RogerS

Karma: 84

RogerS Apr 17, 2013, 10:08 PM
0 points
in reply to: PrawnOfFate’s comment on: The real difference between Reductionism and Emergentism

“As a theory of mind (which it is not always), emergentism differs from idealism, eliminative materialism, identity theories, neutral monism, panpsychism, and substance dualism, whilst being closely associated with property dualism. ” (WP)

As a theory exclusively of the mind, I can see that emergentism has implications like property dualism, but not as a theory that treats the brain just as a very complex system with similar issues to other complex systems.

RogerS Apr 17, 2013, 3:44 PM
0 points
in reply to: PrawnOfFate’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
OK, not strictly “conserved”, except that I understand quantum mechanics requires that the information in the universe must be conserved. But what I meant is that if you download a file to a different medium and then delete the original, the information is still the same although the descriptions at quark level are utterly different. Thus there is a sense in which a quark level description of reality fails to capture an important fact about it (the identity of the two files in information terms).

I don’t think this has anything to do with dualism in the Cartesian sense, it’s just an example of my general preference for not taking metaphysical positions without reference to the context. I’m afraid I don’t know the label for that!

RogerS Apr 17, 2013, 3:25 PM
0 points
in reply to: PrawnOfFate’s comment on: The real difference between Reductionism and Emergentism

“Emergentism” can only be applied to gearboxes if the irreducibility clause is dropped. The high-level behaviour of a mechanism is always reducible to its the behaviour of its parts.

My point is that depends if by “behaviour” you mean “the characteristics of a single solution” or “the characteristics of solution space”. In the latter case the meaning of “reduction” doesn’t seem unambiguous to me.

The practical debate I have in mind is whether multibody dynamics can answer practical questions about the behaviour of gearboxes under conditions of stochastic or transient excitation with backlash taken into account, the point being that the solution space in such an application can be very large.

RogerS Apr 17, 2013, 3:11 PM
0 points
in reply to: TimS’s comment on: The real difference between Reductionism and Emergentism

The problem is when people use the label “emergence” as a semantic stop sign

Agreed, which is why I was trying to replace it by a “proceed with caution” sign with some specific directions.

One lives & learns—thanks.

RogerS Apr 14, 2013, 3:49 PM
2 points
on: Logical Pinpointing
The boundary between physical causality and logical or mathematical implication doesn’t always seem to be clearcut. Take two examples.

(1) The product of two and an integer is an even integer. So if I double an integer I will find that the result is even. The first statement is clearly a timeless mathematical implication. But by recasting the equation as a procedure I introduce both an implied separation in time between action and outcome, and an implied physical embodiment that could be subject to error or interruption. Thus the truth of the second formulation strictly depends on both a mathematical fact and physical facts.

(2) The endpoint of a physical process is causally related to the initial conditions by the physical laws governing the process. The sensitivity of the endpoint to the initial conditions is a quite separate physical fact, but requires no new physical laws: it is a mathematical implication of the physical laws already noted. Again, the relationship depends on both physical and mathematical truths.

Is there a recognized name for such hybrid cases? They could perhaps be described as “quasi-causal” relationships.

RogerS Apr 11, 2013, 10:44 AM
5 points
in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: We Don’t Have a Utility Function
Yes indeed, it is a challenge to understand how the same human moral functionality “F” can result in a very different value system “M” to ones own, though I suspect a lot of historical reading would be necessary to fully understand the Nazi’s construction of the social world—“S”, in my shorthand. A contemporary example of the same challenge is the cultures that practice female genital mutilation. You don’t have to agree with a construction of the world to begin to see how it results in the avowed values that emerge from it, but you do have to be able to picture it properly. In both cases, this challenge has to be distinguished from the somewhat easier task of explaining the origins of the value system concerned.

RogerS Apr 10, 2013, 11:56 AM
6 points
in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013)
Maybe it’s just that EY is very persuasive! I’m reminded of what was said about some other polymath (Arthur Koestler I think) that the critics were agreed that he was right on almost everything—except, of course, for the topic that the critic concerned was expert in, where he was completely wrong!

So my problem is, whether to just read the sequences, or to skim through all the responses as well. The latter takes an awful lot longer, but from what I’ve seen so far there’s often a response from some expert in the field concerned that, at the least, puts the post into a whole different perspective.

RogerS Apr 10, 2013, 8:49 AM
6 points
on: We Don’t Have a Utility Function
Confidence in moral judgments is never a sound criterion for them being “terminal”, it seems to me.

To see why, consider that ones working values are unavoidably a function of two related things: one’s picture of oneself, and of the social world. Thus, confident judgments are likely to reflect confidence in relevant parts of these pictures, rather than the shape of the function. To take your example, your adverse judgement of authority could have been a reflection of a confident picture of your ideal self as not being submissive, and of human society at its current state of development as being capable of operating without authority (doubtless oversimplifying greatly, but I hope you get the idea).

A crude mathematical model may help. If M is a vector of your moral values, and S and I is your understanding of society and personal construct respectively, then I am suggesting M = F(S, I). Then the problem is that “terminal values” as I understand them reside in F, but it is only M that is directly accessible to introspection. It is extremely difficult to imagine away the effect of S and I, but one way of making progress should be to vary S & I. That is, try hard to imagine being in an utterly different social context to the one we know. EG: an ancestral hunter-gatherer tribal group; a group of castaways on an island, the remainder being young children; an encounter with aliens; in a group defending ones family against an evil oppressor; etc. etc. Likewise, imagine being in the shoes of somebody with very different aptitudes and personality. The things that remain constant—the things that tell us how to deal with all these different cases—are our terminal values. (Or rather, they would be if we could only eliminate self-deception.)

RogerS Apr 8, 2013, 9:07 PM
3 points
in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
I’m still puzzled, as you seem to be both defending and contradicting EY’s view that:

the reductionist thesis is that we use multi-level models for computational reasons, but physical reality has only a single level. (Italics added).

I’m not actually attacking this view so much as regarding it as a particular convention or definition of reality rather than a “thesis”.

Perhaps you are reading “best characterized as” as “best modelled as”? I’m not saying that, just that this is the sense of “reality” that EY/the wiki writer prefers to adopt.

RogerS Apr 6, 2013, 11:01 PM
2 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
Re my claim:

“well, of course Bryan’s mental model of his pain doesn’t exist in reality by definition”

On reflection I suspect the disagreement here is that I am doubting that Bryan could consciously deny this, and you & EY & others are suspecting that he is unconsciously denying it. Well, that’s a theory. I have added an edit to my post recognizing this. This seems to boil down to the LW-wiki “definition” not really defining what reductionists believe, but rather defining why they believe certain criticisms of reductionism are wrong. That at least would explain why it sounds biased!

What do you mean when you say “but it’s information that is downloaded”? That the monist model does not completely describe reality? That computer programming is easier with the dualist model than the monist model? That information lives in a nonphysical universe that communicates with the physical universe, such that only having the physical universe would be insufficient for computers to run?

To answer more fully: The ‘monist’ model without information as a category describes reality at any instant but does not describe what is conserved from one instant to the next. Any activity that requires an intelligible account of what is going on is easier with the concept of information as a separate “thing”. Of course, information doesn’t belong in a nonphysical universe, since it obeys physical laws. Nevertheless the fact that it has a life of its own, with laws distinct to the laws specific to the materials which embody it an any given time, give it part (but not all) of the character of a separate physical but intangible substance.

The point of my analogy was to emphasise that all categories are man-made, including “substance”, so that “substance counting” has an element of arbitrariness. Actually I don’t find that treating “mind” as a separate substance is helpful!

RogerS Apr 6, 2013, 10:29 PM
2 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
Re Hands vs. Fingers. What worries me about this is the lack of any attention to the different contexts/purposes of different statements about hands & fingers. I have added a comment to the original post to amplify this.

RogerS Apr 6, 2013, 7:53 PM
0 points
on: Hand vs. Fingers
...much later… The thing that puzzles me about this post is that no attention is paid to context.

I had an operation last year to my right index finger. It was carried out by a hand surgeon. I used those terms because it was rather important which finger was operated on, and because the medical specialism relates to any part of the hand indifferently.

A trivial example, of course, but it illustrates the point, which applies also to much more complex issues, that the appropriate choice of “model level” (or other meta-model feature) to best represent the aspect of reality that matters depends on the context (and especially on the purpose). The difficulty begins, IMHO, when people insist on using the same model or meta-model whatever the context.

Most commenters on this post seem entirely wrapped up in the mind/brain question. That isn’t the only question for rationalists to have a view about! They don’t seem to be aware that arguments about the usefulness and limits of reductionism also continue in many other fields. The problem is probably that concepts like emergence are used in the mind-brain debate as an excuse for vitalism. But that is really a special case, just because minds are the things that are conducting this debate. In other fields emergence can be a useful concept. In other words I can claim that emergence is useful (in some senses anyway) without believing this has anything to do with consciousness.

RogerS Apr 3, 2013, 10:21 PM
0 points
on: Fake Explanations
Many different things can be deduced from this story, as previous comments have illustrated. The step that I question is “carries no information” = “magic”. I prefer Karl Popper’s account, in which [to paraphrase “Conjectures & Refutations” Chapter 1] “carries no predictive information” = “metaphysical” but “metaphysical” does not mean “unscientific”. Rather, science involves two activities, hypothesis creation and hypothesis testing. It is the hypothesis testing that has to be exclusively empirical (confined to falsifiable hypotheses). There are no rules for arriving at new hypotheses according to Popper, only heuristics, and metaphysical arguments can often be a source of new insights that lead to new falsifiable hypotheses. I believe Imre Lakatos developed this distinction with his idea of “Research programmes” which cannot be falsified but get abandoned when they cease to be fruitful of falsifiable hypotheses. The commenters who have stressed that some of the student’s wrong answers could be valuable first steps towards understanding fit into Popper’s scheme. The question (which we can’t answer) is whether the “password” status or the “first step” status was uppermost in their minds. To conclude, the posting is valuable in drawing attention to the disutility of password-type answers, but misleading in not also recognizing the role of first-step-type answers.

RogerS Apr 1, 2013, 6:07 PM
2 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
Thanks again.

it seems cleaner to consider that a fact about computer science, not meteorology.

I’d call it a fact about any system whose trajectories diverge at a smaller scale and converge at a larger scale (roughly), but that’s a radical view that needs a new discussion some time.

I think I can see a useful way of taking the reductionism question further, but will do more reading first...

RogerS Mar 29, 2013, 11:54 PM
2 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
Well, if the definition said that “reductionists disagree that 2 & 2 make 5” I wouldn’t disagree with that either. What worries me is the apparent refusal to engage with the rational critics of reductionism. But I am mainly thinking of critics in fields other than physics—politics “there is no such thing as society”, Skinner’s psychology, “there are no thoughts, only stimuli and responses”, not to mention developmental biology, weather forecasting & even mechanical engineering analysis, none of which actually get near “the territory” of quarks and leptons. So I am beginning to suspect that reductionism is used in a special sense by EY, more or less as a synonym for monism. And it’s true, I wouldn’t want to defend “substance dualists”.

As for the Naval Gunner, the point is that he would be right in other fields than fundamental physics. In weather forecasting long term forecasts using coarser models are actually more accurate than those using fine meshes, because of the chaotic behaviour at smaller scales. So I would say the gunner was just misinformed! The fact that one of the two theories happens to be one of the very few theories that are exact as far as we currently know, and the other an approximation, makes it a special case - though possibly one of special relevance if monism/dualism is really the issue in question.

Thanks for pointing to the more recent EY post, which I look forward to reading. No time tonight.

RogerS Mar 29, 2013, 12:54 AM
2 points
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
;) … but that’s still only matter and information, just that we’re now just information....

RogerS Mar 29, 2013, 12:47 AM
3 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
Sorry no time for a full answer, but roughly, yes, in a sense I do think that many of these disagreements turn out to be linguistic if you dig far enough. But if they are causal, the definition needs to compare two intelligible models of causality, not define one in a self-contradictory way. My reply to buybuydandavis may also help clarify.

That computer programming is easier with the dualist model than the monist model?

Yes, and anything else that requires an intelligible account of what is going on. You start with a monist model and then you have to define something called or synonymous with information. In my understanding that makes it a dualist model. (I hope my draft next discussion, Karma permitting(!), will elucidate further.)

RogerS Mar 29, 2013, 12:23 AM
2 points
in reply to: AlexMennen’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
I find it hard to square that with the Sequence item referred to, but then you imply you also found it confused. So, what do you use the word to mean?

RogerS Mar 29, 2013, 12:16 AM
3 points
in reply to: notsonewuser’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
So my objections aren’t aimed at you!

RogerS 29 Mar 2013 0:11 UTC
2 points
in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: Removing Bias From the Definition of Reductionism
I wasn’t intending to unless that’s what the Wiki definition characterizes it as, because I simply tried to re-express that definition without using the terms map and territory in ways that their definitions exclude.

I think perhaps I can see the problem. My phrase “for the purposes of causal explanation” is ambiguous. I wasn’t meaning “as a way of explaining any particular behaviour” but rather “as a way of establishing the root causes underlying any behaviour”. Does that make it more acceptable/less “greedy”?

Another possible cause of misunderstanding is that I have never seen the point of essentialism, in other words I think the questions that matter are always “how can something be most usefully described (for some stated purpose)” rather than “what is the essence of that something”, so I instinctively avoided an essentialist definition. I’ll think about rewording my version in a way that essentialists will recognize, as the sort of reductionism we are talking about does seem to hinge on reality being a sort of Platonic essence...