11–20 of 57 posts
Sometimes I think I was born too soon. To think the new knowledge we well discover with in the next 100, 200, 1000 years is really exciting. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 20-50 years with all the genetic engineer going on one could live for ever. Of cause as long as you can afford it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you aware that's irrational? Your assumptions about priors contain plenty of mistakes (all ideas do, mine too) and you should find a way of thinking which better allows for correcting those mistakes.
I think it's more unfortunate than irrational. I'd like to think I'm open to changing them--my priors started out (a couple of decades ago) pretty terrible. The process of how to do it well in response to arguments without experimental results is the challenging part.
This (empiricism) has driven philosophers to things like positivism (where they declare everything non-empirical to be worthless or even meaningless). It's a problematic tradition.
The problems are made worse because it turns out that the large majority of ideas are assessed in a non-empirical way (not due to people being idiots; this is correct). Using evidence is the less common case (though it is quite important when relevant).
In _The Fabric of Reality_ by David Deutsch, he gives an example of the theory that eating a kilogram of grass will cure the common cold. This, he points out, should not be empirically tested, and will not be. Rather it is rejected without evidence because it is a bad explanation. Only good explanations are worth testing. (This does not make us miss out on any truths. If it really was true, someone could figure out some explanation of how it works, and then we'd test it.)
In his recent book, _The Beginning of Infinity_, Deutsch further explains that there's no point in testing any theory for which its details can easily be changed around in an ad hoc way, because you can never refute such things with evidence since they will just revise themselves endlessly. The only thing that can refute that sort of approach is philosophical criticism. Only ideas which survive some philosophical criticism and are therefore of higher quality are worthwhile to empirically test.
What makes it hard to change a theory around, ad hoc, to avoid refutation, is if there is some actual connection between the content of the theory and the problem it's trying to solve, so most changes to it would make it no longer address the problem as well.
Deutsch calls that quality "hard to vary" and says it is what makes explanations good. His books expand on this, and offer a version of Popperian epistemology with (relatively small) improvements.
Popperian epistemology, focussed on criticism not justification (which is impossible), and which applies to all types of knowledge without difficulty rather than being narrowly focussed on empiricism, is the solution.
One of the Popperian ideas is that because we are fallible and make lots of mistakes, and need to improve on them (by criticism), irrationality has to do with anything that hampers this process of correcting errors. So that's why I regard difficulty error-correcting priors as irrational. Deutsch even proposes that hampering the correction of mistakes is the most important criterion of immorality.
Sometimes I think I was born too soon. To think the new knowledge we well discover with in the next 100, 200, 1000 years is really exciting. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 20-50 years with all the genetic engineer going on one could live for ever. Of cause as long as you can afford it.
A clock will be constantly visible on your forearm and time will be the only commodity in the world, in which you'll get paid and make payments in.
After the age of 25, you'll get 1 to 75 years of "time" deposited in your account. The clock on your arm will decrement by default as time passes, and increase/decrease as you earn/spend.
When your time expires (the clock reaches zero), you die.
Most people will live day-to-day, only having 24 hours of time in any given moment. Others will have millions of years on their clocks.
hah, its like a variable in a function making theories about what the whole program is all about, and that there might be many other functions similar to it. :D take a look at this one too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
They take something that's perfectly explainable with a probability wave, and turn it into fantasy.
Sometimes I think I was born too soon. To think the new knowledge we well discover with in the next 100, 200, 1000 years is really exciting. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 20-50 years with all the genetic engineer going on one could live for ever. Of cause as long as you can afford it.
I envision a world where, due to technology and science, everyone stops aging after 25. A clock will be constantly visible on your forearm and time will be the only commodity in the world, in which you'll get paid and make payments in. After the age of 25, you'll get 1 to 75 years of "time" deposited in your account. The clock on your arm will decrement by default as time passes, and increase/decrease as you earn/spe…
Sometimes I think I was born too soon. To think the new knowledge we well discover with in the next 100, 200, 1000 years is really exciting. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 20-50 years with all the genetic engineer going on one could live for ever. Of cause as long as you can afford it.
Whenever I find myself getting wistful about the future portrayed in science fiction, I remind myself that I am better off than all the humans before me since the dawn of our species, and also better off than the vast majority of humans on the planet right now. Future generations may look back at this as a golden age. So enjoy it!
Edit: this inspired me to write an article:
Sometimes I think I was born too soon. To think the new knowledge we well discover with in the next 100, 200, 1000 years is really exciting. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 20-50 years with all the genetic engineer going on one could live for ever. Of cause as long as you can afford it.
I envision a world where, due to technology and science, everyone stops aging after 25. A clock will be constantly visible on your forearm and time will be the only commodity in the world, in which you'll get paid and make payments in. After the age of 25, you'll get 1 to 75 years of "time" deposited in your account. The clock on your arm will decrement by default as time passes, and increase/decrease as you earn/spe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I envision a world where, due to technology and science, everyone stops aging after 25. A clock will be constantly visible on your forearm and time will be the only commodity in the world, in which you'll get paid and make payments in. After the age of 25, you'll get 1 to 75 years of "time" deposited in your account. The clock on your arm will decrement by default as time passes, and increase/decrease as you earn/spe…
This plot doesn't make any sense.
Gold is only backed by the agreement of its scarcity; otherwise, it has no value (outside its physical usefulness as a material).
Fiat currency is only backed by the confidence of a nation; otherwise, it has no value.
Time is a currency that's backed by your life.
It is as real as it gets.
http://www.ted.com/talks/george_smoot_on_the_design_of_the_u...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's more unfortunate than irrational. I'd like to think I'm open to changing them--my priors started out (a couple of decades ago) pretty terrible. The process of how to do it well in response to arguments without experimental results is the challenging part.
Bayesianism is in the empiricist tradition where it's focussed on how to update ideas in response to evidence, but it doesn't actually provide guidance for how to deal with non-empirical ideas that can't be judged by evidence. This (empiricism) has driven philosophers to things like positivism (where they declare everything non-empirical to be worthless or even meaningless). It's a problematic tradition. The problems…
To contribute something, other than my thanks, here's a link to Deutsch talking about knowledge, evidence, and incredible cosmic relationships:
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_on_our_place_in_the_c...