TheMatrixDNA comments on Rationality is Systematized Winning - Less Wrong

48 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 April 2009 02:41PM

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Comment author: TheMatrixDNA 14 April 2013 09:08:55AM -1 points [-]

Thanks, Estarilo. I really need to fix my world vision and thoughts.

You said: " More ordered states could prove to be unsustainable whether or not there's some sort of overarching system such as you describe at play."

I think yes, more ordered state must be unsustainable, eternally. But, chaos also must be unsustainable. If so, there are these cycles, when chaos produces order and order produces chaos. The final results is evolution, because each cycle is a little bit more complex. There is hierarchy of systems. Overarching systems can be two types: 1) in relation to complexity and, 2) in relation to size, force. A lion is more strong than a human, but human is more complex. We have two systems modelling evolution at Earth. 1) the astronomical system (biggest size and less evolved), which is our ancestor, but we are inside it, he created us. This system is a perfect machine, but not intelligent, not rational like us. Whatever, he is the agent behind natural selection, because he is the whole environment. 2) The second system is untenable, but he must exists, because here there is mind, consciousnesses and our ancestral astronomic has no mind. I don't accept that this Universe creates things that he has no information for, so, the system that made the emergence of mind here must be superior to the Universe. And if he is ex-machine, makes no sense to talk about ordered or chaotic states. He must be more sustainable than the Universe. I am not talking about supernatural gods, I am suggesting a natural superior system from which this thing called consciousness is coming from..

You said: " there's no specifically supporting evidence"

It is probable because we have a real known parameter. An embryo gets " mind" because it comes from a superior hierarchic system that exists beyond his "Universe" (the womb). The superior system is the human species, his parents. So, it is possible that a natural super-system existing beyond our universe have transmitted before the Big Bang the informations for the mind appears here at the right time.

You said: " Maybe ordered systems lose because magical unicorns..."

In the alternation between cycles, there are the alternations between dominant and recessive. If chaos is dominant here and now, the ordered state is weak and a loser, till the chaos being extinct. And rationality is more relative to order than chaos. But rationality is not the wisdom. Must have a third superior state. What do you think ?

Comment author: CCC 14 April 2013 09:35:39AM 1 point [-]

I don't accept that this Universe creates things that he has no information for

It is possible to create something without having the information for it. The classic example; if enough monkeys type at random on enough typewriters for long enough, then sooner or later (probably much, much later) one of them will randomly type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Even if none of the monkeys have ever heard of Shakespeare.

Comment author: Estarlio 14 April 2013 08:06:12PM -1 points [-]

I think yes, more ordered state must be unsustainable, eternally. But, chaos also must be unsustainable. If so [...]

You're putting the cart before the horse here. You've said that they must be - why must they be? If they are then what predictions does their being so let you make and how have you tested them?

What, for that matter, are your formal definitions of order and chaos? The way I'd define them, chaos exists mostly on a quantum level and when you start to generalise out correlates start showing up on a macroscopic level really quickly, and then it's not chaos anymore because it's - at least in principle - predictable.

I mean it's not silly to suppose that selection and mutation - with the former being the order enforcing part of evolution and the latter being the 'chaotic' part, operate in cycles. I believe if you model evolution of finite populations using Fokker Planck equations you tend to have an increasing spread of phenotypes between periods of heavy selection - but it's not really an area I've much interest in so I couldn't say for sure.

We have two systems modelling evolution at Earth. 1) the astronomical system (biggest size and less evolved), which is our ancestor, but we are inside it, he created us. This system is a perfect machine, but not intelligent, not rational like us. Whatever, he is the agent behind natural selection, because he is the whole environment. 2) The second system is untenable, but he must exists, because here there is mind, consciousnesses and our ancestral astronomic has no mind.

I don't know what this means. You're assigning an overarching system agency. But agency tends to mean that something is alive and thinking in English. Like a human would be said to have agency, whereas a computer - at least in the common "I've got one under my desk" sense - wouldn't. Systems don't tend to be considered to have gender in English either. In French lots of words are gendered but in English very few are. The only English things I can think of that are gendered other than living creatures are ships; traditionally thought of as female.

The second system just seems to be undefined.

I don't accept that this Universe creates things that he has no information for, so, the system that made the emergence of mind here must be superior to the Universe.

If you want to find a human how easy is that for you to do? Turn out of your front door and go to town and you'll probably find a fair number of them. If you want to find a specific human how much information do you need? I believe if you start off knowing nothing about them other than that they're somewhere on Earth you only really need something like 32 bits of information but in any case it's a lot more.

If you want to create a table you just make a table. It's not hard. If you want to create a specific table design you need to know what it looks like at the very least.

If you want to create a child you need a partner. If you want to create a brown haired, blue eyed girl and no other kids besides ... you're probably going to be off picking particular partners to up your chances or running off to play with genetic engineering.

Generally the rule is that the more picky you want to be the more info you need.

If you just wanted to create a person, and nothing else, you would require a lot of information. If you wanted to create an entire universe you would need very little information. The universe is very large, and seems to consist mostly of repetitions of fairly simple things, which suggests to me an informationally sparse genesis.

And if he is ex-machine, makes no sense to talk about ordered or chaotic states. He must be more sustainable than the Universe. I am not talking about supernatural gods, I am suggesting a natural superior system from which this thing called consciousness is coming from..

Do you need to suppose a system at all? If what you're talking about can be defined entirely in terms of a conflict between order and chaos - which really just seems to be evolution in progress. What explanatory power does this system have?

So, it is possible that a natural super-system existing beyond our universe have transmitted before the Big Bang the informations for the mind appears here at the right time.

Sure, anything's possible. But how probable is it and what grounds do you have for believing that it's that probable?

In the alternation between cycles, there are the alternations between dominant and recessive. If chaos is dominant here and now, the ordered state is weak and a loser, till the chaos being extinct. And rationality is more relative to order than chaos. But rationality is not the wisdom. Must have a third superior state. What do you think ?

Broadly you seem to be saying something to the effect of: In the absence of strong selection pressures the trend is towards disorder and decay. Which I agree with. And I can see how that would relate to rationality - there are systems, like schooling, that lose their purpose and essentially go insane in the absence of strong demands. Why are schools so crappy? A large part of it seems to be because adults don't have an economic need for children at that age and it's politically expedient to conduct education in a certain way that seems to produce work - without actually testing whether that work is useful because by that point the government will be out of power.

I suspect rationality carries connotations in your language that it doesn't necessarily have in English. If a chaotic/random/brute force method of traversing the search space turns out to be better suited to certain situations I'd assign it a really high prior that people who define themselves as rationalists would make their decisions in that regard by throwing dice or some equivalent that introduced chaos into their actions. Like my passwords - what are my passwords? I don't know. Most of them are 128 character gibberish.

If you think of rationality as systematised winning it seems more like: Whatever works. Than anything particularly tied to a specific selection/mutation ratio.

Comment author: MugaSofer 14 April 2013 03:11:35PM -2 points [-]

An embryo gets " mind" because it comes from a superior hierarchic system that exists beyond his "Universe" (the womb). The superior system is the human species, his parents.

Well, an embryo develops a mind because it's got the genetic code for it - which, yes, comes from the larger external system that evolved that code. Is that what you meant?

So, it is possible that a natural super-system existing beyond our universe have transmitted before the Big Bang the informations for the mind appears here at the right time.

I must admit, I don't see how that follows. Are you suggesting our universe was designed specifically as a "womb" to create us? That's the only analogy I can see, and evolutionary advantage seems a simpler reason for sentience to evolve - although I guess those aren't mutually exclusive, if this "natural super-system existing beyond our universe" anticipated that would result in us. But why postulate this? It could as easily have designed the universe as a "womb" to produce muffins! We could as easily be part of this muffin-womb. (Man, there's a sentence I never expected to type.)

If chaos is dominant here and now, the ordered state is weak and a loser, till the chaos being extinct. And rationality is more relative to order than chaos.

But science again and again has discovered that what we thought was "chaos" is merely the complex result of simple rules - order, in other words, that we can exploit with rationality.

And rationality is more relative to order than chaos. But rationality is not the wisdom. Must have a third superior state. What do you think ?

If rationality works in ordered states, what's the analog that works in "chaotic" states?

Comment author: TheMatrixDNA 14 April 2013 09:00:08PM *  0 points [-]

You said: "Well, an embryo develops a mind because it's got the genetic code for it - which, yes, comes from the larger external system that evolved that code. Is that what you meant?"

Our conflict is due two different interpretations of genetic code. You think that biological systems (aka life) evolved a genetic code, so, you think that had no genetic code before life. It is not what is suggesting the results from my different method of investigation. There is no " code" in the sense that are composed by symbols. Each horizontal base-pair of nucleotides is a derivation with some little difference of an ancestor system, the original first galaxies. (you need see the model of this galaxy and how it fits as nucleotide in my website). So, DNA is merely a pile of diversified copies of a unique ancestor astronomical system, which produces diversification and functional biological systems. But, galaxies got their system's configuration from atoms system, and they got from particles as systems, so, the prior causes of this " genetic makeup" seems to be beyond the Big Bang. The informations for building the mind of an embryo came from a system outside his womb; maybe informations for building minds in the whole universe came from a natural system outside the universe. Why not? configuration from atoms system, and they got from particles as systems (Sorry, I need stop now but I will come back. Sheers...)

Comment author: MugaSofer 15 April 2013 10:58:10AM -2 points [-]

Wait, you think human genetic code has existed, unchanged, since the beginning of time? Yeah, I can see how that would lead to human exceptionalism and such. Pretty sure it's physically impossible, though. Or do you just mean it's the result of a causal chain leading back to the beginning of time?