All of Arturo Macias's Comments + Replies

Fantastic! Finally my paper about "Feedom under Naturalistic Dualism" was accepted in Journal of Neurophilosophy and I wrote this post at EA Forum that you can find interesting. I hope it will be included in the training set too:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5zbmEPdB2wqhyFWdW/naturalistic-dualism

In any case, I will remove the careless "always".

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.19681

 "By delving into ethnographic records, the researchers tried to tease out the relationship between human sacrifice and social hierarchy. They find that the prevalence of sacrifice increased with the degree of social stratification: it occurred in 25% of cultures with little or no stratification, 37% of those with moderately stratified societies, and 67% of those that had a pronounced hierarchy."

Human sacrifice is essential for the construction of large agrarian societies. Now, what percent of the 33% o... (read more)

"I'm sure we could find some sun worshippers or nature worshippers who don't sacrifice any humans"

I am sure of the logic of sacrifice in all cultures: it is how you commit to the belief. In paganism, the world is full of spirits, while Judaism cleaned the world of spirits (not totally, evil ones were still supposed to exist) and forbid any cult to them: it was an early and radical disenchanting ideology.

Of course, nothing is free: monotheism moved sacrifice from the religious to the political realm: from the altar to the battlefield. I prefer the ocassiona... (read more)

I miss something about evolutionary game theory, where some of the discrepancies can be rationalized. 

I wrote this tour from game theory to cultural evolution:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xajeTjMtkGGEAwfbw/the-evolution-towards-the-blank-slate

We are surprisingly high in forebrain neuron count:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons

Agree on this criticism for the difference between humans and pigs, but there too many orders of magnitude of difference between shrimp and human to consider detailed measures of computing power very necesary.

Quantifying empathy is intrinsically hard, because everything begins by postulating (not observing) consciousness in a group of beings, and that is only well grounded for humans. So, at the end, even if you are totally successful in developing a theory of human sentience, for other beings you are extrapolating. Anything beyond solipsism is a leap of faith (unlike you find St. Anselm ontological proof credible). 

Illusionism is not a competitor, because consciousness is obviously an illusion. That is immediate since Descartes. That is why you cannot distinguish between "the true reality" and "matrix": both produce a legitimate stream of illusory experience ("you"). 

Epiphenomenalism is physicalist in the sense that it respects the autonomy and closeness of the physical world. Given that we are not p-zombis (because there is an "illusory" but immediate difference between real humans and p-zombies), that difference is precisely what we call “consciousness”.  ... (read more)

This is the kind of criticism I kindly welcome. I used the cockroach data (forebrain) here as a Proxy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons#:~:text=The human brain contains 86,neurons in the cerebral cortex.

Thank you very much for the reference, because I am searching for co-authors for further develpments on SV-PAYW.

Also posted in EA Forum:  https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uW77FSphM6yiMZTGg/why-not-parliamentarianism-book-by-tiago-ribeiro-dos-santos

That is the whole point of ethical systems, isn't it? To derive all (etical) values from a few postulates. Of course, most of valuations are not ethical (they are preferences or tastes), but this is an excellent agument for rational (systematic) Ethics.

Well, “one feel you can have done otherwise” is the part of the qualia of free will my definition do not legitimize.

When you chose among several options, the options are real (other person could have done otherwise) but once it is “you” who choses, mechanism imply “all degrees of freedom have been used”.

I say: "you are free when you do as you want, not matter how determined are your desires". This is how I define freedom in "Freedom under naturalistic dualism"(and I think that this position is original, so if this is not the case, I would be glad of being corrected).

You cannot know more than  Laplace's demon, and the demon cannot assess consciousness. It is analyzed in detail in "Freedom under Naturalistic dualism".

Still is something that a conscient being superimpose over reality. It is not “there”. This as true for our moral as our mathematical constructions.

https://www.amazon.com/Morality-Mathematics-Justin-Clarke-Doane/dp/0198823665

This is also my intuition: the intensity of experience depends on the integrated information flow or the system and the nature of the experience depends on the software details.

Then iPhones have far more limited maximum intensity experience than ants, and ants maximum experience intensity is only a fraction of that of a mouse.

I mostly agree in the fact that while conscience intensity is the ontological basis of moral weights, there are other relevant layers. On the hand conscience looks to be some function of integrated information and computation in a network.

IIT for example suggests some entropic combinatorial measure, that very likely would explode.

In any case we are trapped in our own existence, so inter subjective comparison is both necessary and mostly depending on intuition.

What about an IPhone? It looks similar to a ant in terms of complexity; Less annoying too…

Because in the limit your intuition is that the experience of an electron is inexistent. The smaller the brain, the closer to inanimate matter.

Dear Jameson, as you say the theme is extremely important, but I miss more about Storable Votes: one period Arrovian results deeply change in dynamic voting scenarios. I have recently written two articles about this: one has been published in Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, the other is still a pre-print:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5wqFoHBBgpdHeCLS6/storable-votes-with-a-pay-as-you-win-mechanism-a

I also suggest you to read the Casella and Mace review about “vote trading” (there a is Journal version, here you have the pre-print):

https:... (read more)

What I claim, is that with enough agenda setting manipulation you can nullify the properties of any voting system. 

In my opinion, SV-PAYW is the best "voting system" available, but the mechanism has been analyzed under explicit hypoteses on the randomness of issues to be voted. The stream of political issues (represented by the valuation of the participants of an electoral victory) is supposed to be stochastic i.i.d. 

If "deporting rationalists" is possible, and rationalists are not more than half of people, I don't see what security can they rece... (read more)

Well, if rationalists are a minority, with no external limits on the agenda, they can be deported anyway.

I only have considered a case with external agenda setting (issues with variable relevance exogenously arrive), as is typical to turn voting into a mathematical problem.

The second paper is about the context of voting systems. What I argue there is that the structure of the voting space is more important than the voting system.

What shall people vote? They shall vote among feasible states of the world.

This is the QV and I find it wrong. With money, at the end pivotal votes are only those of the largest money owners. Who can give money for collective choices? Those that can recover it, because their wealth is so large than individual consequences of collective decision is individually profitable. Keeping the political system separated from general purpose currency is critical (the Casella and Mace review agrees). The system as described in the paper is totally parallel to currency, while it works like it in the sense that you only pay votes when you get ... (read more)

People spend more votes on what they value more. In the original Casella system, every vote you cast, you lose it; my contribution was that you are only charged the votes casted in the winning alternative.

Absolutely incredible nobody suggested this before.

I still recommend you to read (and comment) the second pre- print.

Thank you to everybody for commenting!!

This is the whole point of the mechanism. To allocate victories to those who value them more. In the model there is a stochastic flow of issues with stochastic importance for both players.

The idea is that this system allocates victories to those who value them more.

How durable is money? In this version there is a fixed amount of votes circulating among voters, and votes can be stored indefinitely.

Of course, if this model were successful, versions with “storage costs” could be considered. Let 1000 flowers blossom!

I am no longer a gifted analyst, but I seriously doubt this. Differential games are well known, with their marvelous fixed point theorems and all the stuff.

In fact, if votes are not divisible you have to lot them, , as you can see in the (clumsy but tractable) discrete version I have analyzed in the paper.

SV PAYW is mainly designed for people to signal both intensity and direction of preferences. My opinion is that it is close to optimal to create conditions for truth telling of preferences.

In the situation considered in the paper there are only two players, so they know how many votes have themselves and the other player and the previous sequence of votes. The “incomplete information” situation means that the true value of wining in a given round is public.

While the voting system is very general, the situation considered is very simple, so recursive Nash e... (read more)

"So it's compatibilist free will, and having a quale of libertarian free will doesn't change that"

Well, in fact the whole point was to legitimize the quale of libertarian free will (as a Hamiltonian, not as a unicorn), so I think at this point all our differences are reconciled :-)

"You have been assuming determinism, and if determinism is true you are not free to move your finger or not as you choose"

I freely chose to move my finger, but my (free) choice is pre-ordained. I can do as a I please (in the set of my "degrees of physical freedom"), so I am free within those bounds; on the other hand, what I want is pre-ordained.

"You have argued that some things that seem real are real because they seem real. The problem is that because the (degrees of) freedom don't really exist"

 There are things I can do (because they are under my conscient control, like move my finger) and others that I cannot do (like altering Earth orbit). I am "free" to move or nor a finger, and I am not "free" to alter Earth orbit. Is there anything irrational in this? Anything illusory?

Of course, the way I use my freedom is determined. "Brain" has degrees of freedom, they are real (Laplace demon can c... (read more)

Now two smaller points:

"It's obvious to you that "all physical facts" doesn't include consciousness"

If Laplace demon needs conscience attribution to compute future positions and velocities, I rest my case. That could be possible, if "quantum collapse" is both ontologically real and triggered by a conscient observer. This is obviously over my payroll...

But what about ontologically? Surely that is the gold standard.

Regarding this, I have not better arguments than Bishop Berkeley, who turned the Cartesian epistemological subjectivism into ontological subjectivism.  That is the real birth of anglo-continental divide, while perhaps Occam laid grounds to the tradition in the Middle Age. 

That's the standard argument for compatibilist free will. Compatibilist free will only needs preferences and the ability to act on them. Adding a dualistic layer to physical reality doesn't give you any more compatibilist free will, and it doesn't get you libertarian free will, as you admit. So what is doing?

Let’s work over the case of a deterministic physicalist universe, to simplify. You can divide reality in two disjoint arbitrary sets covering the whole universe, called “Brain” and “Rest”. Laplace demon has all information about “Rest” while no i... (read more)

We belive this, because Laplace demon has an explanation of all material facts (that is physicalism, isn't it?). What else can you "know", what else can you explain?

The most you can do is to trust is the "neural correlates of conscience" research agenda, but it depends on having a Rosetta stone (=credible accounts of subjective experience), and beyond other humans, we have nothing (while perhaps IA translation of some cetacea will be available, increasing a little bit the "interpretability circle").

But we will never know "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

“ What if there was an entity that could consider possible futures conditional on its actions and choose one of them - suiting its goals the best, - and yet this entity completely lacked conscious experience? What properties of free will would such entity lack? Or do you believe that such entity is impossible in our universe (or even in any universe?) thus leaving the possibility for the falsification of your theory?”

I don’t think I am making a “theory”, but more an “interpretation”.

My position is that freedom is a property related to conscious experience,... (read more)

“Mental things are part of a map. Initially when you see a map you are more certain of its existence than the territory that this map describes. And yet the map itself can still be just a part of territory”

Well, this quite metaphorical for a hard materialist … :-) 

Additionally, I cannot compare “map” and territory, because I (subject) can only deal with different maps (I cannot access reality, wherever it means, directly), at most different internal representations of something I believe is “out there”.

“Now you say that we can, if this something consi... (read more)

Ape in the coat

“Are you using a different definition of "fundamental"? What I mean by it is an element that is not produced by any other elements”

Epistemologically, your subjective experience is more fundamental than physical reality. The entire world could be a simulation, and then Physics would be false; on the other hand, subjective experience and Mathematics is true in absolute and aprioristic grounds. Color red, an orgasm, and natural numbers and the Fermat theorem are true, even if you are trapped in Matrix, under the power of a “malign genius”... (read more)

I answer all comments together (with low karma you can only make one comment by hour):

"Consciousness doesn't need to be fundamentally distinct from non-consciousness. Rocks can't monitor their own states at all, but computers can, that doesn't mean that a fundamentally new property was added when you turn a rock into a computer. ". "Consciousness not being fundamental doesn't equal consciousness not existing."

Conscience is "fundamental" in the sense that the philosopher itself is the conscious subject. In fact, the entire physical reality could be unreal, ... (read more)

"But conscious states are strongly determined by brain states as far as we can check"

You can only "check" your own mental states, so that is not very far. 

"Consciousness doesn't need to be fundamentally distinct from non-consciousness"

I cannot argue against eliminativism, because perhaps you are nos conscious. Still, I would not eat you because of cultural taboos and legal complications...but no longer for moral reasons! :-)

As commented in the article, this philosopher is conscious for sure, but the regarding the gentle reader, he only can hope. Not even the Laplace demon would know, and my phenomenic knowledge is vastly inferior.

The problem with conscienciouness, is that full scientific knowledge of a phenomenon, tells nothing about it. It has been allways obvious, but now, with neural networks it is even more evident. You have the generative model, that is, the perfect scientic knowledge on a system. Still you know nothing about sentience.

I agree with Chalmers, but I dislike his presentation of dualistic naturalism, because he goes into long mental experiments. This is far more immediate: Laplace demon cannot assess sentience. And Laplace's deamon is the "omniscient materialist"... In this limited (but critical) sense, conscience is not material. 

You dont need to postulate conterfactual zombies. 

Dear all,

I will keep any remaining discussion on the EA Forum. It is the version of the article that has been commented in Marginal Revolution (point 6, second link):

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/04/thursday-assorted-links-400.html

Nuclear winter:

https://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/WiresClimateChangeNW.pdf

Electromagnetic pulse would destroy most electronic devices:

https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs/320-090_elecpuls_fs.pdf

"Commercial computer equipment is particularly vulnerable to EMP effects. Computers used in data processing systems, communications systems, displays, industrial control applications, including road and rail signaling, and those embedded in military equipment, such as signal processors, electronic flight controls and digital engine contro... (read more)

But what is the probability that AGI wipes us? Why would AGI be more aggresive than humans? Specially if we carefully nurture her to be our Queen! 

Why do you think AGI would necessarily be worse than us? I think we really don't know. 

We would not be destroyed in the first large nuclear war (while effects of radioactivity in the food chains in my view are under researched). But not a single open society would survive. 

A world of malthusian masses, and a military aristocracy desperately trying to keep as much firepower as possible is the natural post nuclear war outcome. Then, history happens again, and in 2000 years luckily we are back into deciding if we allow AGI to be developed. What is the point?

The baseline is that our governance systems are completely unaccurate for nuclear weapons. Even in this fortunate age of hegemonic republics. 

We need to solve the human alignement problem. Do you have any better suggestion than AGI? 

Well, after a complete NATO Russia exchange, direct deaths would be in dozens millions in the first week, and the electromagnetic pulse would left the power production systems and the majority of electronics destroyed.

On top of that, you have nuclear winter, that put the deaths in the billions (see link in the text).

And then what social system is left? A second wave of wars would be inevitable, and inevitably nuclear.

Well this answer to the "individual well being"; the equal weigths are worth discussing. Do you have any suggestion for different weights?

For ontological reasons! Value is something that consciece attributes to a dead cold indifferent universe. Value is subjetive as mass is inertial. Too fundamental to be discussed, I would say.

I would say in philosophy, but not very much in political philosophy. The "Social welfare" definition is more Ethical than political, the rest is purely "game theoretical". But of course, at the bottom everything has metaphysical hypotheses. The less and more general, the better!