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The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

nautil.us

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Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#61

Post by Iv »

ukj wrote: post #53
radford-neal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far, in this brief comment and a brief comment above, you've mentioned Goodhart's law, the McNamara fallacy, and the Munchhausen trilemma. I know nothing of any of these. I think that you would communicate better if you avoided such references. I'd even venture to suggest that your internal thoughts might be improved by not shoving arguments into such pre-defined categories.

I like terseness. Just because you haven't heard of something it doesn't preclude it from being a well-indexed idea in human folklore. Google is your friend.

Goodhart's law/McNamara fallacy: when you put value in a measure, you create incentives to trick it.

Here is aa equivalent statement, as terse and clearer, than the comment you made above.

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#62

Post by ukj »

Iv wrote: post #55
ukj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conception is highly susceptible to Goodhart's law. It favours the quantitative over the qualitative which is a good way to trip over the McNamara fallacy.

I don't think so, if it is done properly. For instance you want a human life to be worth more but the only way for that to happen is to actually spend more to save human lives, which makes the value of life increase.

What is your standard for "properness" ?

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#63

Post by ukj »

Iv wrote: post #61
ukj wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like terseness. Just because you haven't heard of something it doesn't preclude it from being a well-indexed idea in human folklore. Google is your friend.

Goodhart's law/McNamara fallacy: when you put value in a measure, you create incentives to trick it. Here is aa equivalent statement, as terse and clearer, than the comment you made above.

So, would that same reasoning apply to putting value in human lives?

Is that an incentive to trick the measurement?

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#64

Post by Iv »

bawolff wrote: post #15

Maybe im missing it, but the argument seems to be morality is objective because everyone thinks it is. How is that not begging the question? Then there are a bunch of pithy lines, which the author seems to treat as obvious in context revelations, but to me seem to utterly lack evidence/argument. > "No matter how the universe had turned out, two plus two would equal four and it would have been wrong to torture people…

Last week, I did some philosophy: I dived into the discussions of Debian-legal of what constitutes open source and licenses apply or not to deep learning model. It was some real philosophy, applied philosophy, on complicated matters, touching technical, legal and moral aspects.

It reminded me why I consider academic philosophy a fraud. I love philosophy, and places where it happens usually call it another name because the academic philosophers really perverted that word.

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#65

Post by manofmanysmiles »

keiferski wrote: post #59
manofmanysmiles wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you really understand someone’s ideas without understanding all the premises? Isn’t it necessary for then to try to “convince” you insofar as just stating a conclusion without supporting arguments is no different than stating an opinion? Or put a different way, why would you ever desire to hear opinions without trying to understand them or establish their truth?

Not sure how you get this from the quote. I meant that I prefer it when the mood of a book is this is interesting/beautiful/insightful and not this is my conclusion, now I’m going to construct an argument to convince you it’s the right one.

I think my reaction stemmed from

> You cannot believe the view I will defend in this book. I therefore will not be able to convince you that this view is true.

This appears as a concession that the truth about the topic cannot be determined. In which case, from a philosophical point of view, what’s the point?

That being said, I often prefer the presentation of “Here are some interesting things I’ve observed and thoughts I’ve had. Do what you will with them.”

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#66

Post by justtopostthis3 »

donatj wrote: post #12

Right off the bat it fails epicly in its comparison of Gandhi to Epstein as bastions of good and evil, as apparently the author is completely unaware of Gandhi’s sleeping with children? What a horrible choice for the side of good, given Epstein’s horrendous misdeeds. What a horribly written horribly reasoned article. Very frustrating to read. > But if Reality is itself a very general form of consciousness, and my con…

> completely unaware of Gandhi’s sleeping with children

I was unaware, and searching suggests you are referring to him sleeping naked in the same bed as a 17 or 18-year-old, without touching them, supposedly to test his celibacy.

Which is, quite frankly, hilariously innocent compared what "sleeping with children" implies, particularly in the context of being contrasted with Epstein.

> None of the women who participated in the brahmachari experiments of Gandhi indicated that they had sex or that Gandhi behaved in any sexual way. Those who went public said they felt as though they were sleeping with their aging mother.

If this is horrible enough to outweigh the good in his life, hell better make room: we're all coming.

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#67

Post by Kednicma »

ukj wrote: post #51
Ste_Evans wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the terms used in Mathematics are a tad more precise than those in natural language e.g. 1 is fairly clear, "moral" is not as clear. The reason Maths works is because it is based on intuitions (counting, space) that are presumably shadows of the physical world cast on the evolving brain via coarse perception. The effectiveness of Mathematics in Physics is probably not unreasonable at all.

Clear to whom? The meaning of "1" is conventional/socially constructed. For the sake of argument I can conveniently forget what "1" means, and then you can try and explain it to me like I am from another planet. Semantics are a non-trivial matter.

To be extremely precise: 1 is the successor of 0. Anywhere that there is a natural numbers object, there's a semantics for this statement. What is socially constructed here is the choice of topos which hosts the natural numbers object!

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#68

Post by ukj »

Kednicma wrote: post #67
ukj wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clear to whom? The meaning of "1" is conventional/socially constructed. For the sake of argument I can conveniently forget what "1" means, and then you can try and explain it to me like I am from another planet. Semantics are a non-trivial matter.

To be extremely precise: 1 is the successor of 0. Anywhere that there is a natural numbers object, there's a semantics for this statement. What is socially constructed here is the choice of topos which hosts the natural numbers object!

SUCC(0) is no explanation of 1, until you explain 0.

Note how you are reaching for complex/abstract ideas (like a "topos" and "natural numbers") to explain simple/intuitive ones (like 0 and 1).

"toposes" and "sets" (of "natural numbers") are socially constructed in the subculture of Mathematicians.

Outside of that shared experience, they are pretty meaningless.

I guess you are on the "discovered" side, and I am on the "invented" side of Mathematics ;)

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#69

Post by Kednicma »

ukj wrote: post #68
Kednicma wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be extremely precise: 1 is the successor of 0. Anywhere that there is a natural numbers object, there's a semantics for this statement. What is socially constructed here is the choice of topos which hosts the natural numbers object!

SUCC(0) is no explanation of 1, until you explain 0. Note how you are reaching for complex/abstract ideas (like a "topos" and "natural numbers") to explain simple/intuitive ones (like 0 and 1). "toposes" and "sets" (of "natural numbers") are socially constructed in the subculture of Mathematicians. Outside of that shared experience, they are pretty meaningless. I guess you are on the "discovered" side, and I am on th…

Humans are what, about 99.9% similar to each other on average? So that gives me 3 nines belief that yes, if I can understand, then you can understand; we're just humans after all. I think that you're being sarcastic; once we define categories, Cartesian closed categories, and elementary topoi, then categorical set theory is a straightforward sequence of diagram schemata. But I understand your point!

You're super-close to a deep realization: all words are only sensical to certain subcultures. IOW there's no absolute meaning to any word. In that perspective, we're both right; "1" is meaningless and 1 is categorical, and it's just a question of pointers vs. names.

Another quick and deep corollary is that reality is socially constructed; whenever a quorum of humans is mutually intelligible during a conversation, then they are agreeing on the local nature of reality. Humans can't construct global maps of reality, though, since they can't observe the Universe all at once. Indeed global maps of reality are forbidden by the Kochen-Specker Theorem.

Edit: To clarify for the audience, I have no appeal to higher categories here, and the definitions of category theory are not some sort of categorization or classification process, but axiomatic definitions akin to set theory.

Re: The Universe Knows Right from Wrong

#70

Post by ukj »

Kednicma wrote: post #69
ukj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SUCC(0) is no explanation of 1, until you explain 0. Note how you are reaching for complex/abstract ideas (like a "topos" and "natural numbers") to explain simple/intuitive ones (like 0 and 1). "toposes" and "sets" (of "natural numbers") are socially constructed in the subculture of Mathematicians. Outside of that shared experience, they are pretty meaningless. I guess you are on the "discovered" side, and I am on th…

Humans are what, about 99.9% similar to each other on average? So that gives me 3 nines belief that yes, if I can understand, then you can understand; we're just humans after all. I think that you're being sarcastic; once we define categories, Cartesian closed categories, and elementary topoi, then categorical set theory is a straightforward sequence of diagram schemata. But I understand your point! You're super-clos…

Heh, how did I know you are going to appeal to infinity-categories at some point?

"defining categories" and their respective categorisation rules is the process of classification. They don't account for the classifiers themselves.

You are super-close to a deeper realisation even.

If any notation is meaningful (even one that uses symbols like ∞), then it's Turing-recognisable.

Type-0 Chomsky grammar. In formal languages syntax is semantics.

In so far as understanding (comprehension?) goes, you could say that I subscribe to the axiom of unrestricted comprehension. It's rather un-Mathematical doing so.

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