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Wild Ideas

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Re: Wild Ideas

#151

Post by Xcelerate »

eoinmurray92 wrote: post #114
Xcelerate wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... but there are no equations or even firm rules for when this collapse is supposed to happen That's why it isn't science ;) Maybe when QM was being developed "collapse" was a debated concept; I'm not too familiar with its history. Currently though, modern QM predicts that ensembles of identically prepared systems select an eigenstate of the linear operator corresponding to whatever observable it is you're measuri…

> I see no implications of collapse with this -- just probabilities of what values you will obtain in experiment. Not exactly, your statement is correct for single states, however it breaks down for entangled states. When one wavefunction describes two or more particle a measurement on one particle can be thought of collapsing the two particle wavefunction, which then forces the other particle into a well defined sta…

I guess I just view the wavefunction as an inherently multiparticle function on a configuration space. The concept of approximating single-particle states seems peculiar to me; it seems simpler just to have one state for an entire system (and the corresponding probabilities of what measurements you'll get on that system, regardless of how the system is distributing spatially). Then again, we're coming from different research backgrounds so we probably have a different way of looking at it ;)

Quantum entanglement doesn't seem to be particularly unusual any more so than the fact that electron-electron correlation must be taken into effect when computing energy levels with some kind of QMC. All particles within a quantum system are correlated, so entanglement just kind of falls naturally out of that; I'm not assuming any kind of locality. I suppose what you're saying is that collapse is defined as the process of "fixing" these correlations?

Re: Wild Ideas

#152

Post by Houshalter »

derleth wrote: post #79
bumbledraven wrote: post #19

1. Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds. True. 2. If medicine were taxed so much that people only bought half as much, they would be just as healthy. False. The "extra" spending in medicine drives innovations so we have better drugs & procedures etc. than we would otherwise. 3. If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make comput…

> If we allowed complete freedom of contract, law could be privatized, to our common benefit. This Anarcho-Capitalist ideal has never come to pass in any scenario where it could have happened: That is, there have been multiple scenarios where the established government has broken down entirely, and nobody's ever created this system with government-by-contract or anything like it. We can argument-from-fiction this to…

>This Anarcho-Capitalist ideal has never come to pass in any scenario where it could have happened: That is, there have been multiple scenarios where the established government has broken down entirely, and nobody's ever created this system with government-by-contract or anything like it.

A collapsed society isn't really a good example of anything. There are some good examples of private law systems here http://youtu.be/o0TBE-pcEi0.

>Only if everyone starts from the same premises.

Only if you are talking about subjective things like values or definitions of words or something like that.

If you are debating actual facts like "I expect X to happen tomorrow with 30% probability" or "if I do this experiment I will get this result" or even "this event happened in the past" (like debating whether someone is guilty of a crime for example.)

Given all the same information and arguments, 2 perfectly rational agents should always come to the same conclusion on these things.

Re: Wild Ideas

#153

Post by gnaritas »

derefr wrote: post #44
gnaritas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because why would I care if I change species if it keeps my consciousness alive?

What is your consciousness, separate from a subsumptive architecture of event loops that react to recognized stimuli in response to goal conditions? Which is to say, if you remove all your goal conditions, all your reference points that could be moved away from center to provoke response -- if you are reduced to http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Orgasmium , in other words -- are you really aware any more?

> What is your consciousness

It's me; and I'd be happy to give up the biological machine I'm running on and trade it for an equivalent or better technological machine or VR environment where the limits of biology no longer applied. Removing my biology doesn't remove all of my goal conditions; it removes the ones nature imposed upon me. I could add back any I like and choose to drop those I don't.

We're intelligent beings who have transcended being driven by instinct alone; we can choose our own goals independent of nature.

Re: Wild Ideas

#154

Post by 6ren »

codezero wrote: post #12
6ren wrote: post #4

Try this: we don't get alien visitors because space travel is prohibitively expensive. But communication is cheap. So you'd expect the sky to be filled with messages, maximally compressed and/or encrypted, and so indistinguishable from noise: background radiation.

The only catch here is that such messages would be prohibitively costly (power wise) to transmit uniformly in all directions. They would be point to point to reduce the power, required to transmit, and increase privacy. It's difficult to intercept line of sight communications and it's unlikely we'd fall on the line of sight of two hot spots of intelligent communication in all the vastness of space. Even if they broad…

They are point to point. There's just so many, billions more than the number of stars (imagine cell phones radiating point to point), and even alien technology can't prevent beam-spread over billions of light years (another assumption).

Re: Wild Ideas

#155

Post by derleth »

icebraining wrote: post #116
derleth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. And we call that system a government. Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a govern…

(Playing Devil's advocate) > Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. And we call that system a government. The problem here is the foolish tendency of English speaking people to use "government" for everything, when we should distinguish the government from the State . Anarchists are obviously not op…

But without a state, governments are worthless. They can't do anything, as we've seen time and again.

Re: Wild Ideas

#156

Post by derleth »

Houshalter wrote: post #150
derleth wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. And we call that system a government. Seriously. Every time an anarchist seriously gets down to brass tacks about how their world would work, there's some agency by 'the people' which does things which have to be done, and it's indistinguishable from a govern…

It's not really a government as you can't (ideally) force people to participate even if they don't want to (or if you do it's through tamer methods like boycotts or whatever rather than threat of imprisonment.) And it doesn't have to be a central organization. It sounds like a minor difference but it's really not. Importantly most things that are done by government would be done completely differently and by private…

First, boycotts are a use of force. Everyone ganging up on someone to boycott them (shunning, as it used to be called, or making them an outlaw) is one of the oldest, cruelest forms of punishment, and we're well shut of it now. Putting someone in prison is one thing; kicking them out of society entirely is another.

> The point is, that if the way government does something is truly superior, then people would still do it that way.

Then why hasn't this ever happened in the past? Why is Somalia suffering through what it's going through when self-organizing communes are so much better?

> They just couldn't force people to participate or pay for it.

Then nobody's going to pay for it, and the people who opt out of the laws entirely are going to be robbing everyone else.

Re: Wild Ideas

#157

Post by ricardobeat »

eru wrote: post #26
ricardobeat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called Polycentric Law[1] and people who actually think it's a good idea seem to exist in larger than zero quantities. See this entertaining thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5009244 [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law

snitko actually approves, I guess.

Oh. Momentary sarcasm detector failure.

His scenario is a little too bright though... more like minorities getting exterminated by the conservative & powerful.

Re: Wild Ideas

#158

Post by icebraining »

derleth wrote: post #155
icebraining wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Playing Devil's advocate) > Anything a government could do, could in theory be done by a voluntary system if enough people agreed it was a good idea or it was a benefit to them to do so. And we call that system a government. The problem here is the foolish tendency of English speaking people to use "government" for everything, when we should distinguish the government from the State . Anarchists are obviously not op…

But without a state, governments are worthless. They can't do anything, as we've seen time and again.

"Governments", as in executive bodies, yes. "Governments", and in systems of government, definitively not. There are multitudes of non-hierarchical, stateless mechanisms that arise from communities and societies trying to solve a cooperation problem.

Just four years ago, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Elinor Ostrom for her work demonstrating how institutional arrangements were developed in various societies facing the problem of resource exhaustion due to overconsumption, without the intervention of the State.

But these are just a few concrete examples of an uncountable number of norms and institutions there are everywhere, and much more there would be if the State intervention didn't crowd them out by imposing its own solutions and banned all others.

Re: Wild Ideas

#159

Post by icebraining »

derleth wrote: post #156
Houshalter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a government as you can't (ideally) force people to participate even if they don't want to (or if you do it's through tamer methods like boycotts or whatever rather than threat of imprisonment.) And it doesn't have to be a central organization. It sounds like a minor difference but it's really not. Importantly most things that are done by government would be done completely differently and by private…

First, boycotts are a use of force. Everyone ganging up on someone to boycott them (shunning, as it used to be called, or making them an outlaw) is one of the oldest, cruelest forms of punishment, and we're well shut of it now. Putting someone in prison is one thing; kicking them out of society entirely is another. > The point is, that if the way government does something is truly superior, then people would still do…

A boycott is not the same as ostracism; nobody said anything about kicking people out of society.

Why is Somalia suffering through what it's going through when self-organizing communes are so much better?

Somalia is not some country who had an anarchist society; it's a country which had a state and a government, and where a civil war broke out, eliminating all possibility of a stable society regardless of its political system.

Judging anarchism by the state of Somalia makes even less sense than judging non-anarchist societies by the actions of the Third Reich.

Re: Wild Ideas

#160

Post by Houshalter »

derleth wrote: post #156
Houshalter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really a government as you can't (ideally) force people to participate even if they don't want to (or if you do it's through tamer methods like boycotts or whatever rather than threat of imprisonment.) And it doesn't have to be a central organization. It sounds like a minor difference but it's really not. Importantly most things that are done by government would be done completely differently and by private…

First, boycotts are a use of force. Everyone ganging up on someone to boycott them (shunning, as it used to be called, or making them an outlaw) is one of the oldest, cruelest forms of punishment, and we're well shut of it now. Putting someone in prison is one thing; kicking them out of society entirely is another. > The point is, that if the way government does something is truly superior, then people would still do…

>First, boycotts are a use of force. Everyone ganging up on someone to boycott them (shunning, as it used to be called, or making them an outlaw) is one of the oldest, cruelest forms of punishment, and we're well shut of it now. Putting someone in prison is one thing; kicking them out of society entirely is another.

In order for that to work you would need nearly 99% of the population or more to agree to that punishment and to actively participate. Which is a lot more than required in a democracy or pretty much any system.

>Then why hasn't this ever happened in the past? Why is Somalia suffering through what it's going through when self-organizing communes are so much better?

Somalia is a collapsed society, not really a good example of anything. The same could be said for democracy until 200 years ago. It took a long time even after the first democracy was established for the idea to spread, and the creation of the US itself took a war and a few centuries of cultural evolution before that to get to that point.

The point is that you can't just say "well if it's a perfect system why has no one done it before?" Libertarianism is counter-intuitive for most people, how do you expect them to form perfect anarcho-capitalist societies overnight?

>Then nobody's going to pay for it, and the people who opt out of the laws entirely are going to be robbing everyone else.

People would defend their own property or pay into some private legal system that promised to do so.

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