If you’re going to write a book hundreds of pages long in which you crucially rely on the concept of complexity, you need to explicitly to define it. That’s just how it works. If you know what concept of complexity is “the” right one here, you need to spell it out yourself.
Well, Silas, what I actually did was write a book 255 pages long of which this whole Dawkins/complexity thing occupies about five pages (29-34) and where complexity is touched on exactly once more, in a brief passage on pages 7-8. From the discrepancy between your description and reality, I infer that you haven’t read the book, which would help to explain why your comments are so bizarrely misdirected.
Oh, and I see that you’re still going on about axiomatic descriptions of squirrels, as if that were relevant to something I’d said. (Hint: A simulation is not an axiomatic system. That’s 48 bajillion and one.)
Well, Silas, what I actually did was write a book 255 pages long of which this whole Dawkins/complexity thing occupies about five pages (29-34) and where complexity is touched on exactly once more, in a brief passage on pages 7-8. From the discrepancy between your description and reality, I infer that you haven’t read the book, which would help to explain why your comments are so bizarrely misdirected.
I have not read the entire book. I have read many long portions of it, mostly the philosophical ones and those dealing with physics. I was drawn to on the assumption that, surely you would have defined complexity in your exposition!
It’s misleading to say that your usage of complexity only takes 8 pages, so it’s insignificant. Rather, the point you make about complexity is your grounding for broader claims about the role mathematics plays in the universe, which you come back to frequently. The explicit mention of the term “complexity” is thus a poor measure of how much you rely on it.
But even if it were just 8 pages, you should still have defined it, and you should still not expect to have achieved insights on the topic, given that you haven’t defined it.
(I certainly wouldn’t want to buy it—why should I subsidize such confused thinking? I don’t even like your defenses of libertarianism, despite being libertarian.)
Oh, and I see that you’re still going on about axiomatic descriptions of squirrels, as if that were relevant to something I’d said. (Hint: A simulation is not an axiomatic system. That’s 48 bajillion and one.)
Ah, another suddenly-crucial distinction to make, so you can wiggle out of being wrong!
I should probably use this opportunity to both show I did read many portions, and show why Landsburg doesn’t get what it means to really explain something. His explanation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (which gets widely praised as a good explanation for some reason) is this: think of an electron as moving in a circle within a square. If you measure its vertical position, its closeness to the top determines the chance of getting a “top” or “bottom” reading.
Likewise the horizontal direction: if you measure the horizontal position of the electron, your chances of getting a “left” or “right” reading depends on how far it is from that side.
And for the important part: why can’t you measure both at the same time? Landsburg’s brilliant explanation: um, because you can’t.
But that’s what the explanation was supposed to demystify in the first place! You can’t demystify by feeding that very mystery a blackbox fact unto itself. To explain it, you would need to explain enough of the dynamics of quantum systems so that, at the end, your reader doesn’t view precise measurement of both position and momentum as even being coherent! Saying, “oh, you can’t because you can’t” isn’t an explanation.
Well, Silas, what I actually did was write a book 255 pages long of which this whole Dawkins/complexity thing occupies about five pages (29-34) and where complexity is touched on exactly once more, in a brief passage on pages 7-8. From the discrepancy between your description and reality, I infer that you haven’t read the book, which would help to explain why your comments are so bizarrely misdirected.
Oh, and I see that you’re still going on about axiomatic descriptions of squirrels, as if that were relevant to something I’d said. (Hint: A simulation is not an axiomatic system. That’s 48 bajillion and one.)
I have not read the entire book. I have read many long portions of it, mostly the philosophical ones and those dealing with physics. I was drawn to on the assumption that, surely you would have defined complexity in your exposition!
It’s misleading to say that your usage of complexity only takes 8 pages, so it’s insignificant. Rather, the point you make about complexity is your grounding for broader claims about the role mathematics plays in the universe, which you come back to frequently. The explicit mention of the term “complexity” is thus a poor measure of how much you rely on it.
But even if it were just 8 pages, you should still have defined it, and you should still not expect to have achieved insights on the topic, given that you haven’t defined it.
(I certainly wouldn’t want to buy it—why should I subsidize such confused thinking? I don’t even like your defenses of libertarianism, despite being libertarian.)
Ah, another suddenly-crucial distinction to make, so you can wiggle out of being wrong!
I should probably use this opportunity to both show I did read many portions, and show why Landsburg doesn’t get what it means to really explain something. His explanation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (which gets widely praised as a good explanation for some reason) is this: think of an electron as moving in a circle within a square. If you measure its vertical position, its closeness to the top determines the chance of getting a “top” or “bottom” reading.
Likewise the horizontal direction: if you measure the horizontal position of the electron, your chances of getting a “left” or “right” reading depends on how far it is from that side.
And for the important part: why can’t you measure both at the same time? Landsburg’s brilliant explanation: um, because you can’t.
But that’s what the explanation was supposed to demystify in the first place! You can’t demystify by feeding that very mystery a blackbox fact unto itself. To explain it, you would need to explain enough of the dynamics of quantum systems so that, at the end, your reader doesn’t view precise measurement of both position and momentum as even being coherent! Saying, “oh, you can’t because you can’t” isn’t an explanation.