Childhood is formative, being a teenager is formative, being a young adult is formative, etc. And some of those phases will involve a conscious reversal of previous beliefs and dispositions. It may be difficult to generalize here.
Also, I doubt that many people think their life was "all steered by Incredibly Deep Wisdom and uncaused free will". For most people, life has involved surprises, external impositions, revelations of personal folly, and so on.
frelkins - that might have been true of the original Cynical movement in antiquity, but that's not what the word means now, surely. Though perhaps even the common cynic has some trace of that will to live truthfully and that boredom with considerations of life, death, and happiness.
When I wrote my comment yesterday, this post seemed to be an idealist's gambit, designed to attenuate the impact of cynicism by associating it with status-seeking rather than with truth, and I wanted to produce an emphatic reminder of the reality of everything bad in life. Even ...
Cynicism is fundamentally about self-defense from future pain. What is the basic message of a cynic? "You'll be disappointed." The cynic, having themselves been painfully disappointed by life, preempts a repeat of the experience by anticipating it everywhere they can, steering clear of hope in general, and advising others to do the same. Some cynics may seek the weakly compensating satisfaction of vanity by trying to perform their cynicism so as to impress, but that is not the essence of the attitude.
This is what I think of as a "mildly unfriendly" outcome. People still end up happy, but before the change, they would not have wanted the outcome. One way for that to happen involves the AI forcibly changing value systems, so that everyone suddenly has an enthusiasm for whatever imperatives it wishes to impose. In this story, as I understand it, there isn't even alteration of values, just a situation constructed to induce the victory of one set of values (everything involved in the quest for a loved one) over another set of values (fidelity to the existing loved one), in a way which violates the protagonist's preferred hierarchy of values.
With respect to reflective decision theory: a few weeks ago I saw a talk by economist Jason Potts on the "economics of identity". Apparently there is a small literature now - Nobel laureate George Akerlof was mentioned - examining the effects of identity-dependent utility functions, where one's "identity" is something like "one's currently dominant self-concept". Jason described the existing work as static, and said he had a paper coming out which would introduce a dynamic account - I got the impression of something like Tom M...
Caledonian: "I didn't say it was completely unreliable. I said it was completely useless."
I'm surprised you didn't take my second option and moderate your position. Whether you are insisting that introspection is only ever accurate by coincidence, or just that whatever accuracy it possesses is of no practical utility, neither position bears much relationship to reality. The introspective modalities, however it is that they are best characterized, have the same quality - partial reliability - that you attributed to the external senses, and everyon...
Caledonian, the science of physiology and evolution may have played a large role in the creation of your epistemology, but I don't doubt that you also personally thought about the issues, paid attention to your own thinking to see if you were making mistakes, and so forth. Anyway, there's no need to play the reflexive game of "you would have used introspection on your way to the conclusion that introspection can't be used", in order to combat the notion that introspection is completely unreliable. If it were completely unreliable you would never ...
Caledonian, the trouble with denying any validity at all to introspective perception is that it would imply that consciousness plays no role in valid cognition. And yet consider the elaborate degree of self-consciousness implied by the construction of the epistemology you just articulated! Are you really going to say you derived all that purely from sense perception and unconscious cognition, with no input from conscious reflection?
Caledonian: "Our perceptions, and most especially our mental self-perceptions, are not veridical. Once we acknowledge that we do not need to [do stuff]"
Do you think "our perceptions, and most especially our mental self-perceptions" are completely valueless? If not, where do you draw the line between valid and invalid?
Allan Crossman: "If a machine can be consistently interpreted as "doing addition", doesn't that indicate that there are intrinsic facts about the machine that have something to do with addition?"
The same physical process, as a computation, can have entirely different semantics depending on interpretation. That already tells you that none of those interpretations is intrinsic to the physical process.
Caledonian: "We don't need a mind to perceive meaning in a pattern of electrical impulses generated by a circuit for that circuit to pe...
Artificial addition is not intrinsically addition, any more than a particular string of shapes on a page intrinsically means anything. There is no "structure that is addition", but there are "structures" that can represent addition.
What is addition, primordially? The root concept is one of combination or juxtaposition of actual entities. The intellectual process consists of reasoning about and identifying the changes in quantity that result from such juxtaposition. And artificial addition is anything that allows one to skip some or all ...
To respond to the SEED article at slightly greater length... We can start by trying to get a grip on what they mean by "realism". Zeilinger himself says "to give up realism about the moon, that's ridiculous". So the so-called rejection of realism doesn't involve anything like the abandonment of belief in reality (whatever that could mean), just an abandonment of belief in the reality of some things. Calling that a rejection of realism may be rhetorical excess; it is as if I believed there was a cake in the cupboard, discovered there was...
In high school I was on a debating team, and I can remember eventually forming the view that it was a potentially corrupting exercise, because you had to argue for the position you were given, not the position that you believed or the position that you might rationally favor. Occasionally the format permitted creative responses; I recall that once, the affirmative team had to argue 'That Australia has failed the Aborigine', and we on the negative team decided to outflank rather than straightforwardly oppose; we said that wasn't true because what Australia ...
Meanwhile, imagine yet another alternate Earth, where the very first physicists to notice nonlocality, said, "Holy brachiating orangutans, there's a non-local force in Nature!"
In the years since, the theory has been successfully extended to encompass every observed phenomenon. The biggest mystery in physics is the relationship between nonlocality and relativity. The basic equations have a preferred reference frame, but it's undetectable. Everyone thinks that there must be a relativistic way to write the equations, but no-one knows how to do it.
On...
Stephen: consistent histories works by having a set of disjoint, coarse-grained histories - "coarse-grained" meaning that they are underspecified by classical standards - which then obtain a-priori probabilities through the use of a "decoherence functional" (which is where stuff like the Hamiltonian, that actually defines the theory, enters). You then get the transition probabilities of ordinary quantum mechanics by conditioning on those global probabilities of whole histories.
Some people have a neo-Copenhagenist attitude towards consis...
"The balance of arguments is overwhelmingly tipped; and physicists who deny it, are making specific errors of probability theory (which I have specifically laid out, and shown to you)"
I guess this refers to the error of supposing that Occam's Razor literally means "have as few entities as possible", rather than "have a theory as simple as possible", and opposing Many Worlds for that reason. Which is indeed an error.
But perhaps for the last time, I will try to enumerate those problems with your position that I can remember.
Th
Covalent bonds with external atoms are just one form of "correlation with the environment".
I wish to postulate a perfect copy, in the sense that the internal correlations are identical to the original, but in which the correlations to the rest of the universe are different (e.g. "on Mars" rather than "on Earth").
There is some confusion here in the switching between individual configurations, and configuration space. An atom is already a blob in configuration space (e.g. "one electron in the ground-state orbital") rat...
The argument that "there is no such thing as a particular atom, therefore neither duplicate has a preferred status as the original" looks sophistical, and it may even be possible to show that it is within your preferred quantum framework. Consider a benzene ring. That's a ring of six carbon atoms. If it occurs as part of a larger molecule, there will be covalent bonds between particular atoms in the ring and atoms exterior to it. Now suppose I verify the presence of the benzene ring through some nondestructive procedure, and then create another b...
But dammit, wavefunctions don't collapse!
Sorry to distract from your main point, but it is quite a distance from there to "therefore, there are Many Worlds". And for that matter, you have definitely not addressed the notion of collapse in all its possible forms. The idea of universe-wide collapse caused by observation is definitely outlandish, solipsistic in fact, and also leaves "consciousness", "observation", or "measurement" as an unanalysed residue. However, that's not the only way to introduce discontinuity into...
Regarding the definition of "intelligence": It's not hard to propose definitions, if you assume the framework of computer science. Consider the cognitive architecture known as an "expected-utility maximizer". It has, to a first approximation, two parts. One part is the utility function, which offers a way of ranking the desirability of the situation which the entity finds itself in. The other part is the problem-solving part: it suggests actions, selected so as to maximize expected utility.
The utility function itself offers a way to rat...
Robin B., I can't speak for Eliezer's characters, but I believe the fashionability of skepticism about string theory has come from the lack of falsifiable predictions, after so many years. No-one has been able to say "this is the ground state". Instead string theorists have studied a large number of possible ground states (distinguished by background geometry), most of them looking nothing like what we see, as they try to get a grip on the theory. The hope used to be that all but one would prove on further study to be unstable. Now there's an int...
If Einstein had chosen the wrong angle of attack on his problem - if he hadn't chosen a sufficiently important problem to work on - if he hadn't persisted for years - if he'd taken any number of wrong turns - or if someone else had solved the problem first - then dear Albert would have ended up as just another Jewish genius.
But if Einstein was the reason why none of those things happened, then maybe he wasn't just another Jewish genius, eh? Maybe he was smart enough to choose the right methods, to select the important problems, to see the value in persisti...
Erratum, I should have written "(quark disappears) (weak interaction happens) (antiquark appears)". My point is that the algebraic reversal of that expression is different from the time reversal of it, so those two parts of the Hamiltonian do actually say different things about the amplitude gradients in configuration space, even when you think about it "timelessly".
I don't buy this abolition of time at all, but this question of how CP violation appears in Barbour's scheme seems like a good test of one's understanding.
The abolition of a time coordinate in quantum gravity is not Barbour's invention. The usual Schrodinger equation is Hψ = -i/hbar dψ/dt, where the H operator represents total energy (typically, sum of a potential and a kinetic term). But in general relativity, the total energy persistently shows up as zero (gravitational potential energy cancelling out against mass-energy, I believe; I confess I'm just re...
Caledonian, perhaps I should have written "objectivity-negating subjectivity" and "subjectivity-negating objectivity". The first would deny that reality has any intrinsic qualities (qualities independent of observation, basically), while the latter ends up denying the qualities of experience itself ("not even mind is moving").
frelkins, taking a stance in opposition to Nagarjuna is difficult because he's so neither-nor, but maybe just saying that something, somewhere, has an intrinsic nature is enough to do it. :-) You shouldn...
frelkins: There's a story (which you may know) that Tibet held a debate between Indian Buddhists, who insisted that enlightenment can only be reached after many stages of analysis, and Chinese Buddhists, who said you could get there in one step. The Indians are said to have won the debate, but I was writing with the Chinese side in mind; I was trying to describe the path to nonduality in the most abbreviated way I could. I am aware of Nagarjuna and "codependent origination", and it may be that it was misleading of me to pass over that aspect. I w...
This love affair of modern rationalist materialists for Buddhism's metaphysical negations is peculiar in that the superficial similarities derive from completely different trains of thought. In a nutshell, as I understand it, the Buddhist argument (or a very prominent version) reduces all things to mind, by noticing the subjective element in all experience, and then reduces mind itself to ineffable formlessness by turning the argument on itself. By contrast, modern materialism in effect proceeds by substituting mathematics for subjectivity at every turn, u...
Color isn't out there; but how can it be "in here", if the brain also just consists of particles in space? And color is either somewhere, or it's nowhere. Dennett takes the "nowhere" option, as part of his general denial of a "Cartesian theater", a place where appearances happen.
Except for those who think mental states can supervene directly on processes extending far outside the physical body, I think most scientifically minded people suppose that the world of appearance is somehow identical with something inside the brain: t...
Are you color-blind, Caledonian? Do you ever use color words? Do you think they refer to nothing more than "neurological associations"? Or is it that they do refer to something of which you are directly aware, but which you have a way of talking around?
When I look out the window right now, I see a blue patch of sky. Am I seeing neurological associations? Am I seeing a mathematical description of neurological associations?
You are free to deny that 'blueness is there', but if that is your only counterargument, I have to think my original argument must have been quite strong.
Caledonian: What evidence do you offer us that mathematical descriptions cannot produce the properties of which you speak?
First of all, let's be clear regarding what we have to work with. Things are complicated a little by the variety of specific theories and formalisms used in physics, but let's take multi-particle quantum mechanics in the configuration basis as illustrative. The configurations are all of the form 'A particle of species a1 at location x1, and a particle of species a2 at location at x2,...', and so forth. The quantum states consist of asso...
Eliezer: From all the books that created me, I was never once warned that Science is not strict enough.
I am trying to figure out exactly what your better methodology is. Is it
(1) Science + Occam's razor, with the razor used to choose between experimentally indistinguishable theories?
(2) Bayes's Law, with Science somehow merely being an application of the law?
(3) Science, Bayes, and an assortment of introspective methods meant to prevent wasting one's time on a-priori extravagant hypotheses?
I do not think anyone will argue with the advice that if a theory c...
A belated meta-response to Caledonian: this is your earlier remark to which I referred. We may have no more than a terminological difference. As I said above, I would (hope to) never say "A exists relative to B", only that A was detectable, rationally inferable, etc., relative to B. It's too confusing to use "existence" as if it only means "epistemically assertible existence".
Günther, I have previously argued that vagueness is not an option for "mind" and "world", even if it is for "baldness" or "heap of sand" or "table". The existence of some sort of a world, with you in it, and the existence of a mind aware of this, are epistemic fundamentals. Try to go vague on those and you are in effect saying there's some question as to whether anything at all exists, or that that is just a matter of definition. Your mind in your world is the medium of your awareness of everything. You are...
The point is incidental to this essay, but Penrose's idea is not a "mysterious answer to a mysterious question". The question is: How could the human brain do more than a universal Turing machine can? The answer is: By there being an objective wavefunction collapse process which is noncomputable in its dynamics and relevant to cognition. Penrose is not even trying to solve the problem of consciousness, though he flags it as an important issue; his theory is an exercise in the physics of hypercomputation. He is motivated by an interpretation of Gö...
People who want to get fundamental physics out of cellular automata could be a lot more imaginative than they are. What about small-world networks? Maybe you could get quantum nonlocality. What about networks which are only statistically regular? Maybe you could get rotational symmetry in the continuum limit. And how about trying to do without a universal time coordinate? What about creation and destruction of cells, not just alteration of cell states? Euclidean, gridlike CAs like Fredkin's should only be a training ground for the intuition, not the templa...
This is a stupid analogy, but:
Suppose we have a software package, UnitaryQM, of predefined functions. There is a competition, the Kolmogorov Challenge, in which you have to implement a new function, Born(). There are two development teams, Collapse and MWI. Collapse does the job by handcoding a new primitive function, collapse(), and adding it to the library. The MWI team really wants to use just the existing functions, but MWI 1.0 actally gives the wrong answers. The current hope for MWI 2.0 is a function called mangle(), but mangle only exists as pseudo...
Tom, Nick, MWI does not make predictions! Well, there is a version of MWI that does, but it is not the one being advocated here.
What makes predictions is a calculational procedure, like sum-over-histories. That procedure has an interpretation in a collapse theory: the theory explains why the procedure works. The version of MWI that Eliezer has expounded cannot do that. He has said so himself, repeatedly - that the recuperation of the Born probabilities is a hope, not an existing achievement.
Is that clear? I feel like I had better say it again. The bare m...
Among all these comments, I see no appreciation of the fact that the version of many worlds we have just been given CANNOT MAKE PREDICTIONS, whereas "collapse theories" DO.
Yes, Schrödinger evolution plus collapse is more complicated than just Schrödinger evolution. But the former makes the predictions, and the latter does not. We have been given the optimistic assertion that maybe the predictions are already somewhere inside the theory without collapse, but this remains to be shown. That's what the meaning of this whole "quest for the Bor...
Tim, I thought there was only one "shut up and calculate" interpretation, and that's the one where you shut up and calculate - rather than talking about many worlds. Perhaps you mean it's a "talk rather than calculate" interpretation?
Suppose I announce the Turtles-All-The-Way-Down "interpretation" of quantum mechanics, is it fair to say that the TATWDI "makes the same predictions" if I can't actually show how to get a number or two out of this postulated tower of turtles, but just say it's a way of thinking about QM? If MWI makes predictions, show me how it does it.
Collapse theories can do something many worlds can't do: they can make the predictions! As can Bohmian theories.
Many worlds, like at least one other prominent interpretation (temporal zigzag), is all promise and no performance. Maybe Robin Hanson's idea will make it work? Well, maybe Mark Hadley's idea will make the zigzag work. Hadley's picture is relativistic, too.
Many worlds deserves its place in the gallery of possible explanations of quantum theory, but that is all.
A further implication of "quantum theory as field theory of configuration space": It means that "spatial configurations" are merely coordinates, labels; and labels are merely conventions. All that really exists in this interpretation are currents in a homogeneous infinite-dimensional space. When such a current passes through a point notionally associated with the existence of a particular brain state, there's no picture of a brain attached anywhere. This means that the currents and their intrinsic relations bear all the explanatory burd...
"Her book ... asserts a direct cause-and-effect relationship between $1 trillion of aid and the rise in African poverty rates from 11% to 66%."
I have hardly skimmed the book but it does not appear to address the economic impact of population growth. Chapter 1 mentions that half of Africa is under the age of 15, but only so as to highlight the sheer number of young Africans lacking opportunities found elsewhere in the world. Wikipedia, paraphrasing UN estimates: "The total population of Africa is estimated at 922 million (as of 2005). It has ... (read more)