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Swimmer963 comments on Rationally Irrational - Less Wrong
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Is that what you think I'm trying to say? No wonder you are disagreeing! The last thing I believe is that our minds are 'abstract souls.'
Of course, the images and thoughts and ideas in your head are not magically happening outside the universe. If someone could look at the "source code" of the universe from the outside, they would see your neurons, made out of atoms, running through all the steps of processing a mental image of, say, an oak leaf.
But that mental image isn't the same as the physical oak leaf that you're modelling it off! Your 'mental world' runs on atoms, and it obeys the laws of physics, and all the information content comes from somewhere...but if you have a memory of an oak tree in a forest 100 miles away, that's a memory, and the oak tree is an oak tree, and they aren't the same thing at all. In the universe source code, one would look like atoms arranged into plant cells with cellulose walls, and one would look like atoms arranged into neurons with tiny electrical impulses darting around. You can imagine the oak tree burning down, but that's just your mental image. You can't make the actual oak tree, 100 miles away, burn down just by imagining it. Which should make it obvious that they aren't the same thing.
If you've been understanding the phrase "the map is not the territory" to mean 'human minds are essential essences that don't need to run on physics", then you've gotten a misleading idea of what most of us belief it to mean, and I apologize for not pointing that out sooner. Most people would find our fault is in being too reductionist. I think the problem might be that what we're calling "map" and what we're calling "territory" both fit under your definition of "territory", while you consider the "map" to mean a hypothetical outside-the-universe 'essential essence.' Does that capture it?
So I don't really know what to say. Because you have definitely captured it, but it is like you don't see it in the same way I do? I don't know. You say
But to me the idea that a physical oak leaf and your mental image are not the same thing is the same thing as saying you believe in 'abstract souls' or a hypothetical outside-the-universe 'essential essence.' It is the modern adaptation of the soul. Just as the croc is the modern adaptation of the shoe. It is packaged differently, and there are some new functional elements packaged in, but ultimately it stems from the same root.
When you see an oak tree and when you think about an oak tree it triggers the same series of neural impulses in your brain. Athletes visualize their actions before doing them, and this provides real benefits to achieving those actions. For humans, there is never any "physical oak leaf" there is only ever constructs.
Okay I think I understand what you're trying to say. So let's go back to our hypothetical observer outside the universe, looking in at the source code. (Not that this is possible, but I find it clarifies my thinking and what I'm trying to say.) The human is looking at an oak tree. The observer is looking at the human's brain, and sees that certain neurons are sending signals to other neurons. The human is closing their eyes and visualizing an oak tree. There's a similar but not identical neural pattern going on–I find the subjective experience of visualizing an oak tree using my imagination isn't quite the same as the experience of looking at one, but the neural firing is probably similar.
Now the human keeps their eyes closed, and the outside-the-universe hypothetical observer looks at the oak tree, which is made out of cellulose, not neurons. The oak tree starts to fall down. In the neural representations in the human's head, the oak tree isn't falling down, because last time he looked at it, it was nice and steady. He keeps his eyes closed, and his earplugs in, and the oak tree falls on his head and he dies. Up until the moment he died, there was no falling oak tree in his mental representation. The information had no sensory channel to come in through. Does that mean it didn't exist for him, that there was never any "physical oak tree?" If so, what killed him?
I think the LessWrong overall attitude to this is comparable to a bunch of observers saying "gee, wouldn't it have been nice if he'd kept his eyes open, and noticed the tree was falling, and gotten out of the way?" The philosophy behind it is that you can influence what goes into your mental representations of the world (I'll stop calling it "map" to avoid triggering your 'modern equivalent of the soul' detector). If you keep your eyes closed when walking in the forest (or you don't get around to going to the doctor and getting a mammogram or a colonoscopy, or [insert example here]), you get hit by falling trees (or your cancer doesn't get detected until it's Stage 5, at which point you might as well go straight to palliative care).
For me there's something basically wrong with claiming that something doesn't exist if no human being knows about it. Was the core of the planet solid before any human knew it was molten? Is an asteroid going to decide not to hit the Earth after all, just because no telescopes were pointed outwards to look for it? What we don't know does hurt us. It hurts us plenty.
Granted, the 'map and territory' claim, along with many other analogies rampant on LW, was aimed more at topics where their is fairly clear evidence for a particular position (say, evolution), and people have ideological reasons not to believe it. But it goes just as well for topics where no human being knows anything yet. They're still out there.
In another comment, you said that you don't think hard science is possible. (Forgive me if i'm misquoting.) Since our entire debate has been pretty much philosophy and words, let's go for some specifics. Do you think research in hard science will stop advancing, or that is should stop advancing? If so, why?
If you don't mind I would like to play off your analogy. I agree that the arrangement of neurons will not be identical, but I would pose the question how does the observer know that the human is closing his eyes? When he is looking at the tree perhaps there is wind and a feeling of coolness; but when he is closing his eyes it can also be windy and cool. If there is a lack of wind in one model how does the observer know that the neurons are the result of a mental construct and not the result of looking at a tree through a window while sitting inside?
The way memories/ mental images work is that they are networked. When we recall a past memory we are irrevocably altering it by attaching it to our current consciousness. So for example, let’s say when I am 20 I remember an exploit of my early teens while at a sleep over drinking vanilla soda. The next time I go to recall that memory, I will also unintentionally, and unavoidably, activate memories of that sleep over and vanilla soda. Every time I reactive that memory the soda and sleep over get activated too, strengthening their place in the memory. In another 10 years the two memories are indistinguishable. Back to our observer, when he is looking at me thinking about an oak tree, it irrevocably activates a network of sensory experiences that will not identically replicate the reality of the oak tree in front of me, but will present an equally believable reality of some oak tree. Not the same oak tree, but I would suggest that the workings of the human brain are more complicated than what you have imagined. Where the observer would not be able to tell the real from the construct.
I have no disagreement here. It is wrong to claim that something doesn’t exist if humans do not know about it. What I have been arguing about is not ontology (what does or does not exist), but epistemology (how humans come to know). It is not that I am saying no territory exists outside of what is human, but that humans have no other way of knowing territory besides through human means, linguistic means.
It is not that I think scientific research will or should stop, but that it should be moderated. What is the purpose of science-technology? I understand the purpose of these things to help humans to be able to better know and predict their environment for the sake of creating a safer niche. Is this what the scientific institution currently does? I would argue no. Currently, I see the driving impetus of science and technology to be profit. That is not a critique in anyway of A.I or the projects of this community. To the contrary, I think the motives of this group are exceptions and exceptional. But I am talking about the larger picture of the scientific institution. The proliferation of new technologies and sciences for the sake of profit has rendered the world less knowable to people, harder to predict, and no in some sense more dangerous (when every technological victory brings with it more sever problems). I am not against hard science. I am against the overemphasis of this one technique to be superimposed onto every facet of human reality.
Um...because a hypothetical observer who can look at neurons can look at the eyes 1 cm away from them, too?
Also, I can tell the difference between a real tree and an imagined tree. It'd be pretty inconvenient if humans couldn't distinguish reality from fantasy. If we can feel a difference, that means there's a difference in the neurons (because you are neurons, not an existential essence), and an observer who knew how to read the patterns could see it too.
Actually, quite a lot of what you're saying comes across as 'no territory exists outside of what is human.' But obviously that's not what you believe. Yay! We agree!
You can tell the difference because you are aware of the difference to begin with. I don't think it is so obvious that our hypothetical observer would observer neurons with eye sight. I thought the observation of neurons would require some extrasensory phenomena, and if that is the case there is no reason why he or she could not have this sense, but lack normal eye sight.
Haha that is how I felt about the whole not beleving in the soul thing. By the way thanks for being so light hearted about this whole conversation, in my experience, people can tend to get pretty nasty if you do not submit to what they think is right. I hope I have not come across in a nasty manner.
As to my comment "It is not that I am saying no territory exists outside of what is human, but that humans have no other way of knowing territory besides through human means." I am not trying to argue that we completely abandon empiricism, or that all of reality is deducible to our thoughts. But I can see how it comes across in that way. That is why I used the moss and stars analogy to try and divorce the idea from an analogy of a totally human constructed reality.
Do you think the territory exists without the map (the human)? I think A territory would exist without the map (the human), but it would be a different territory. The territory humans exist in is one that is defined by having a map. The map shapes the territory in a way that to remove it would remove humanity.
How does this sit with you O_o
Bah. Nastiness begets more nastiness. And more nastiness means less actual information getting transmitted. And I happen to like new information more than I like being self-righteous. Also, I'm pretty young and pretty sheltered, and I'm dedicating this period of my life to absorbing as much knowledge as I can. Even if I finish a discussion thinking you're wrong, I've still learned something, if only about how a certain segment of humanity sees the world.
I basically agree with this statement, as I think you intend it. Why not call that leftover thing "the territory" and then assert that most scientists are incorrectly asserting that some things are in the territory when they are actually in the map?
In other words, I don't understand what purpose you are trying to achieve when you say:
I don't really know what the leftover part you are talking about is, but I do not think there is a leftover part. I don't think things can be broken down that way. Maybe my comment about the visual and audio cortexes was confusing in this degree, but that was just to sound like a know it all.
Maybe I'm confused. You said that you thought something would exist even if there were no humans. I'm suggesting that, for purposes of the map/territory metaphor, you could use "territory" to reference the what-would-exist-without-humans stuff.
You mean the portion of reality we don't interact with? Like for example whatever is outside the universe or in a galaxy on the other side of the universe?
Specifically, it would remove a significant proportion of the frontal cortex and hippocampus from all the humans leaving whatever is left of the humans rather useless.
If you were going to physically lobotomize it out of people, it would probably include most o the cerebral cortex, not just the frontal lobe. The visual cortex is probably the origin of language and symbolic function, but the audio cortexes play a huge role too.
Correct.
Incorrect.
To understand the distinction, note this passage from The Simple Truth:
'belief' corresponds to 'map'; 'reality' corresponds to 'territory'.
By what basis are we assuming that beliefs cannot surprise you and determine experimental results. Have you never been thinking about something and suddenly are overcome by some other thought or feeling? Or thought that some idea or line of thinking would take you one place and you end up somewhere radically different, which in turn leads to the need of a new hypothesis?
That's just moving the distinction up one meta-level, not collapsing it. You had beliefs about your beliefs, and they turned out to be wrong as compared to the reality of your beliefs. Your map is also in the territory, and you have a representation of your map on your map. Recurse as necessary.
EDIT: There's a good illustration in A Sketch of an Anti-Realist Metaethics most of the way down the article. We really should have that on the wiki or something.
When reality surprises you, it is not always the case that it has defied a hypothesis, but often times that it reveals some new sliver of experience that is so unexpected it demands the creation of a new hypothesis. I thought that the point of Swimmer's comment was to suggest that EDIT: in reality we undergo this type of surprise, while in our beliefs we do not. Which I continue to suggest that beliefs also can create the above mentioned surprises, so what is the distinction between the two.
That would be stupid. Beliefs are in reality.
Still, I burn down oak trees by changing oak trees, not by changing my beliefs about oak trees.
But changing your beliefs about oak trees can lead to you either burning them down or preserving them, right?
Is your point that every human action happens in belief form before it happens in "reality"? Of course. But when it happens in belief form (I decide to burn down an oak tree), it hasn't necessarily happened yet in reality. I might still get hit by a car on the way to the forest and never end up carrying out my plan, and the oak tree wouldn't burn.
...and, conversely, I might burn down an oak tree without ever deciding to. Indeed, I might even watch the tree burning in consternation, never discovering that I was responsible.
Not that EVERY human action happens in belief form first, but that the transition between belief and action is a two way road. Beliefs lead to actions, actions lead to beliefs.
Reality doesn't undergo the surprise. It "knew all along." (Quantum mechanics was a pretty big surprise, but it was true even back in Newton's day...even back in paleolithic days.) Beliefs undergo changes in response to a 'surprise.' But that surprise doesn't happen spontaneously...it happens because new information entered the belief system. Because someone had their eyes open. Reality causes the surprise.
If, in some weird hypothetical world, all physics research had been banned in 1900, no one would've ever kept investigating the surprising results of the black-body radiation problem or the photoelectric effect. No human would've ever written the equations down. Newton would be the final word on everything, and no one would be surprised. But quantum mechanics would still be true. A hundred years later, if the anti-physics laws were reversed, someone might be surprised then, and have to create a new hypothesis.
Sorry that was a typo, I meant to say that in reality we undergo this type of surprise, but in our beliefs we do not.