Neotenic

• NeotenicMar 18, 2013, 6:17 PM

  −4 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Car­ing about pos­si­ble peo­ple in far Worlds

  Indeed we could get more information if we knew that ratio. The assumption here though is that World three is a future stage of worlds 1 and 2, but these two bear no relationship in that way. The three are intervals/​stages of a different histories.

  So actually that ratio is not defined.

  The trouble I’m trying to point out is that if the FSM created the Tegmark4 multiverse, he’d still have to do more work to relate all these world stages that are disconnected by ascribing each pair a reality-fluid ratio. He would not need to do further work to get kilograms or daltons.

  The function that connects two words W1 and W2 to a percentage has to be added. The same problem arises for personal identity as naively conceived. There are functions that will tell you, about any two agent intervals their: 1)Level of psychological/​functional similarity 2)Will respond 1 if they are causally connected, and 0 otherwise and 3)If you are a phenomenalist—level of phenomenal consciousness interrelatedness.
  There is no further fact about personal identity, that is all we mean by Personal Identity. If another function was required determining 1 or 0 for each pair of agents and with the name “Personal Identity” it would be very suspicious.

• NeotenicMar 18, 2013, 5:57 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Car­ing about pos­si­ble peo­ple in far Worlds

  Thank you. That is the exact kind of nausea I was expecting to cause. The post works.

  Still, it seems that you remain secure about the concepts that I’m doubting play a role under some considerations do play a role.

  If you are secure about the role that “existence” plays in moral discussion, please clarify it. One way of doing that is by describing a function where on one axis you have different theories about many-worlds as the ones I described in my previous post, and in the other axis you have what exists given our epistemic evidence if that theory turns out to be correct.

Car­ing about pos­si­ble peo­ple in far Worlds

• NeotenicMar 17, 2013, 6:05 PM

  5 points

  on: Im­pos­ing con­di­tions that would have been ev­i­dence about op­ti­mal be­havi­our in the EEA

  Once I decided to undereat while travelling. The result was that for the first month I was in hypomania almost, very excited about things and places. I also slept much less and kept away from easy pleasures. At some point, at the end of the month, this hyper-functional system broke down, and I realized that though I thought I was dancing, in a club, I was actually not taking my feet of the ground. I suspected I might be tired, and went to bed. 17 hours later I woke up. I interpreted that as “I put myself in emergency mode and became more interested and productive, still this nitro didn’t get me the nourishment I needed after a month, so the body gave up and sent a message to the mind (or the medial prefrontal cortex) saying—That was all you had. Give up now, hope for a better crop tomorrow.”

• NeotenicMar 17, 2013, 5:45 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Im­pos­ing con­di­tions that would have been ev­i­dence about op­ti­mal be­havi­our in the EEA

  The curve will be particularly complex. When there’s no one. No curve. Very few, then it’s worth to collaborate even when they backstab you. Specially if the environment is super-dangerous. You want to create a story according to which they didn’t betray you at all. Anything, as long as the mutual knowledge is still on the friends side. Bigger numbers: Something close to Dunbar number would probably be where you most need to signal trustworthiness, and from then on, the more there are, the lowest is the cost of free-riding.

• NeotenicMar 17, 2013, 3:00 PM

  5 points

  in reply to: torekp’s comment on: Plu­ral­is­tic Ex­is­tence in Many Many-Worlds

  It is less crazy than it sounds the more you study philosophy of physics I suppose. It basically depends on accepting or not that matter could be just relational properties, with nothing intrinsic.

• NeotenicMar 16, 2013, 5:56 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Error’s comment on: Plu­ral­is­tic Ex­is­tence in Many Many-Worlds

  Some interesting stuff about our conceptions of the world might fall apart if you adopt the mathematical universe. If you think that the entirety of mathematical structures exists in the same way, than it is hard to think what happens when you decide to do good to someone with the entire structure. The whole thing just “is there”. Your decision could be thought of as a computational process that takes place in many different subsets. But the exact opposite decision still takes place where it takes place. Then you get something complicated in which your decision ends up conflates with self location in the near future. As if you deciding something doesn’t change the whole, but only where in the whole are things of the “you” kind to be found.

  And then, citing Lewis becomes helpful to find out about the minimal levels of complexity we are dealing with: As suggested above, let us call an individual which is wholly part of one world a possible individual.” If a possible individual X is part of a trans-world individual Y, and X is not a proper part of any other possible individual that is part of Y, let us call X a stage of Y. The stages of a trans-world individual are its maximal possible parts; they are the intersections of it with the worlds which it overlaps. It has at most one stage per world, and it is the mereological sum of its stages. Sometimes one stage of a trans-world individual will be a counterpart of another. If all stages of a trans-world individual Y are counterparts of one another, let us call Y counterpart-interrelated. If Y is counterpart-interrelated, and not a proper part of any other counterpart-interrelated trans-world individual (that is, if Y is maximal counterpart-interrelated), then let us call Y a -possible individual. Given any predicate that applies to possible individuals, we can define a corresponding starred predicate that applies to -possible individuals relative to worlds. A -possible individual is a -man at W iff it has a stage at W that is a man; it -wins the presidency at W iff it has a stage at W that wins the presidency; it is a -ordinary individual at W iff it has a stage at W that is an ordinary individual. It -exists at world W iff it has a stage at W that exists; likewise it -exists in its entirety at world W iff it has a stage at W that exists its entirety, so—since any stage at any world does exist in its entirety—a -possible individual -exists in its entirety at any world where it -exists at all. (Even though it does not exist in its entirety at any world.) It -is not a trans-world individual at W iff it has a stage at W that is not a trans-world individual, so every -possible individual (although it is a trans-world individual) also -is not a trans-world individual at any world. It is a -possible individual at W iff it has a stage at W that is a possible individual, so something is a -possible individual simpliciter iff it is a -possible individual at every world where it -exists. Likewise for relations. One -possible individual -kicks another at world W iff a stage at W of the first kicks a stage at W of the second; two -possible individuals are -identical at W iff a stage at W of the first is identical to a stage at W of the second; and so on.

• NeotenicMar 12, 2013, 11:54 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: torekp’s comment on: Plu­ral­is­tic Ex­is­tence in Many Many-Worlds

  So the reason is that Tegmarks claim is that the the mathematical properties not only define the Multiverse, but also that they constitute the entire extension of it. If there were substances, properties, or objects, that behaved mathematically well, that would still falsify his claim.

Plu­ral­is­tic Ex­is­tence in Many Many-Worlds

• NeotenicMar 11, 2013, 7:40 PM

  2 points

  on: Thoughts on the frame prob­lem and moral sym­bol grounding

  The fewer symbols you have, the more meanings they can have.

  Interestingly, in human language, the more a particular symbol is used, the more meanings it ends up having. (Pinker 2007)

  Might be the case that even after the plethora of symbols is very large, they still don’t ‘touch’ ‘reach’ ‘track’ the world the right way. So instead of keeping in mind the one world, and seeing whether a more complex and full map is better or worse at representing it, could be useful to keep in mind for each particular map structure, the infinitely many different worlds it represents. Just as a heuristic.

• NeotenicMar 10, 2013, 3:45 PM

  6 points

  in reply to: Error’s comment on: Cog­ni­tive Load and Effec­tive Donation

  I think Tegmark’s claim is unequivocally that we should endorse Dark Artsy subsets of scientific knowledge to promote science and whatever needs promotion (rationality perhaps). So yes, the thing being claimed is the thing you are emotionally inclined to fear/​dislike. By him and by me.

  Though just to be 100% sure, I’d like to have a brief description of your meaning of “dark arts” to avoid the double transparency fallacy.

Cog­ni­tive Load and Effec­tive Donation

• NeotenicMar 10, 2013, 3:01 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: B_For_Bandana’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes March 2013

  That is a very important subset of what I had in mind. So I`m glad you made that subset salient, as it seems independently important.

  You could think more generally that if the world is more altruistic, morally enhanced, etc… there will be less externalities of bad kinds operating, and the instruments we use to understand the world would become more effective at so doing. A very simplified version is that because this would be a richer world, more institutions would have spare resources to grasp it.

• NeotenicMar 4, 2013, 3:07 AM

  3 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes March 2013

  If the only way to get a clearer picture of the world—to enhance it epistemically, as it were—were to make it much better to start with, would the Utilitarians finally have found an argument that convinces any epistemic rationalist?

• NeotenicMar 4, 2013, 3:04 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Antadil’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes March 2013

  When Lennon remarked that “Ignorance is bliss”, should he have said “Unknown unknowns, except for knightian uncertainty, are bliss”?

• NeotenicMar 4, 2013, 3:01 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Stabilizer’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes March 2013

  Isn’t a Bucket List, literally, the list of things you want to do before dying but were unlikely to do prior to establishing your bucket list? (regardless of whether you became likely to now)

• NeotenicMar 4, 2013, 2:58 AM

  9 points

  in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes March 2013

  The error was epiphenomenal.

• NeotenicMar 4, 2013, 2:52 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes March 2013

  Socially a higher threshold should play a role than the above epsilon. There are things that are so low in probability (though much higher than epsilon) that establishing a contract/​agreement on what should both of you do if they happen is deleterious for the relationship. Such as when a couple who thinks they disagree about abortion asks: What should we do if the condom and pill don’t work?

  The probability is not so low. But the fight is too costly.

• NeotenicMar 4, 2013, 2:45 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: Stabilizer’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes March 2013

  Could we use “threshold for letting someone else take credit” as a signal for altruism?

• NeotenicMar 4, 2013, 2:41 AM

  5 points

  in reply to: Elithrion’s comment on: Giv­ing in to small vices

  I felt the exact same.

  Decreasing cognitive load in general makes people more rational. Joshua Greene cites that under a cognitive task, people are more likely to eat cake than an apple. There is less resource left for high-order cognitive tasks, like ‘avoid cake’.

  Meaning that hurrying Koreans are dedicating less cognition to “to litter or not to litter” and if bins were around, they simply wouldn’t have to do that.