Then -> than?
Language is more than blood... more powerful than blood? I recognise "Language of the Third Reich", it was a study on how language (most notably alien and eternal) was used to alter perceptions during the Third Reich's reign. Maybe this quote means language can turn blood relatives against each other? Or that language can dehumanise a person to the point that seeing them die (their blood spilled?) doesn't bother someone?
Yeah, I got nothing either.
It is poetry. Given the context, it is a sentence which stresses the importance of language, to reflect and language and to use it properly. Language has grave consequences.
"LANGUAGE IS MORE THAN BLOOD'
-- Franz Rosenzweig, quoted in the book "Language of the Third Reich; a Philologist's Notebook" by Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer
"reflecting on your mind using your mind" Can Glasses look at their self? No. What you ought to mean is that you assume other minds are similar to your own.
You assume implicitly a strict connection between cognition and evolution
That assumption follows pretty straightforwardly from evolution and some trivial observations. If I meet a human, I expect with high likelihood that they will have cognitive capabilities in the ballpark with mine. If I meet a lobster, tree, or rock, then I expect with high likelihood that they will not have such cognitive capabilities. I assume that relationship is based on the way the thing is constructed.
Or am I misunderstanding you?
You're assuming evolution (and natural selection) as a basis for shaping cognition with the robots, and then produce altruism. Why not assume culture and program robots like that and call it evidence for cultural shaping which has nopthing to do with evolution?
My point is, you're trying to prove cognitive evolution via...cognitive evolution while assuming evolution shapes cognition. And to remind you, altruism is culturally shaped. See for example capitalism VS communism or the cult named radiofreedomain which advocates acting towards family as any other human being.
Simplified & short; If P, then Q. Q. Therefore, P.
While propositional logic may be a special case of Bayesian reasoning, the Bayes's theorem formalization of the scientific method cannot be usefully reduced to propositional logic.
Also, welcome to Less Wrong!. It sounds like you may want to check out Bayes' Theorem and/or Technical Explanation.
Thank you for the kind welcome. Will read.
Would it help to know you could generate altruism in robots just by putting them in a simulation of evolution?
You assume implicitly a strict connection between cognition and evolution, while that is what we are trying to prove.
I could understand wider impulses as relatively probable & testable, but "sacrifice themselves for three brothers but not one", that is one huge kind of a detalied leap. Since when by the way observation is enough? You need to determine the actual cause from all the other possible ones.
You are right that the "three brothers but not one" bit is detailed. That is why observing such specific numbers would provide strong support for the theory, even if you didn't "determine the actual cause from all the other possible ones". Mere observation is enough. That is the essence of Bayesian epistemology.
In general, suppose that a theory T says that a highly-specific (and hence a priori improbable) observation E is likely, and then E is actually observed. Then that observation makes the probability of T increase by a very large factor. And the probability of T increases more, the more specific E is. In symbols, if p(E) is small, but p(E|T) is large, then the ratio p(T|E) / p(T) is very large. This is a direct corollary of Bayes's theorem: p(T|E) = p(T) * p(E|T) / p(E).
Note that this applies even if you merely observed E, but didn't determine what caused E to happen. (However, if you subsequently did determine what caused E, and that cause differed from what T said it would be, then T would lose whatever favored status it had gained.)
Simplified & short;
If P, then Q.
Q.
Therefore, P.
The question remains, postdictions or predictions? I observe a certain group of people in a culture doing something, then I postdict it with EvPsy or alien control. I observe many people dying around age 80. My theory is that if alines exist, they kill people around age 80. A postdiction with observation, is utterly worthless. It is "just so" storytelling. Observation is not enough in our case, take a walk to the the faculty of sociology. And yet, establishing casual links & correlations isn't important?
EvPsy have no apparent correlation to these behaviors, or cultures who motivate/shape them. Can you think of any falsifiable test for this explanation? Is this science?
These postdictions are not predictions, I challenge you actually pose a testable prediction/hypothesis for this pseudo-science or provide real reliable examples. "Just so" stories is an excellent category for this "science".
What about the prediction that people would (statistically) sacrifice themselves for three brothers but not one, or for nine cousins but not three? Would this qualify, provided that these specific numbers were empirically observed? After all, no competing theory makes such precise numerical predictions, to my knowledge. So, if observations were to bear out these numbers, then that would provide strong Bayesian evidence for the evolutionary origins of this kind of altruism.
Also, some of the things that you're calling "postdictions" are not universally acknowledged to be facts — e.g., claims about psychological differences between men and women. So, to the extent that convincing empirical evidence for these differences ultimately arises, wouldn't that qualify as an honest prediction of evolutionary psychology?
Could you find examples of societies who act differently? Yes. Can culture twist/avoid Kin altruism? If so, I can also invent an evolutionary story to fit that culture just as easily. Does EP explain all of these different cultures via natural selection? I did not find any so far. Evolutionary biology always seems to "explain" a narrow provincial behavior and always in postdictions.
What is satisfying? Something accurate enough avoiding ambiguity, taking in account of all of the facts & and provoing an accurate account of the actual cause of behavior (different cultures, sociology, different possible causes - i.e. actually proving it's bio-psy-evolutionary roots that drive such -detailed behaviors- & not local cultures). I could understand wider impulses as relatively probable & testable, but "sacrifice themselves for three brothers but not one", that is one huge kind of a detalied leap. Since when by the way observation is enough? You need to determine the actual cause from all the other possible ones.
I find this to be a major obstacle for the success of this enterprise as a science.
These postdictions are not predictions, I challenge you actually pose a testable prediction/hypothesis for this pseudo-science or provide real reliable examples. "Just so" stories is an excellent category for this "science".
"There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise...Evolutionary psychologists generate evolutionary hypotheses by first finding apparent design in the world, say in our psychological make up, and then presenting a selective scenario that would have led to the production of the trait that exhibits apparent design. The hypotheses evolutionary psychologists generate, given that they are usually hypotheses about our psychological capacities, are tested by standard psychological methods. Philosophers of biology challenge evolutionary psychologists on both of these points" - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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"It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs."