I think my ideas may be important because they may lead to some new mathematical concepts.
Sometimes studying a simple idea or mechanic leads to a new mathematical concept which leads to completely unexpected applications.
For example, a simple toy with six sides (dice) may lead to saving people and major progress in science. Connecting points with lines (graphs) may lead to algorithms, data structures and new ways to find the optimal option or check/verify something.
Not any simple thing is guaranteed to lead to a new math concept. But I just want you to consider this possibility. And maybe ask questions answers to which could rise the probability of this possibility.
A new type of probability?
I think my ideas may be related to:
Probability and statistics.
Ways to describe vague things.
Ways to describe vague arguments or vague reasoning, thinking in context. For example arguments about “bodily autonomy”
Maybe those ideas describe a new type of probability:
You can compare classic probability to a pie made of a uniform and known dough. When you assign probabilities to outcomes and ideas you share the pie and you know what you’re sharing.
And in my idea you have a pie made of different types of dough (colors) and those types may change dynamically. You don’t know what you’re sharing when you share this pie.
This new type of probability is supposed to be applicable to things that have family resemblance, polyphyly or “cluster properties” (here’s an explanation of the latter in a Philosophy Tube video).
Blind men and an elephant
Imagine a world where people don’t know the concept of a “circle”. People do see round things, but can’t consciously pick out the property of roundness. (Any object has a lot of other properties.)
Some people say “the Moon is like a face”. Other say “the Moon is like a flower”. Weirder people say “the Moon is like a tree trunk” or “the Moon is like an embrace”. The weirdest people say “the Moon is like a day” or “the Moon is like going for a walk and returning back home”. Nobody agrees with each other, nobody understands each other.
Then one person comes up and says: “All of you are right. Opinions of everyone contain objective and useful information.”
People are shocked: at least someone has got to be wrong? If everyone is right, how can the information be objective and useful?
The concept of a “circle” is explained. Suddenly it’s extremely easy to understand each other. Like 2 and 2. And suddenly there’s nothing to argue about. People begin to share their knowledge and this knowledge finds completely unexpected applications.
The situation was just like in the story about blind men and an elephant, but even more ironic, since this time everyone was touching the same “shape”.
With my story I wanted to explain my opinions and goals:
I want to share my subjective experience.
I believe that it contains objective and important information.
I want to share a way to share subjective experience. I believe everyone’s experience contains objective and important information.
Meta subjective knowledge
If you can get knowledge from/about subjective experience itself, it means there exists some completely unexplored type of knowledge. I want to “prove” that there does exist such type of knowledge.
Such knowledge would be important because it would be a new fundamental type of knowledge.
And such knowledge may be the most abstract: if you have knowledge about subjective experience itself, you have knowledge that’s true for any being with subjective experience.
People
I’m amazed how different people are. If nothing else, just look at the faces: completely different proportions and shapes and flavors of emotions. And it seems like those proportions and shapes can’t be encountered anywhere else. They don’t feel exactly like geometrical shapes. They are so incredibly alien and incomprehensible, and yet so familiar. But… nobody cares. Nobody seems surprised or too interested, nobody notices how inadequate our concepts are at describing stuff like that. And this is just the faces, but there are also voices, ways to speak, characters… all different in ways I absolutely can’t comprehend/verbalize.
I believe that if we (people) were able to share the way we experience each other, it would change us. It would make us respect each other 10 times more, remember each other 10 times better, learn 10 times more from each other.
It pains me every day that I can’t share my experience of other people (accumulated over the years I thought about this). My memory about other people. I don’t have the concepts, the language for this. Can’t figure it out. This feels so unfair! All the more unfair that it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else.
This state of the world feels like a prison. This prison was created by specific injustices, but the wound grew deeper, cutting something fundamental. Vivid experiences of qualia (other people, fantastic worlds) feel like a small window out of this prison. But together we could crush the prison wall completely.
Part 2: Examples
Part 3: Motivation
I think my ideas may be important because they may lead to some new mathematical concepts.
Sometimes studying a simple idea or mechanic leads to a new mathematical concept which leads to completely unexpected applications.
For example, a simple toy with six sides (dice) may lead to saving people and major progress in science. Connecting points with lines (graphs) may lead to algorithms, data structures and new ways to find the optimal option or check/verify something.
Not any simple thing is guaranteed to lead to a new math concept. But I just want you to consider this possibility. And maybe ask questions answers to which could rise the probability of this possibility.
A new type of probability?
I think my ideas may be related to:
Probability and statistics.
Ways to describe vague things.
Ways to describe vague arguments or vague reasoning, thinking in context. For example arguments about “bodily autonomy”
Maybe those ideas describe a new type of probability:
You can compare classic probability to a pie made of a uniform and known dough. When you assign probabilities to outcomes and ideas you share the pie and you know what you’re sharing.
And in my idea you have a pie made of different types of dough (colors) and those types may change dynamically. You don’t know what you’re sharing when you share this pie.
This new type of probability is supposed to be applicable to things that have family resemblance, polyphyly or “cluster properties” (here’s an explanation of the latter in a Philosophy Tube video).
Blind men and an elephant
Imagine a world where people don’t know the concept of a “circle”. People do see round things, but can’t consciously pick out the property of roundness. (Any object has a lot of other properties.)
Some people say “the Moon is like a face”. Other say “the Moon is like a flower”. Weirder people say “the Moon is like a tree trunk” or “the Moon is like an embrace”. The weirdest people say “the Moon is like a day” or “the Moon is like going for a walk and returning back home”. Nobody agrees with each other, nobody understands each other.
Then one person comes up and says: “All of you are right. Opinions of everyone contain objective and useful information.”
People are shocked: at least someone has got to be wrong? If everyone is right, how can the information be objective and useful?
The concept of a “circle” is explained. Suddenly it’s extremely easy to understand each other. Like 2 and 2. And suddenly there’s nothing to argue about. People begin to share their knowledge and this knowledge finds completely unexpected applications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
The situation was just like in the story about blind men and an elephant, but even more ironic, since this time everyone was touching the same “shape”.
With my story I wanted to explain my opinions and goals:
I want to share my subjective experience.
I believe that it contains objective and important information.
I want to share a way to share subjective experience. I believe everyone’s experience contains objective and important information.
Meta subjective knowledge
If you can get knowledge from/about subjective experience itself, it means there exists some completely unexplored type of knowledge. I want to “prove” that there does exist such type of knowledge.
Such knowledge would be important because it would be a new fundamental type of knowledge.
And such knowledge may be the most abstract: if you have knowledge about subjective experience itself, you have knowledge that’s true for any being with subjective experience.
People
I’m amazed how different people are. If nothing else, just look at the faces: completely different proportions and shapes and flavors of emotions. And it seems like those proportions and shapes can’t be encountered anywhere else. They don’t feel exactly like geometrical shapes. They are so incredibly alien and incomprehensible, and yet so familiar. But… nobody cares. Nobody seems surprised or too interested, nobody notices how inadequate our concepts are at describing stuff like that. And this is just the faces, but there are also voices, ways to speak, characters… all different in ways I absolutely can’t comprehend/verbalize.
I believe that if we (people) were able to share the way we experience each other, it would change us. It would make us respect each other 10 times more, remember each other 10 times better, learn 10 times more from each other.
It pains me every day that I can’t share my experience of other people (accumulated over the years I thought about this). My memory about other people. I don’t have the concepts, the language for this. Can’t figure it out. This feels so unfair! All the more unfair that it doesn’t seem to bother anyone else.
This state of the world feels like a prison. This prison was created by specific injustices, but the wound grew deeper, cutting something fundamental. Vivid experiences of qualia (other people, fantastic worlds) feel like a small window out of this prison. But together we could crush the prison wall completely.