Suggestion: “Rationalists seek to Win, not to be rational”.
Suggestion: “If what you think is rational appears less likely to Win than what you think is irrational, then you need to reassess probabilities and your understanding of what is rational and what is irrational”.
Suggestion: “It is not rational to do anything other than the thing which has the best chance of winning”.
If I have a choice between what I define as the “Rational” course of action, and a course of action which I describe as “irrational” but which I predict has a better chance of winning, I am either predicting badly or wrongly defining what is Rational.
I am not sure my suggestions are Better, but I am groping towards understanding and hope my gropings help.
EDIT: and the warning is that we may deceive ourselves into thinking that we are being rational, when we are missing something, using the wrong map, arguing fallaciously. So what about:
Suggestion: “If you are not Winning, consider whether you are really being rational”.
“If you are not Winning more than people you believe to be irrational, this may be evidence that you are not really being rational”.
On a different tack, “Rationalists win wherever rationality is an aid to winning”. I am not going to win millions on the Lottery, because I do not play it.
Choosing what gives the “best chance of winning” is good advice for a two-valued utility function, but I’m also interested in reducing the severity of my loss under uncertainty and misfortune.
I guess “maximizing expected utility” isn’t as sexy as “winning”.
I don’t think so. I take “wining” to be actualization of one’s values, which encompasses minimizing loss.
Furthermore, I think it actually helps to make the terms “sexy”, because I am a heuristic human; my brain is wired for narratives and motivated by drama and “coolness.” Framing ideas as something Grand and Awesome makes them matter to me emotionally, makes them a part of my identity, and makes me more likely to apply them.
Similarly, there are certain worthwhile causes for which I fight. They ARE worth fighting for, but I’m deluding myself if I act as if I’m so morally superior that I support them only because the problems are so pressing that I couldn’t possibly not do anything, that I have a duty to fulfill. That may be true, but it is also true that I disposed to be a fighter, and I am looking for a cause for which to fight. Knowing this, dramatizing the causes that actually do matter (as great battles for the fate of the human species) will motivate me to pursue them.
I have to be careful (as with anything), not to allow this sort of framing to distort my perception of the real, but I think as long as I know what I am doing, and I contain my self-manipulation to framing (and not denial of facts), I am served by it.
Winning is a conventional dictionary word, though. You can’t easily just redefine it without causing confusion. “Winning” and “maximising” have different definitions and connotations.
Of course there is random noise and different starting points, but there is also some evidence of whether one is really rational. It is a question of epistemic rationality what Wins should accrue to Rational people, and what wins (eg, parentage, the lottery) do not.
I disagree. Someone winning the lottery when you don’t is evidence that you are not being rational, if getting a large sum of money for little effort is a goal you’d shoot for. But on evaluation, it should be seen as evidence that counts for little or nothing. Most of us have already done that evaluation.
I used the lottery as an example of very randomized wins. It’s the “right place at the right time” factor. Some events in life are, for all practical purposes, randomized and out of an agent’s direct control. By the central limit theorem, some agents will seem to accumulate large wins due in large part to these kinds of random events, and some will accumulate large losses.
Most agents will be, by definition, near the center of the normal distribution. The existence of agents at the tails of the curve does not constitute evidence of one’s own irrationality.
Right, but you could be wrong about it being randomized, or having negative expected value; not winning it can be taken as evidence that you’re not being rational.
Suppose that everyone on your street other than you plays the lotto; you laugh at them for not being rational. Every week, someone on your street wins the lotto—by the end of the year, everyone else has become a millionaire. Doesn’t it seem like you might have misunderstood something about the lottery?
Of course, it could be that you examine it further and find that the lottery is indeed random and you’ve just noticed a very improbable event. It was still evidence that was worth investigating.
There’s a big difference between “someone else wins the lottery” and “everyone else on your street wins the lottery”. One is likely, the other absurdly unlikely.
Given your current knowledge of how the lottery works, the expected value is negative, ergo not playing the lottery is rational. Someone else winning the lottery (a result predicted by your current understanding) is itself not evidence that this decision is irrational.
However, if an extremely improbable event occurs, such as everyone on your street winning the lotto, this is strong evidence that your knowledge of the lottery is mistaken, and given the large potential payoff it then becomes rational to examine the matter further, and alter your current understanding if necessary. Your earlier actions may look irrational in hindsight, but that doesn’t change that they were rational based on your knowledge at the time.
...presuming that your knowledge at the time was itself rationally obtained based on the evidence; and in the long run, we should not expect too many times to find ourselves believing with high confidence that the lottery has a tiny payout and then seeing everyone on the street winning the lottery. If this mistake recurs, it is a sign of epistemic irrationality.
I make this point because a lot of success in life consists in holding yourself to high standards; and a lot of that is hunting down the excuses and killing them.
...presuming that your knowledge at the time was itself rationally obtained based on the evidence; and in the long run, we should not expect too many times to find ourselves believing with high confidence that the lottery has a tiny payout and then seeing everyone on the street winning the lottery. If this mistake recurs, it is a sign of epistemic irrationality.
Yes. I was generally assuming in my comment that the rhetorical “you” is an imperfect epistemic rationalist with a reasonably sensible set of priors.
The point I was trying to make is to not handwave away the difference between making the most optimal known choices at a moment in time vs. updating one’s model of the world. It’s possible (if silly) to be very irrational on one and largely rational on the other.
I make this point because a lot of success in life consists in holding yourself to high standards; and a lot of that is hunting down the excuses and killing them.
Not that you’d know anything about this, since you papers read like my 8th grade papers.… Oh wait you never actually went to school beyond that...
There is an issue never remembered here, about the question that we believe the world is X but it is Y: Are you sure that rationality is pure product of brains… Are you sure that mind is pure product of brains… What if mind is product of a hidden superior natural system whose bits-information are invading our immediate world and being aggregated to our synapses… If so, rationality as pure product of mind will make the most evolved rationalist a loser, by while… Or don t… (sorry, I have no punctuation mark in this keyboard)
Here, in Amazon jungle, lays our real origins. And you see here that this biosphere is product of chaos. We are product of chaos, not order. It seems to me that we are the flow of order lifting up from chaos. So, for long term winning, those that best represents this flow will have bad times because the forces of chaos are the strongest. Then, the winners now, are still representants of chaos, less evolved...
But it seems to me that above the chaotic biosphere I see Cosmos at ordered state. So, I suspect that this Cosmos is the ” natural” super-system sending bits-information and modelling this terrestrial chaos into a future state of order. It is acting over the last evolved system here, and I think it is the mind, not the brain. So, if one is being driven for to be rationalist (in relation to Cosmos and ordered state), he,she will be a loser in relation to this biosphere in chaotic state. The intelligent best thing to do should to find a middle alternative, fighting this world at the same time that do it with less sacrifice. What do you think…
More ordered states could prove to be unsustainable whether or not there’s some sort of overarching system such as you describe at play. Your assumptions seem to be quite complicated and thus get a low probability ahead of time, there’s no specifically supporting evidence (indeed it’s not even sure what supporting evidence for some super system sending down information would be.)
Basically the idea falls beneath the noise level for me in terms of credibility. Maybe ordered systems lose because the magical unicorns have a love of chaos in their hearts. I consider the two ideas about as seriously.
Thanks, Estarilo. I really need to fix my world vision and thoughts.
You said: ” More ordered states could prove to be unsustainable whether or not there’s some sort of overarching system such as you describe at play.”
I think yes, more ordered state must be unsustainable, eternally. But, chaos also must be unsustainable. If so, there are these cycles, when chaos produces order and order produces chaos. The final results is evolution, because each cycle is a little bit more complex. There is hierarchy of systems. Overarching systems can be two types: 1) in relation to complexity and, 2) in relation to size, force. A lion is more strong than a human, but human is more complex. We have two systems modelling evolution at Earth. 1) the astronomical system (biggest size and less evolved), which is our ancestor, but we are inside it, he created us. This system is a perfect machine, but not intelligent, not rational like us. Whatever, he is the agent behind natural selection, because he is the whole environment. 2) The second system is untenable, but he must exists, because here there is mind, consciousnesses and our ancestral astronomic has no mind. I don’t accept that this Universe creates things that he has no information for, so, the system that made the emergence of mind here must be superior to the Universe. And if he is ex-machine, makes no sense to talk about ordered or chaotic states. He must be more sustainable than the Universe. I am not talking about supernatural gods, I am suggesting a natural superior system from which this thing called consciousness is coming from..
You said: ” there’s no specifically supporting evidence”
It is probable because we have a real known parameter. An embryo gets ” mind” because it comes from a superior hierarchic system that exists beyond his “Universe” (the womb). The superior system is the human species, his parents. So, it is possible that a natural super-system existing beyond our universe have transmitted before the Big Bang the informations for the mind appears here at the right time.
You said: ” Maybe ordered systems lose because magical unicorns...”
In the alternation between cycles, there are the alternations between dominant and recessive. If chaos is dominant here and now, the ordered state is weak and a loser, till the chaos being extinct. And rationality is more relative to order than chaos. But rationality is not the wisdom. Must have a third superior state. What do you think ?
I don’t accept that this Universe creates things that he has no information for
It is possible to create something without having the information for it. The classic example; if enough monkeys type at random on enough typewriters for long enough, then sooner or later (probably much, much later) one of them will randomly type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Even if none of the monkeys have ever heard of Shakespeare.
I can’t grasp yours example. Typewriters has the informations. Letters are graphic symbols of sounds that are signals of real things. My world vision started with comparative anatomy between all natural systems and the universal patterns founded here were projected for calculations about universes and first causes. As final result we got the same theory of Hideki Yukawa calculating the nuclear gluon, how protons and neutrons interacts. As result, this universe started with all informations for everything here, like any new origins of any human being started with prior information for creating the embryo and its womb (his entire universe). But these informations for universes are natural. Two groups of vortexes one spin right, other spin left. The interactions between then creates the intermediary movements. Each vortexes has at least seven properties which were the physical brutes forces(tendency to inertia, tendency to movement; tendency to grow, tendency to shorter; etc.). The different intensities of these forces and their interactions produces an infinity of individual types or vortex. Each vortex is one information, like genes. Th ere are genes that begins working later, so, there are universal informations in the air not applied yet. Like those building consciousness here. But, my results from these method is still theoretical. It makes sense and one day will be falsifiable
I’m confused; I can’t understand what you are saying. I think that part of this is the language barrier (what is your first language, by the way?) and part of it is probably an inferential distance issue (that is, what you’re saying is far enough away from anything that I expect that I’m having trouble making the mental leap).
Typewriters has the informations.
So… would this mean that a typewriter contains the information for anything that can be typed on a typewriter? Including… say… the secret of immortality, plans for a time machine, and a way to detect the Higgs Boson? That seems a rather broad definition of ‘information’.
So… would this mean that a typewriter contains the information for anything that can be typed on a typewriter? Including… say… the secret of immortality, plans for a time machine, and a way to detect the Higgs Boson? That seems a rather broad definition of ‘information’.
Well, in information-theoretic terms, the information for those comes from whoever looks over the monkey’s work and selects Shakespeare (or whatever.)
But the output exists, whether it is selected or not. (Admittedly, there will almost certainly be several inaccurate Shakespeare-like imitations/parodies/etc. that exist as well by then).
As final result we got the same theory of Hideki Yukawa calculating the nuclear gluon, how protons and neutrons interacts. As result, this universe started with all informations for everything here,
Heavily compressed, mind, but it’s technically true that a superintelligence could deduce us. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t imply it was deliberately designed, though; we could just be an emergent property of the universe, not it’s object.
I think yes, more ordered state must be unsustainable, eternally. But, chaos also must be unsustainable. If so [...]
You’re putting the cart before the horse here. You’ve said that they must be—why must they be? If they are then what predictions does their being so let you make and how have you tested them?
What, for that matter, are your formal definitions of order and chaos? The way I’d define them, chaos exists mostly on a quantum level and when you start to generalise out correlates start showing up on a macroscopic level really quickly, and then it’s not chaos anymore because it’s—at least in principle—predictable.
I mean it’s not silly to suppose that selection and mutation—with the former being the order enforcing part of evolution and the latter being the ‘chaotic’ part, operate in cycles. I believe if you model evolution of finite populations using Fokker Planck equations you tend to have an increasing spread of phenotypes between periods of heavy selection—but it’s not really an area I’ve much interest in so I couldn’t say for sure.
We have two systems modelling evolution at Earth. 1) the astronomical system (biggest size and less evolved), which is our ancestor, but we are inside it, he created us. This system is a perfect machine, but not intelligent, not rational like us. Whatever, he is the agent behind natural selection, because he is the whole environment. 2) The second system is untenable, but he must exists, because here there is mind, consciousnesses and our ancestral astronomic has no mind.
I don’t know what this means. You’re assigning an overarching system agency. But agency tends to mean that something is alive and thinking in English. Like a human would be said to have agency, whereas a computer—at least in the common “I’ve got one under my desk” sense—wouldn’t. Systems don’t tend to be considered to have gender in English either. In French lots of words are gendered but in English very few are. The only English things I can think of that are gendered other than living creatures are ships; traditionally thought of as female.
The second system just seems to be undefined.
I don’t accept that this Universe creates things that he has no information for, so, the system that made the emergence of mind here must be superior to the Universe.
If you want to find a human how easy is that for you to do? Turn out of your front door and go to town and you’ll probably find a fair number of them. If you want to find a specific human how much information do you need? I believe if you start off knowing nothing about them other than that they’re somewhere on Earth you only really need something like 32 bits of information but in any case it’s a lot more.
If you want to create a table you just make a table. It’s not hard. If you want to create a specific table design you need to know what it looks like at the very least.
If you want to create a child you need a partner. If you want to create a brown haired, blue eyed girl and no other kids besides … you’re probably going to be off picking particular partners to up your chances or running off to play with genetic engineering.
Generally the rule is that the more picky you want to be the more info you need.
If you just wanted to create a person, and nothing else, you would require a lot of information. If you wanted to create an entire universe you would need very little information. The universe is very large, and seems to consist mostly of repetitions of fairly simple things, which suggests to me an informationally sparse genesis.
And if he is ex-machine, makes no sense to talk about ordered or chaotic states. He must be more sustainable than the Universe. I am not talking about supernatural gods, I am suggesting a natural superior system from which this thing called consciousness is coming from..
Do you need to suppose a system at all? If what you’re talking about can be defined entirely in terms of a conflict between order and chaos—which really just seems to be evolution in progress. What explanatory power does this system have?
So, it is possible that a natural super-system existing beyond our universe have transmitted before the Big Bang the informations for the mind appears here at the right time.
Sure, anything’s possible. But how probable is it and what grounds do you have for believing that it’s that probable?
In the alternation between cycles, there are the alternations between dominant and recessive. If chaos is dominant here and now, the ordered state is weak and a loser, till the chaos being extinct. And rationality is more relative to order than chaos. But rationality is not the wisdom. Must have a third superior state. What do you think ?
Broadly you seem to be saying something to the effect of: In the absence of strong selection pressures the trend is towards disorder and decay. Which I agree with. And I can see how that would relate to rationality—there are systems, like schooling, that lose their purpose and essentially go insane in the absence of strong demands. Why are schools so crappy? A large part of it seems to be because adults don’t have an economic need for children at that age and it’s politically expedient to conduct education in a certain way that seems to produce work—without actually testing whether that work is useful because by that point the government will be out of power.
I suspect rationality carries connotations in your language that it doesn’t necessarily have in English. If a chaotic/random/brute force method of traversing the search space turns out to be better suited to certain situations I’d assign it a really high prior that people who define themselves as rationalists would make their decisions in that regard by throwing dice or some equivalent that introduced chaos into their actions. Like my passwords—what are my passwords? I don’t know. Most of them are 128 character gibberish.
If you think of rationality as systematised winning it seems more like: Whatever works. Than anything particularly tied to a specific selection/mutation ratio.
An embryo gets ” mind” because it comes from a superior hierarchic system that exists beyond his “Universe” (the womb). The superior system is the human species, his parents.
Well, an embryo develops a mind because it’s got the genetic code for it—which, yes, comes from the larger external system that evolved that code. Is that what you meant?
So, it is possible that a natural super-system existing beyond our universe have transmitted before the Big Bang the informations for the mind appears here at the right time.
I must admit, I don’t see how that follows. Are you suggesting our universe was designed specifically as a “womb” to create us? That’s the only analogy I can see, and evolutionary advantage seems a simpler reason for sentience to evolve—although I guess those aren’t mutually exclusive, if this “natural super-system existing beyond our universe” anticipated that would result in us. But why postulate this? It could as easily have designed the universe as a “womb” to produce muffins! We could as easily be part of this muffin-womb. (Man, there’s a sentence I never expected to type.)
If chaos is dominant here and now, the ordered state is weak and a loser, till the chaos being extinct. And rationality is more relative to order than chaos.
But science again and again has discovered that what we thought was “chaos” is merely the complex result of simple rules—order, in other words, that we can exploit with rationality.
And rationality is more relative to order than chaos. But rationality is not the wisdom. Must have a third superior state. What do you think ?
If rationality works in ordered states, what’s the analog that works in “chaotic” states?
You said: “Well, an embryo develops a mind because it’s got the genetic code for it—which, yes, comes from the larger external system that evolved that code. Is that what you meant?”
Our conflict is due two different interpretations of genetic code. You think that biological systems (aka life) evolved a genetic code, so, you think that had no genetic code before life. It is not what is suggesting the results from my different method of investigation. There is no ” code” in the sense that are composed by symbols. Each horizontal base-pair of nucleotides is a derivation with some little difference of an ancestor system, the original first galaxies. (you need see the model of this galaxy and how it fits as nucleotide in my website). So, DNA is merely a pile of diversified copies of a unique ancestor astronomical system, which produces diversification and functional biological systems. But, galaxies got their system’s configuration from atoms system, and they got from particles as systems, so, the prior causes of this ” genetic makeup” seems to be beyond the Big Bang. The informations for building the mind of an embryo came from a system outside his womb; maybe informations for building minds in the whole universe came from a natural system outside the universe. Why not?
configuration from atoms system, and they got from particles as systems
(Sorry, I need stop now but I will come back. Sheers...)
Wait, you think human genetic code has existed, unchanged, since the beginning of time? Yeah, I can see how that would lead to human exceptionalism and such. Pretty sure it’s physically impossible, though. Or do you just mean it’s the result of a causal chain leading back to the beginning of time?
What if mind is product of a hidden superior natural system whose bits-information are invading our immediate world and being aggregated to our synapses
Well, our personalities, memories and so on can be affected by interfering with the brain, and it certainly looks like it’s doing some sort of information processing (as far as we can tell), so … seems unlikely, to be honest. Also, our minds do kind of look evolved to fit our biological niche.
If so, rationality as pure product of mind will make the most evolved rationalist a loser
I’m having real trouble parsing this. Are you saying evolution will make us irrational? Or that rationality is incompatible with lovecraftian puppetry? Or something completely different?
Here, in Amazon jungle, lays our real origins.
You … realize human’s didn’t evolve in the Amazon, right?
And you see here that this biosphere is product of chaos. We are product of chaos, not order. It seems to me that we are the flow of order lifting up from chaos. So, for long term winning, those that best represents this flow will have bad times because the forces of chaos are the strongest. Then, the winners now, are still representants of chaos, less evolved...
I’m not sure I’d characterize the natural world as “chaotic” as such. Complex, sometimes, sure, but it follows some pretty simple rules, and when we deduce these rules we can manipulate them.
But it seems to me that above the chaotic biosphere I see Cosmos at ordered state. So, I suspect that this Cosmos is the ” natural” super-system sending bits-information and modelling this terrestrial chaos into a future state of order
The universe is definitely ordered, but don’t forget evolution can produce some pretty “designed” looking structures.
What do you think...
I think you sound kind of like a crank, to be honest with you. You seem to be treating “order” and “chaos” more like elemental forces or something, and generally sound like you’ve got problems with magical thinking. That said, I had some trouble understanding bits of what you wrote, so it’s possible I’m inadvertently addressing a strawman version of your claims. Tell me, are you a native English speaker?
Thanks, MugaSofer, for yours constructive reply. No, I am not a native English and my brain was hard-wired at the salvage jungle here, so, I think is a good opportunity for me debating our different experiences and world views. I hope that it must be curious for you too.
You said: ” Well, our personalities, memories and so on can be affected by interfering with the brain, and it certainly looks like it’s doing some sort of information processing (as far as we can tell), so … seems unlikely, to be honest.”
Yes, these things (personality, memories, etc.) composes our ” state of being” and they are merely product of brains/nature. But, we have a real phenomena where we watch the emergence of consciousnesses without being product of brains: the embryo. There is no natural architecture able to be conscious of its existence, neither are the brains alone. So, where comes from the conscious state of embryos? From a superior hierarchic system that exists beyond his universe (the womb), and this system is called ” human species” . So, it is not zero the probability that human mind is product of a hidden superior natural system whose bits-information are invading our immediate world and being aggregated to our synapses, besides the possibility that it was encrypted into our genes (if my models about Matrix/DNA are right).
You said: “Are you saying evolution will make us irrational? Or that rationality is incompatible with lovecraftian puppetry? Or something completely different?”
No, evolution will make us more suitable to real natural world. But, due the alternation between chaos and order, and due our origins coming from chaos, the flow of order (which is the basis for rationality) is the baby and weak force just now. Chaos is dying, order is growing, but now, chaos still is the strongest, so. irrationality and randomness are the winners, by while.
You said: ” You … realize human’s didn’t evolve in the Amazon, right?”
I don’t understand your question. Being still virgin and untouchable, the elements of Amazon hidden niches are witness of life’s origins. And we see chaos here. So, our origins came from terrestrial chaotic state of Nature, which came from ordered state of Cosmos… Cyclic alternations.
You said: ” I’m not sure I’d characterize the natural world as “chaotic” as such. Complex, sometimes, sure, but it follows some pretty simple rules, and when we deduce these rules we can manipulate them.”
Natural world is the Universe, not this terrestrial biosphere alone. This biosphere is a kind of disturbance, a noise, in relation to the ordered state of Cosmos. Biosphere is product of an entropic process, like the radiation of sun. So, the disturbance is corrected by the ordered Cosmos, from which is coming the emergence of those rules you are talking about. The curious thing is that humans are the carriers of those rules, we are bringing order to our salvage environment.
You said: ” The universe is definitely ordered, but don’t forget evolution can produce some pretty “designed” looking structures.”
The Universe, as a conglomerate of galaxies, seems to be mass with no shape, not a system. We don’t know if there is a nucleus, relations among parts, etc. We can’t know if it is ordered or chaotic. Evolution is the result of a flow of energy moving inside this Universe. Like any fetus is under evolution due a genetic flow producing more designed looking structures. The source of this “evolution” is a natural system (human species) living beyond the fetus’ universe (the womb). This is the unique real natural parameter we have for theories about the universe.
You said: You seem to be treating “order” and “chaos” more like elemental forces or something, and generally sound like you’ve got problems with magical thinking.
It is not magical thinking, it is the normal natural chain of causes and effects. Every system that reaches an ordered state is attacked by entropy, which produces chaos, from which lift up order again, but each cycle is more complex than the ancestors cycles. At chaotic states, like our biosphere, generations of empty minds are more likely to be winners, while generations of reasonable minds must be losers at short time and the final winner at long time. But, maybe the jungle is teaching me everything wrong. What do you think?
Thanks, MugaSofer, for yours constructive reply. No, I am not a native English and my brain was hard-wired at the salvage jungle here, so, I think is a good opportunity for me debating our different experiences and world views. I hope that it must be curious for you too.
It certainly is that.
Yes, these things (personality, memories, etc.) composes our ” state of being” and they are merely product of brains/nature.
So … what’s left? Doesn’t that explain everything we mean by “mind”?
But, we have a real phenomena where we watch the emergence of consciousnesses without being product of brains: the embryo. There is no natural architecture able to be conscious of its existence, neither are the brains alone. So, where comes from the conscious state of embryos? From a superior hierarchic system that exists beyond his universe (the womb), and this system is called ” human species” .
So, it is not zero the probability that human mind is product of a hidden superior natural system whose bits-information are invading our immediate world and being aggregated to our synapses, besides the possibility that it was encrypted into our genes (if my models about Matrix/DNA are right).
I’ve replied to this assertion elsewhere; hope I got the interpretation right.
No, evolution will make us more suitable to real natural world. But, due the alternation between chaos and order, and due our origins coming from chaos, the flow of order (which is the basis for rationality) is the baby and weak force just now. Chaos is dying, order is growing, but now, chaos still is the strongest, so. irrationality and randomness are the winners, by while.
You know, I’m not sure what you mean by “chaos”. If it’s just randomness, rationality can tell you how to choose ptimally using probabilities; perhaps that’s not what you mean? Is it complexity?
I don’t understand your question. Being still virgin and untouchable, the elements of Amazon hidden niches are witness of life’s origins. And we see chaos here. So, our origins came from terrestrial chaotic state of Nature, which came from ordered state of Cosmos… Cyclic alternations.
Oh, I think I get it; the Amazon is emblematic of Earth before civilization, right? The ancestral environment. Which is, naturally, where we evolved.
Natural world is the Universe, not this terrestrial biosphere alone. This biosphere is a kind of disturbance, a noise, in relation to the ordered state of Cosmos. Biosphere is product of an entropic process, like the radiation of sun. So, the disturbance is corrected by the ordered Cosmos, from which is coming the emergence of those rules you are talking about. The curious thing is that humans are the carriers of those rules, we are bringing order to our salvage environment.
But even the biosphere follows laws, even if sometimes the results are so complex we have trouble discerning them.
The Universe, as a conglomerate of galaxies, seems to be mass with no shape, not a system. We don’t know if there is a nucleus, relations among parts, etc. We can’t know if it is ordered or chaotic. Evolution is the result of a flow of energy moving inside this Universe. Like any fetus is under evolution due a genetic flow producing more designed looking structures. The source of this “evolution” is a natural system (human species) living beyond the fetus’ universe (the womb). This is the unique real natural parameter we have for theories about the universe.
Sorry; by “evolution” I meant natural selection. You know, Darwinism?
It is not magical thinking, it is the normal natural chain of causes and effects. Every system that reaches an ordered state is attacked by entropy, which produces chaos, from which lift up order again, but each cycle is more complex than the ancestors cycles. At chaotic states, like our biosphere, generations of empty minds are more likely to be winners, while generations of reasonable minds must be losers at short time and the final winner at long time. But, maybe the jungle is teaching me everything wrong. What do you think?
Well, I understand physically entropy is always increasing, and replicators tend to overrun available resources and improve via selection, but I’m not clear on these “cycles”.
Suggestion: “Rationalists seek to Win, not to be rational”.
Suggestion: “If what you think is rational appears less likely to Win than what you think is irrational, then you need to reassess probabilities and your understanding of what is rational and what is irrational”.
Suggestion: “It is not rational to do anything other than the thing which has the best chance of winning”.
If I have a choice between what I define as the “Rational” course of action, and a course of action which I describe as “irrational” but which I predict has a better chance of winning, I am either predicting badly or wrongly defining what is Rational.
I am not sure my suggestions are Better, but I am groping towards understanding and hope my gropings help.
EDIT: and the warning is that we may deceive ourselves into thinking that we are being rational, when we are missing something, using the wrong map, arguing fallaciously. So what about:
Suggestion: “If you are not Winning, consider whether you are really being rational”.
“If you are not Winning more than people you believe to be irrational, this may be evidence that you are not really being rational”.
On a different tack, “Rationalists win wherever rationality is an aid to winning”. I am not going to win millions on the Lottery, because I do not play it.
Choosing what gives the “best chance of winning” is good advice for a two-valued utility function, but I’m also interested in reducing the severity of my loss under uncertainty and misfortune.
I guess “maximizing expected utility” isn’t as sexy as “winning”.
Indeed. Forget about “winning”. It is not sexy if it is wrong.
I don’t think so. I take “wining” to be actualization of one’s values, which encompasses minimizing loss.
Furthermore, I think it actually helps to make the terms “sexy”, because I am a heuristic human; my brain is wired for narratives and motivated by drama and “coolness.” Framing ideas as something Grand and Awesome makes them matter to me emotionally, makes them a part of my identity, and makes me more likely to apply them.
Similarly, there are certain worthwhile causes for which I fight. They ARE worth fighting for, but I’m deluding myself if I act as if I’m so morally superior that I support them only because the problems are so pressing that I couldn’t possibly not do anything, that I have a duty to fulfill. That may be true, but it is also true that I disposed to be a fighter, and I am looking for a cause for which to fight. Knowing this, dramatizing the causes that actually do matter (as great battles for the fate of the human species) will motivate me to pursue them.
I have to be careful (as with anything), not to allow this sort of framing to distort my perception of the real, but I think as long as I know what I am doing, and I contain my self-manipulation to framing (and not denial of facts), I am served by it.
I think you’re defining “winning” too strictly. Sometimes a minor loss is still a win, if the alternative was a large one.
Winning is a conventional dictionary word, though. You can’t easily just redefine it without causing confusion. “Winning” and “maximising” have different definitions and connotations.
The first definition from google—Be successful or victorious in (a contest or conflict).
This is no different than I or most people would define it, and I don’t think it contradicts with how I used it.
“Winning” refers to outcomes, not to actions, so it should just be “maximizing utility”.
The problem with this is that winning as a metric is swamped with random noise and different starting points.
Someone winning the lottery when you don’t is not evidence that you are not being rational.
Someone whose parents were both high-paid lawyers making a fortune in business when you don’t is not evidence that you are not being rational.
Yes, but...
Of course there is random noise and different starting points, but there is also some evidence of whether one is really rational. It is a question of epistemic rationality what Wins should accrue to Rational people, and what wins (eg, parentage, the lottery) do not.
I disagree. Someone winning the lottery when you don’t is evidence that you are not being rational, if getting a large sum of money for little effort is a goal you’d shoot for. But on evaluation, it should be seen as evidence that counts for little or nothing. Most of us have already done that evaluation.
I don’t follow.
I used the lottery as an example of very randomized wins. It’s the “right place at the right time” factor. Some events in life are, for all practical purposes, randomized and out of an agent’s direct control. By the central limit theorem, some agents will seem to accumulate large wins due in large part to these kinds of random events, and some will accumulate large losses.
Most agents will be, by definition, near the center of the normal distribution. The existence of agents at the tails of the curve does not constitute evidence of one’s own irrationality.
Right, but you could be wrong about it being randomized, or having negative expected value; not winning it can be taken as evidence that you’re not being rational.
Suppose that everyone on your street other than you plays the lotto; you laugh at them for not being rational. Every week, someone on your street wins the lotto—by the end of the year, everyone else has become a millionaire. Doesn’t it seem like you might have misunderstood something about the lottery?
Of course, it could be that you examine it further and find that the lottery is indeed random and you’ve just noticed a very improbable event. It was still evidence that was worth investigating.
There’s a big difference between “someone else wins the lottery” and “everyone else on your street wins the lottery”. One is likely, the other absurdly unlikely.
Given your current knowledge of how the lottery works, the expected value is negative, ergo not playing the lottery is rational. Someone else winning the lottery (a result predicted by your current understanding) is itself not evidence that this decision is irrational.
However, if an extremely improbable event occurs, such as everyone on your street winning the lotto, this is strong evidence that your knowledge of the lottery is mistaken, and given the large potential payoff it then becomes rational to examine the matter further, and alter your current understanding if necessary. Your earlier actions may look irrational in hindsight, but that doesn’t change that they were rational based on your knowledge at the time.
...presuming that your knowledge at the time was itself rationally obtained based on the evidence; and in the long run, we should not expect too many times to find ourselves believing with high confidence that the lottery has a tiny payout and then seeing everyone on the street winning the lottery. If this mistake recurs, it is a sign of epistemic irrationality.
I make this point because a lot of success in life consists in holding yourself to high standards; and a lot of that is hunting down the excuses and killing them.
Yes. I was generally assuming in my comment that the rhetorical “you” is an imperfect epistemic rationalist with a reasonably sensible set of priors.
The point I was trying to make is to not handwave away the difference between making the most optimal known choices at a moment in time vs. updating one’s model of the world. It’s possible (if silly) to be very irrational on one and largely rational on the other.
Not that you’d know anything about this, since you papers read like my 8th grade papers.… Oh wait you never actually went to school beyond that...
There is an issue never remembered here, about the question that we believe the world is X but it is Y: Are you sure that rationality is pure product of brains… Are you sure that mind is pure product of brains… What if mind is product of a hidden superior natural system whose bits-information are invading our immediate world and being aggregated to our synapses… If so, rationality as pure product of mind will make the most evolved rationalist a loser, by while… Or don t… (sorry, I have no punctuation mark in this keyboard)
Here, in Amazon jungle, lays our real origins. And you see here that this biosphere is product of chaos. We are product of chaos, not order. It seems to me that we are the flow of order lifting up from chaos. So, for long term winning, those that best represents this flow will have bad times because the forces of chaos are the strongest. Then, the winners now, are still representants of chaos, less evolved...
But it seems to me that above the chaotic biosphere I see Cosmos at ordered state. So, I suspect that this Cosmos is the ” natural” super-system sending bits-information and modelling this terrestrial chaos into a future state of order. It is acting over the last evolved system here, and I think it is the mind, not the brain. So, if one is being driven for to be rationalist (in relation to Cosmos and ordered state), he,she will be a loser in relation to this biosphere in chaotic state. The intelligent best thing to do should to find a middle alternative, fighting this world at the same time that do it with less sacrifice. What do you think…
More ordered states could prove to be unsustainable whether or not there’s some sort of overarching system such as you describe at play. Your assumptions seem to be quite complicated and thus get a low probability ahead of time, there’s no specifically supporting evidence (indeed it’s not even sure what supporting evidence for some super system sending down information would be.)
Basically the idea falls beneath the noise level for me in terms of credibility. Maybe ordered systems lose because the magical unicorns have a love of chaos in their hearts. I consider the two ideas about as seriously.
Thanks, Estarilo. I really need to fix my world vision and thoughts.
You said: ” More ordered states could prove to be unsustainable whether or not there’s some sort of overarching system such as you describe at play.”
I think yes, more ordered state must be unsustainable, eternally. But, chaos also must be unsustainable. If so, there are these cycles, when chaos produces order and order produces chaos. The final results is evolution, because each cycle is a little bit more complex. There is hierarchy of systems. Overarching systems can be two types: 1) in relation to complexity and, 2) in relation to size, force. A lion is more strong than a human, but human is more complex. We have two systems modelling evolution at Earth. 1) the astronomical system (biggest size and less evolved), which is our ancestor, but we are inside it, he created us. This system is a perfect machine, but not intelligent, not rational like us. Whatever, he is the agent behind natural selection, because he is the whole environment. 2) The second system is untenable, but he must exists, because here there is mind, consciousnesses and our ancestral astronomic has no mind. I don’t accept that this Universe creates things that he has no information for, so, the system that made the emergence of mind here must be superior to the Universe. And if he is ex-machine, makes no sense to talk about ordered or chaotic states. He must be more sustainable than the Universe. I am not talking about supernatural gods, I am suggesting a natural superior system from which this thing called consciousness is coming from..
You said: ” there’s no specifically supporting evidence”
It is probable because we have a real known parameter. An embryo gets ” mind” because it comes from a superior hierarchic system that exists beyond his “Universe” (the womb). The superior system is the human species, his parents. So, it is possible that a natural super-system existing beyond our universe have transmitted before the Big Bang the informations for the mind appears here at the right time.
You said: ” Maybe ordered systems lose because magical unicorns...”
In the alternation between cycles, there are the alternations between dominant and recessive. If chaos is dominant here and now, the ordered state is weak and a loser, till the chaos being extinct. And rationality is more relative to order than chaos. But rationality is not the wisdom. Must have a third superior state. What do you think ?
It is possible to create something without having the information for it. The classic example; if enough monkeys type at random on enough typewriters for long enough, then sooner or later (probably much, much later) one of them will randomly type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Even if none of the monkeys have ever heard of Shakespeare.
I can’t grasp yours example. Typewriters has the informations. Letters are graphic symbols of sounds that are signals of real things. My world vision started with comparative anatomy between all natural systems and the universal patterns founded here were projected for calculations about universes and first causes. As final result we got the same theory of Hideki Yukawa calculating the nuclear gluon, how protons and neutrons interacts. As result, this universe started with all informations for everything here, like any new origins of any human being started with prior information for creating the embryo and its womb (his entire universe). But these informations for universes are natural. Two groups of vortexes one spin right, other spin left. The interactions between then creates the intermediary movements. Each vortexes has at least seven properties which were the physical brutes forces(tendency to inertia, tendency to movement; tendency to grow, tendency to shorter; etc.). The different intensities of these forces and their interactions produces an infinity of individual types or vortex. Each vortex is one information, like genes. Th ere are genes that begins working later, so, there are universal informations in the air not applied yet. Like those building consciousness here. But, my results from these method is still theoretical. It makes sense and one day will be falsifiable
I’m confused; I can’t understand what you are saying. I think that part of this is the language barrier (what is your first language, by the way?) and part of it is probably an inferential distance issue (that is, what you’re saying is far enough away from anything that I expect that I’m having trouble making the mental leap).
So… would this mean that a typewriter contains the information for anything that can be typed on a typewriter? Including… say… the secret of immortality, plans for a time machine, and a way to detect the Higgs Boson? That seems a rather broad definition of ‘information’.
Well, in information-theoretic terms, the information for those comes from whoever looks over the monkey’s work and selects Shakespeare (or whatever.)
But the output exists, whether it is selected or not. (Admittedly, there will almost certainly be several inaccurate Shakespeare-like imitations/parodies/etc. that exist as well by then).
Heavily compressed, mind, but it’s technically true that a superintelligence could deduce us. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t imply it was deliberately designed, though; we could just be an emergent property of the universe, not it’s object.
You’re putting the cart before the horse here. You’ve said that they must be—why must they be? If they are then what predictions does their being so let you make and how have you tested them?
What, for that matter, are your formal definitions of order and chaos? The way I’d define them, chaos exists mostly on a quantum level and when you start to generalise out correlates start showing up on a macroscopic level really quickly, and then it’s not chaos anymore because it’s—at least in principle—predictable.
I mean it’s not silly to suppose that selection and mutation—with the former being the order enforcing part of evolution and the latter being the ‘chaotic’ part, operate in cycles. I believe if you model evolution of finite populations using Fokker Planck equations you tend to have an increasing spread of phenotypes between periods of heavy selection—but it’s not really an area I’ve much interest in so I couldn’t say for sure.
I don’t know what this means. You’re assigning an overarching system agency. But agency tends to mean that something is alive and thinking in English. Like a human would be said to have agency, whereas a computer—at least in the common “I’ve got one under my desk” sense—wouldn’t. Systems don’t tend to be considered to have gender in English either. In French lots of words are gendered but in English very few are. The only English things I can think of that are gendered other than living creatures are ships; traditionally thought of as female.
The second system just seems to be undefined.
If you want to find a human how easy is that for you to do? Turn out of your front door and go to town and you’ll probably find a fair number of them. If you want to find a specific human how much information do you need? I believe if you start off knowing nothing about them other than that they’re somewhere on Earth you only really need something like 32 bits of information but in any case it’s a lot more.
If you want to create a table you just make a table. It’s not hard. If you want to create a specific table design you need to know what it looks like at the very least.
If you want to create a child you need a partner. If you want to create a brown haired, blue eyed girl and no other kids besides … you’re probably going to be off picking particular partners to up your chances or running off to play with genetic engineering.
Generally the rule is that the more picky you want to be the more info you need.
If you just wanted to create a person, and nothing else, you would require a lot of information. If you wanted to create an entire universe you would need very little information. The universe is very large, and seems to consist mostly of repetitions of fairly simple things, which suggests to me an informationally sparse genesis.
Do you need to suppose a system at all? If what you’re talking about can be defined entirely in terms of a conflict between order and chaos—which really just seems to be evolution in progress. What explanatory power does this system have?
Sure, anything’s possible. But how probable is it and what grounds do you have for believing that it’s that probable?
Broadly you seem to be saying something to the effect of: In the absence of strong selection pressures the trend is towards disorder and decay. Which I agree with. And I can see how that would relate to rationality—there are systems, like schooling, that lose their purpose and essentially go insane in the absence of strong demands. Why are schools so crappy? A large part of it seems to be because adults don’t have an economic need for children at that age and it’s politically expedient to conduct education in a certain way that seems to produce work—without actually testing whether that work is useful because by that point the government will be out of power.
I suspect rationality carries connotations in your language that it doesn’t necessarily have in English. If a chaotic/random/brute force method of traversing the search space turns out to be better suited to certain situations I’d assign it a really high prior that people who define themselves as rationalists would make their decisions in that regard by throwing dice or some equivalent that introduced chaos into their actions. Like my passwords—what are my passwords? I don’t know. Most of them are 128 character gibberish.
If you think of rationality as systematised winning it seems more like: Whatever works. Than anything particularly tied to a specific selection/mutation ratio.
Well, an embryo develops a mind because it’s got the genetic code for it—which, yes, comes from the larger external system that evolved that code. Is that what you meant?
I must admit, I don’t see how that follows. Are you suggesting our universe was designed specifically as a “womb” to create us? That’s the only analogy I can see, and evolutionary advantage seems a simpler reason for sentience to evolve—although I guess those aren’t mutually exclusive, if this “natural super-system existing beyond our universe” anticipated that would result in us. But why postulate this? It could as easily have designed the universe as a “womb” to produce muffins! We could as easily be part of this muffin-womb. (Man, there’s a sentence I never expected to type.)
But science again and again has discovered that what we thought was “chaos” is merely the complex result of simple rules—order, in other words, that we can exploit with rationality.
If rationality works in ordered states, what’s the analog that works in “chaotic” states?
You said: “Well, an embryo develops a mind because it’s got the genetic code for it—which, yes, comes from the larger external system that evolved that code. Is that what you meant?”
Our conflict is due two different interpretations of genetic code. You think that biological systems (aka life) evolved a genetic code, so, you think that had no genetic code before life. It is not what is suggesting the results from my different method of investigation. There is no ” code” in the sense that are composed by symbols. Each horizontal base-pair of nucleotides is a derivation with some little difference of an ancestor system, the original first galaxies. (you need see the model of this galaxy and how it fits as nucleotide in my website). So, DNA is merely a pile of diversified copies of a unique ancestor astronomical system, which produces diversification and functional biological systems. But, galaxies got their system’s configuration from atoms system, and they got from particles as systems, so, the prior causes of this ” genetic makeup” seems to be beyond the Big Bang. The informations for building the mind of an embryo came from a system outside his womb; maybe informations for building minds in the whole universe came from a natural system outside the universe. Why not? configuration from atoms system, and they got from particles as systems (Sorry, I need stop now but I will come back. Sheers...)
Wait, you think human genetic code has existed, unchanged, since the beginning of time? Yeah, I can see how that would lead to human exceptionalism and such. Pretty sure it’s physically impossible, though. Or do you just mean it’s the result of a causal chain leading back to the beginning of time?
Well, our personalities, memories and so on can be affected by interfering with the brain, and it certainly looks like it’s doing some sort of information processing (as far as we can tell), so … seems unlikely, to be honest. Also, our minds do kind of look evolved to fit our biological niche.
I’m having real trouble parsing this. Are you saying evolution will make us irrational? Or that rationality is incompatible with lovecraftian puppetry? Or something completely different?
You … realize human’s didn’t evolve in the Amazon, right?
I’m not sure I’d characterize the natural world as “chaotic” as such. Complex, sometimes, sure, but it follows some pretty simple rules, and when we deduce these rules we can manipulate them.
The universe is definitely ordered, but don’t forget evolution can produce some pretty “designed” looking structures.
I think you sound kind of like a crank, to be honest with you. You seem to be treating “order” and “chaos” more like elemental forces or something, and generally sound like you’ve got problems with magical thinking. That said, I had some trouble understanding bits of what you wrote, so it’s possible I’m inadvertently addressing a strawman version of your claims. Tell me, are you a native English speaker?
Thanks, MugaSofer, for yours constructive reply. No, I am not a native English and my brain was hard-wired at the salvage jungle here, so, I think is a good opportunity for me debating our different experiences and world views. I hope that it must be curious for you too.
You said: ” Well, our personalities, memories and so on can be affected by interfering with the brain, and it certainly looks like it’s doing some sort of information processing (as far as we can tell), so … seems unlikely, to be honest.”
Yes, these things (personality, memories, etc.) composes our ” state of being” and they are merely product of brains/nature. But, we have a real phenomena where we watch the emergence of consciousnesses without being product of brains: the embryo. There is no natural architecture able to be conscious of its existence, neither are the brains alone. So, where comes from the conscious state of embryos? From a superior hierarchic system that exists beyond his universe (the womb), and this system is called ” human species” . So, it is not zero the probability that human mind is product of a hidden superior natural system whose bits-information are invading our immediate world and being aggregated to our synapses, besides the possibility that it was encrypted into our genes (if my models about Matrix/DNA are right).
You said: “Are you saying evolution will make us irrational? Or that rationality is incompatible with lovecraftian puppetry? Or something completely different?”
No, evolution will make us more suitable to real natural world. But, due the alternation between chaos and order, and due our origins coming from chaos, the flow of order (which is the basis for rationality) is the baby and weak force just now. Chaos is dying, order is growing, but now, chaos still is the strongest, so. irrationality and randomness are the winners, by while.
You said: ” You … realize human’s didn’t evolve in the Amazon, right?”
I don’t understand your question. Being still virgin and untouchable, the elements of Amazon hidden niches are witness of life’s origins. And we see chaos here. So, our origins came from terrestrial chaotic state of Nature, which came from ordered state of Cosmos… Cyclic alternations.
You said: ” I’m not sure I’d characterize the natural world as “chaotic” as such. Complex, sometimes, sure, but it follows some pretty simple rules, and when we deduce these rules we can manipulate them.”
Natural world is the Universe, not this terrestrial biosphere alone. This biosphere is a kind of disturbance, a noise, in relation to the ordered state of Cosmos. Biosphere is product of an entropic process, like the radiation of sun. So, the disturbance is corrected by the ordered Cosmos, from which is coming the emergence of those rules you are talking about. The curious thing is that humans are the carriers of those rules, we are bringing order to our salvage environment.
You said: ” The universe is definitely ordered, but don’t forget evolution can produce some pretty “designed” looking structures.”
The Universe, as a conglomerate of galaxies, seems to be mass with no shape, not a system. We don’t know if there is a nucleus, relations among parts, etc. We can’t know if it is ordered or chaotic. Evolution is the result of a flow of energy moving inside this Universe. Like any fetus is under evolution due a genetic flow producing more designed looking structures. The source of this “evolution” is a natural system (human species) living beyond the fetus’ universe (the womb). This is the unique real natural parameter we have for theories about the universe.
You said: You seem to be treating “order” and “chaos” more like elemental forces or something, and generally sound like you’ve got problems with magical thinking.
It is not magical thinking, it is the normal natural chain of causes and effects. Every system that reaches an ordered state is attacked by entropy, which produces chaos, from which lift up order again, but each cycle is more complex than the ancestors cycles. At chaotic states, like our biosphere, generations of empty minds are more likely to be winners, while generations of reasonable minds must be losers at short time and the final winner at long time. But, maybe the jungle is teaching me everything wrong. What do you think?
It certainly is that.
So … what’s left? Doesn’t that explain everything we mean by “mind”?
I’ve replied to this assertion elsewhere; hope I got the interpretation right.
You know, I’m not sure what you mean by “chaos”. If it’s just randomness, rationality can tell you how to choose ptimally using probabilities; perhaps that’s not what you mean? Is it complexity?
Oh, I think I get it; the Amazon is emblematic of Earth before civilization, right? The ancestral environment. Which is, naturally, where we evolved.
But even the biosphere follows laws, even if sometimes the results are so complex we have trouble discerning them.
Sorry; by “evolution” I meant natural selection. You know, Darwinism?
Well, I understand physically entropy is always increasing, and replicators tend to overrun available resources and improve via selection, but I’m not clear on these “cycles”.