Here's a 32-minute presentation I made to provide an introduction to some of the core LessWrong concepts for a general audience:

You Are A Brain [YouTube]

You Are a Brain [Google Slides] - public domain

I already posted this here in 2009 and some commenters asked for a video, so I immediately recorded one six years later. This time the audience isn't teens from my former youth group, it's employees who work at my software company where we have a seminar series on Thursday afternoons.

Stanford Encyclopedia : Perception
Wikipedia : Direct and Indirect Realism

On various philosophy forums I've participated on, there have been arguments between those who call themselves 'direct realists' and those who call themselves 'indirect realists'. The question is apparently about perception. Do we experience reality directly, or do we experience it indirectly?

When I was first initiated to the conversation, I immediately took the indirect side -- There is a ball, photons bounce off the ball, the frequency of those photons is changed by some properties of the ball, the photons hit my retina activating light-sensitive cells, those cells send signals to my brain communicating that they were activated, the signals make it to the visual cortex and...you know...some stuff happens, and I experience the sight of a ball.

So, my first thought in the conversation about Indirect vs Direct realism was that there was a lot of stuff in between the ball and my experience of it, so, it must be indirect.

But then I found that direct realists don't actually disagree about any part of that sequence of events I described above. For them as well, at least the few that have bothered to respond, photons bounce off a ball, interact with our retinas, send signals to the brain, etc. The physical process is apparently the same for both sides of the debate.

And when two sides vehemently disagree on something, and then when the question is broken down into easy, answerable questions you find that they actually agree on every relevant question, that tends to be a pretty good hint that it's a wrong question.

So, is this a wrong question? Is this just a debate about definitions? Is it a semantic argument, or is there a meaningful difference between Direct and Indirect Realism? In the paraphrased words of Eliezer, "Is there any way-the-world-could-be—any state of affairs—that corresponds to Direct Realism being true, or Indirect Realism being true?"

Race Realism AKA Human Biodiversity Theorem is an extremely contentious issue, which frequently seems to be owned by the extremists on both sides.  Some people say we should have a frank discussion on race, and personally I think we should have one.

The link that follows goes to a 20 minute youtube video where I discuss the issue.  Is it racist to discuss race realism?  By the colloquial defintion of racist.  Well, sort of.  But that doesn't mean you should throw the baby out with the bath water.  Stormfront might happily embrace any study that shows disparate achievement, but that doesn't mean that the studies are false.

Are the Race Realists on the internet anti-black, or is sensible social policy based upon acceptance of differences?

Transcript.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/bCaxQXVHMp0

...

BTW, I've acted like a jerk.  This will be deleted in 48 hours.

A second attempt.

Defintions:

universe: that which contains everything.

reality: the realm of natural phenomena.

scientific theory: a theory that identifies natural phenomena.

morality: the realm of normative rules.

normative theory: a theory that identifies normative rules.

identification: "this natural phenomenon has following properties" or "this normative rule says: ... "

 

What are you?

Please answer in the form of [ABC0]{4}, where 0 stands for no opinion. Feel free to add an explanation.

Example: B0BA stands for anti-realism, no opinion on values, weak ontological realism, scientific reductionism.

 

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1A realism

Reality is external to the mind.

It is possible to evaluate which scientific theory is more correct.

1B anti-realism

Reality is external to the mind.

It is impossible to evaluate which scientific theory is more correct.

1C subjectivism

Reality is a product of the mind.

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2A value realism

Morality is external to the mind.

It is possible to evaluate which normative theory is better.

2B value anti-realism

Morality is external to the mind.

It is impossible to evaluate which normative theory is better.

2C value relativism

Morality is a product of the mind.

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3A strong ontological reductionism

Mental phenomena are reducible to reality and reality is reducible to mathematics.

Mathematics is the universe.

3B weak ontological reductionism

Mental phenomena are reducible to reality, but reality is not reducible to mathematics.

Reality (and mathematics) is the universe.

3C anti-reductionism

Mental phenomena are not reducible to reality and reality is not reducible to mathematics.

 

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4A scientific reductionism

The entirety of scientific theories can be reduced to some axiomatic theories.

4B scientific anti-reductionism

The entirety of scientific theories cannot be reduced to some axiomatic theories.

New natural phenomena require new irreducible scientific theories.

 

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