Psychological problems related to mistakes

[Rami Rustom]

When somebody makes a mistake and they feel bad, don't say: "Don't
beat your self up. Its not that bad. Stop thinking about it. Don't
worry about it. You're doing great. It'll get better. Now it feels
bad, but later you'll laugh at this." [Do you know any more of this
kind of sayings?]

Why don't these sayings work? Because they don't help the person
understand anything. Realize that the negative feeling is a symptom.
So what problem causes the symptom? Its the thought they are thinking.

So instead of those useless sayings, ask questions that cause the
person to answer by exposing those bad thoughts: "What thought did you
have that caused the negative feeling?" Then ask questions about that
thought. The resulting answers clearly show that the thought is wrong.
Then the person won't think those thoughts again.

For example, if the thought is: "Why did I make that mistake...what's
wrong with me?" Then ask: "That thought suggests that you think you
can't change. Do you think you can't change?" He'll say, No. Then you
can give an explanation of how personalities, habits, and knowledge
are not fixed. Then say: "So the questions you should ask yourself
are: 'what is the problem and how can I solve it?' and 'what habit can
I change?' These questions actually have answers to them and so you
can begin working towards solving your problem. Your original question
can not be answered, so its a useless question to ask."

Another example is the thought: "I made a mistake. I worry that I'll
look bad." Then ask: "What does 'look bad' mean? Do you think people
expect you to be perfect? Do they think you should never make
mistakes? Why do you care what other people think? Why should you care
what it looks like?"

Another example is the thought: "I made a mistake. I worry that I'll
lose the employee's trust." Then ask: "Do you think your employee will
think you are an incapable manager because you made a mistake? Compare
yourself to other managers. Haven't you already developed trust by
being a good person, being a good manager, and applying good
philosophy? Do you think a mistake erases all that?

Another example is the thought: "I made a mistake. I hope you're not
upset." Then ask: "Why would I be upset?" "Did the mistake cause us
to lose lots of money? Did somebody quit? Do they expect us to be
perfect? Do they think we should never make mistakes?"

Another example is the thought: "I made a mistake, and I thought
irrationally about it at first, and its because I'm fearful of
failure." Then ask: "That sounds like you're saying that your mistake
is big enough to cause our company to go under. The company will only
go under because of two reasons: 1) we stop improving or 2) an
exterior event that we don't have control over, like Verizon getting
rid of all its agents or Caterpillar moving their headquarters from
our town. Do you think that your mistake can cause our company could
go under?"

Another example is the thought: "I made a mistake, and I thought
irrationally about it at first, and its because I'm passionate about
things." Then ask: "That sounds like you're saying you expect to be
perfect. That you are trying to prevent all mistakes. Do you think
that is possible?"

Another example is the thought: "That sums up my anxiety issues I've
been having and its not just with you." Then say: "The *issue* is not
anxiety. Anxiety is a symptom. The *issue* is the problem causing the
symptom of anxiety. The problem is the thoughts you are thinking.
Instead of focusing on the symptom of anxiety, focus on the problem
which is your thoughts. So instead of asking, 'why am I having
anxiety?' ask 'what am I thinking that is causing the anxiety?' Then
question those thoughts. Continue questioning until you've revealed
the thought that is causing the anxiety. You'll know that you've
revealed it once the anxiety stops."

Then say: "Remember that all psychological problems are resultant from
a lack of knowledge."

Help? Criticism?

-- Rami

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 13.05.2012 04:51 Rami Rustom said the following:

...

> Then say: "Remember that all psychological problems are resultant from
> a lack of knowledge."
>
> Help? Criticism?
>
> -- Rami
>

Could you please apply your idea in the case when one have lost some
sport competition?

Evgenii

[Rami Rustom]

So you are the coach of an athlete. And your athlete has lost a
competition and going into that competition he believed he would win,
based on history and whatever. Are you talking about the negative
feeling he had at the point at which he lost? Or are you talking about
the long drought of poor performance that followed that first loss?

If immediately after the loss he got angry and pouted, say:

I'd like to help you deal with this loss. Its important to put things
like this in context because if you don't, then your emotions can
negatively affect your performance in future competitions. So, why are
you upset? [Because I lost and I was supposed to win.] What do you
mean by, 'supposed to win'?. [I'm better than that guy.] Sure on your
best day, you'd beat him, but everyday is not your best day, right?
[Ya.] So today you made a mistake. Maybe the mistake was due to not
sleeping well last night, or you didn't have time for breakfast, or
you're focused on your girlfriend cheating on you, or nothing at all
and you just made a mistake and the other guy took that opportunity to
win. [...] So going into this competition, did you think you'd never
make a mistake? [No.] Did you think that the other guy is the only one
that could make mistakes? [Of course not.] So with any competition,
you could lose, and it doesn't matter whether or not you are better
than the other guy... there's always the chance that you'll lose.
Right? [Sure.] So you saw this coming... so what are you upset about?
[Well I never thought about it that way.] To never make mistakes, is
impossible... so trying to be perfect is pointless. What is important
is to always improve... by always applying error correction methods
[this needs lots more explanation]. Realize that you can not apply
error correction methods if you're upset about making a mistake. So by
getting upset about your mistakes, you are creating a barrier to
improvement.

If your athlete is in a slump, i.e. his performance has decreased
dramatically over a long period starting from a situation similar to
the above story, say:

What are you focusing on? [I don't want to make mistakes.] If you
focus on "not making mistakes", then you're not focusing on the right
activity that would produce good results. You're focusing on "not"
doing something, rather than on "doing" something. Often, when people
focus on "not" making mistakes, they also focus on what would happen
if they do make mistakes. They play in their mind all the things that
would happen if they do make a mistake. They worry about what their
coach, team members, friends and family will say. This will surely
produce more mistakes because they are not focused on the right
activity and instead they are focused on the repercussions of making a
mistake.

...

BTW, I'd like to make clear that my fist post might make it seem that
one discussion is enough to help someone solve their psychological
problem. But that has not been my experience. The person can often
hide some of their thoughts, which of course means that you can not
question those thoughts in order to help them understand what is wrong
with those thoughts. Or the person doesn't know the real ideas causing
his emotions, which means that his subconscious knows it, but his
conscious doesn't know it, i.e. he is not aware of those ideas. With
each discussion, you should be able to create new questions that
eventually reveal those hidden thoughts. In the case of one of my
employees, I've had an uncountable number of discussions with him
about this stuff and each time I create new revealing questions that
help him expose hidden thoughts.

-- Rami

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 13.05.2012 16:17 Rami Rustom said the following:

> On Sun, May 13, 2012 at 2:04 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>> On 13.05.2012 04:51 Rami Rustom said the following:
>>
>> ...
>>
>>
>>> Then say: "Remember that all psychological problems are resultant from
>>> a lack of knowledge."
>>>
>>> Help? Criticism?
>>>
>>> -- Rami
>>>
>>
>> Could you please apply your idea in the case when one have lost some sport
>> competition?
>
> So you are the coach of an athlete. And your athlete has lost a
> competition and going into that competition he believed he would win,
> based on history and whatever. Are you talking about the negative
> feeling he had at the point at which he lost? Or are you talking about
> the long drought of poor performance that followed that first loss?

It is up to you. I just wanted to see how you will apply your conclusion

"Remember that all psychological problems are resultant from a lack of
knowledge."

in the case when two persons compete with each other. It is still
unclear to me as in your full answer in your message you seem not to
rely on it any more.

Evgenii

[Rami Rustom]

I don't know what you mean. What is the hypothetical situation you are thinking of?

There are two athletes competing. Are you saying that one or both of them are having psychological problems? And you want me to describe the possible lack of knowledge that is causing the problem?

-- Rami

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 15.05.2012 20:16 Rami Rustom said the following:

> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

...

>> It is up to you. I just wanted to see how you will apply your conclusion
>>
>>
>> "Remember that all psychological problems are resultant from a lack of
>> knowledge."
>>
>> in the case when two persons compete with each other. It is still unclear
>> to me as in your full answer in your message you seem not to rely on it any
>> more.
>>
>
> I don't know what you mean. What is the hypothetical situation you are
> thinking of?
>
> There are two athletes competing. Are you saying that one or both of them
> are having psychological problems? And you want me to describe the possible
> lack of knowledge that is causing the problem?
>
> -- Rami
>

I just was thinking how to apply your conclusion in the case of
competition. Let us imagine that one athlete has lost and another has
won. This is what happens in sport. An alternative would be when two
person were fighting for some position (for example a professor). One
has got the position and another has lost.

The question would be how to apply your conclusion about a lack of
knowledge in this case. It seems to me that this will not work in such a
situation.

Evgenii

[Rami Rustom]

Why not?

Lets first define the psychological problem. Its a problem that the
person has that causes negative emotions and they haven't been able to
solve it over a long period of time.

You might be talking about a negative emotion that comes and goes
quickly. I'm not classifying those moments as psychological problems
because there is no *problem*.

So in your hypothetical situation, do you mean that the negative
feelings are persisting over a long period of time?

-- Rami

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 15.05.2012 21:45 Rami Rustom said the following:

> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

...

>> I just was thinking how to apply your conclusion in the case of competition.
>> Let us imagine that one athlete has lost and another has won. This is what
>> happens in sport. An alternative would be when two person were fighting for
>> some position (for example a professor). One has got the position and
>> another has lost.
>>
>> The question would be how to apply your conclusion about a lack of knowledge
>> in this case. It seems to me that this will not work in such a situation.
>
> Why not?
>
> Lets first define the psychological problem. Its a problem that the
> person has that causes negative emotions and they haven't been able to
> solve it over a long period of time.
>
> You might be talking about a negative emotion that comes and goes
> quickly. I'm not classifying those moments as psychological problems
> because there is no *problem*.
>
> So in your hypothetical situation, do you mean that the negative
> feelings are persisting over a long period of time?

Let me try it this way. Say there is a person with a strong character
who knows perfectly that

"Remember that all psychological problems are resultant from a lack of
knowledge."

He also knows the latest scientific discoveries and latest good
explanations. Still, he has lost and now he introspects the event and
thinks it over.

He checks all the steps that he has made before the event and during the
event. Everything was according to good explanations. He has made
everything correctly, exactly as he should have done it.

The only reason, according to his analysis, seems to be that his
opponent was just better. The final conclusion is that presumably his
opponent has a better mixture of genes and future fights are meaningless.

This is however a very depressive conclusion and finally the person
commits suicide.

Evgenii

[Alan Forrester]

You say that he analysed the sporting event, cycling say, and came up with a good explanation for what went wrong. You then say his opponent was "just better", which is a bad explanation because nobody is "just better" than anybody else at anything, rather one person is better than another in some specific respect that makes the difference between winning and losing. The difference might be that the winning cyclist is better at keeping his balance and can lean more into a turn and turn corners faster. This can't be genetic because there are no genes for bicycle riding, even if there are genes for having a more sensitive inner ear. The winner had to develop the knowledge to concentrate on some things at the expense of others. So the gene thing is also a bad explanation.

> This is however a very depressive conclusion and finally the person commits suicide.

Let's say that the person concerned concludes that he doesn't want to be the world's best cyclist anymore despite having spent 20 years on trying to do it. He could learn how to do something else, or he could become a cycling coach or whatever. The only reason why he would commit suicide is that he has some knowledge that indicates that it is a good idea: this knowledge is, in most suicidal people, an anti-rational meme.

Alan

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 17.05.2012 10:11 Alan Forrester said the following:

> On 17 May 2012, at 08:34, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

...

> You say that he analysed the sporting event, cycling say, and came up
> with a good explanation for what went wrong. You then say his
> opponent was "just better", which is a bad explanation because nobody
> is "just better" than anybody else at anything, rather one person is
> better than another in some specific respect that makes the
> difference between winning and losing. The difference might be that
> the winning cyclist is better at keeping his balance and can lean
> more into a turn and turn corners faster. This can't be genetic
> because there are no genes for bicycle riding, even if there are
> genes for having a more sensitive inner ear. The winner had to
> develop the knowledge to concentrate on some things at the expense of
> others. So the gene thing is also a bad explanation.

"A bad explanation" is just an expression that proves nothing. Whether
ability for a good sport is determined by genes or not, I do not know.
Yet, it seems to be plausible from what biologists say.

I would say that to take a positive position, one should believe that
he/she possess free will that would allow him to achieve better results.
Yet, modern natural sciences are skeptical in this respect.

>> This is however a very depressive conclusion and finally the person
>> commits suicide.
>
> Let's say that the person concerned concludes that he doesn't want to
> be the world's best cyclist anymore despite having spent 20 years on
> trying to do it. He could learn how to do something else, or he could
> become a cycling coach or whatever. The only reason why he would
> commit suicide is that he has some knowledge that indicates that it
> is a good idea: this knowledge is, in most suicidal people, an
> anti-rational meme.

This is exactly what science says, that everything is determined by
replication of genes and memes and free will of a person plays no role.
Hence, suicide could be even a good solution to prevent that bad meme to
be replicated.

Evgenii

P.S. What keeps the suicide meme to be replicated? Some bad genes?

[Rami Rustom]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 6:25 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> On 17.05.2012 10:11 Alan Forrester said the following:
>> On 17 May 2012, at 08:34, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
> ...
>
>
>> You say that he analysed the sporting event, cycling say, and came up
>> with a good explanation for what went wrong. You then say his
>> opponent was "just better", which is a bad explanation because nobody
>> is "just better" than anybody else at anything, rather one person is
>> better than another in some specific respect that makes the
>> difference between winning and losing. The difference might be that
>> the winning cyclist is better at keeping his balance and can lean
>> more into a turn and turn corners faster. This can't be genetic
>> because there are no genes for bicycle riding, even if there are
>> genes for having a more sensitive inner ear. The winner had to
>> develop the knowledge to concentrate on some things at the expense of
>> others. So the gene thing is also a bad explanation.
>
>
> "A bad explanation" is just an expression that proves nothing.

Alan used the expression 'bad explanation' in reference to your 'just
better' argument. I agree that its a 'bad explanation'. What does
'just better' mean? What does it explain exactly?

> Whether
> ability for a good sport is determined by genes or not, I do not know. Yet,
> it seems to be plausible from what biologists say.

Ability for success in sports involves many things. Genes are
involved. And so are choices. And other stuff. What are you saying
that biologists say?

> I would say that to take a positive position, one should believe that he/she
> possess free will that would allow him to achieve better results. Yet,
> modern natural sciences are skeptical in this respect.

Says who? Please post a link to a research paper with page numbers.

>>> This is however a very depressive conclusion and finally the person
>>> commits suicide.
>>
>>
>> Let's say that the person concerned concludes that he doesn't want to
>> be the world's best cyclist anymore despite having spent 20 years on
>> trying to do it. He could learn how to do something else, or he could
>> become a cycling coach or whatever. The only reason why he would
>> commit suicide is that he has some knowledge that indicates that it
>> is a good idea: this knowledge is, in most suicidal people, an
>> anti-rational meme.
>
>
> This is exactly what science says, that everything is determined by
> replication of genes and memes and free will of a person plays no role.
> Hence, suicide could be even a good solution to prevent that bad meme to be
> replicated.

How do you think genes and memes are passed? Realize that someone can
choose not to pass genes and memes.

In the case of genes, say you learned that your unborn child has a
terminal illness and could die at 20 years old. You could choose to
abort. That would prevent those bad genes from replicating. Or you
could choose to keep the child and he could have more kids and
possibly pass those genes to the gene pool as you did.

In the case of memes, people can choose to pay attention to their
problems. Say you get angry when stuff doesn't go exactly as you
planned it. You could choose to reflect on this. You could figure out
what is causing your anger; on your own or with the help of friends,
family, or counselors. Once you've figured it out, you no longer get
angry when stuff doesn't go exactly as you planned it. Or you could
choose to do nothing and continue getting angry in such situations.
Then you could choose to have children. Then you'll have passed on
that anti-rational meme to your child. So he'll get angry when stuff
doesn't go exactly as he planned. And he could choose to fix that or
he can pass the same bad meme to his child.

> P.S. What keeps the suicide meme to be replicated? Some bad genes?

No. Genes can't *know* a complex idea like suicide. Or maybe you mean
that there are memes that cause people to be sad and that eventually
results in a suicide. Either way, its bad choices that cause memes to
replicate. Genes can't possibly understand complex things like memes.

-- Rami

[Alan Forrester]

On 17 May 2012, at 12:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 17.05.2012 10:11 Alan Forrester said the following:
> > On 17 May 2012, at 08:34, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
> ...
>
>> You say that he analysed the sporting event, cycling say, and came up
>> with a good explanation for what went wrong. You then say his
>> opponent was "just better", which is a bad explanation because nobody
>> is "just better" than anybody else at anything, rather one person is
>> better than another in some specific respect that makes the
>> difference between winning and losing. The difference might be that
>> the winning cyclist is better at keeping his balance and can lean
>> more into a turn and turn corners faster. This can't be genetic
>> because there are no genes for bicycle riding, even if there are
>> genes for having a more sensitive inner ear. The winner had to
>> develop the knowledge to concentrate on some things at the expense of
>> others. So the gene thing is also a bad explanation.
>
> "A bad explanation" is just an expression that proves nothing.

No argument proves anything. You have bad epistemological ideas. I would advise you to read BoI and "Realism and the Aim of Science" by Karl Popper.

Explaining that an idea is a bad explanation is a substantive criticism of that idea.

> Whether ability for a good sport is determined by genes or not, I do not know. Yet, it seems to be plausible from what biologists say.

There are no genes for bicycle riding or for any other behaviour. Genes provide the hardware for cultural evolution, but they change far too slowly for them to be responsible for any cultural evolution. All cultural knowledge, including knowledge of how to ride bicycles, is instantiated in memes. Genetic diseases could cause some people to be unable to do certain things. It seems somewhat doubtful that somebody with harlequin icthyosis could be a champion bicycle rider. But even here, such a person will be unable to ride a bicycle skillfully only up to the time when we invent a good enough cure or treatment for his disease, and likewise for other genetic diseases. So limitations imposed by genes are parochial.

> I would say that to take a positive position, one should believe that he/she possess free will that would allow him to achieve better results. Yet, modern natural sciences are skeptical in this respect.

Wrong, see below.

>>> This is however a very depressive conclusion and finally the person
>>> commits suicide.
>>
>> Let's say that the person concerned concludes that he doesn't want to
>> be the world's best cyclist anymore despite having spent 20 years on
>> trying to do it. He could learn how to do something else, or he could
>> become a cycling coach or whatever. The only reason why he would
>> commit suicide is that he has some knowledge that indicates that it
>> is a good idea: this knowledge is, in most suicidal people, an
>> anti-rational meme.
>
> This is exactly what science says, that everything is determined by replication of genes and memes and free will of a person plays no role. Hence, suicide could be even a good solution to prevent that bad meme to be replicated.

Science doesn't say we lack free will. You are a bunch of memes so it doesn't make sense to say your memes force you to do stuff. What knowledge you develop depends on your choices. That knowledge affects what you do and so affect what happens to you. You can make choices and affect the future.

> Evgenii
>
> P.S. What keeps the suicide meme to be replicated? Some bad genes?

There isn't a gene for suicide, just as other behaviour isn't caused by memes, and there couldn't be a gene for suicide anyway because its holders would not pass on the gene as well as non-suicide genes. The person with the suicide gene would be expending time and energy on committing suicide that could be spent on doing something that would lead to his children being able to pass on their genes better, or to having more children or something like that. By contrast, suicide need not get in the way of meme replication since memes can be passed on by people learning stuff. The vast majority of suicide memes replicate by destroying the capacity of the person who adopts them to criticise them.

Alan

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 17.05.2012 18:49 Rami Rustom said the following:

> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 6:25 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
> wrote:
>> On 17.05.2012 10:11 Alan Forrester said the following:

...

>>
>> "A bad explanation" is just an expression that proves nothing.
>
> Alan used the expression 'bad explanation' in reference to your
> 'just better' argument. I agree that its a 'bad explanation'. What
> does 'just better' mean? What does it explain exactly?

It explains that a winner in a fair competition was just better than the
others. I do not understand why this is a bad explanation.

>> Whether ability for a good sport is determined by genes or not, I
>> do not know. Yet, it seems to be plausible from what biologists
>> say.
>
> Ability for success in sports involves many things. Genes are
> involved. And so are choices. And other stuff. What are you saying
> that biologists say?

For example RICHARD DAWKINS

http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html

"But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system
make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or
not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on
antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity
and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or
diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a
Fawlty car?"

"Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such
conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or
on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units
that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like
blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our
brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and
responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents
that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer
analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My
dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even
learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his
car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of
enlightenment."

>> I would say that to take a positive position, one should believe
>> that he/she possess free will that would allow him to achieve
>> better results. Yet, modern natural sciences are skeptical in this
>> respect.
>
> Says who? Please post a link to a research paper with page numbers.

Let us start with Dawkins above. Then Stephen Hawking in his Grand Design

�It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is
determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than
biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.�

Also you can take neuroscience

Soon, CS, Brass, M, Heinze, HJ, and Haynes, JD (2008).
Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain.
Nat Neurosci.

You can also look at what John-Dylan Haynes popularizes in this respect.

Finally philosophers

Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will

Well, if you look around you what natural sciences say about free will,
you will find much much more.

...

> In the case of memes, people can choose to pay attention to their
> problems. Say you get angry when stuff doesn't go exactly as you
> planned it. You could choose to reflect on this. You could figure
> out what is causing your anger; on your own or with the help of
> friends, family, or counselors. Once you've figured it out, you no
> longer get angry when stuff doesn't go exactly as you planned it. Or
> you could choose to do nothing and continue getting angry in such
> situations. Then you could choose to have children. Then you'll have
> passed on that anti-rational meme to your child. So he'll get angry
> when stuff doesn't go exactly as he planned. And he could choose to
> fix that or he can pass the same bad meme to his child.

If we can choose our decisions by ourselves, then the meme theory does
not make much sense.

>> P.S. What keeps the suicide meme to be replicated? Some bad genes?
>
> No. Genes can't *know* a complex idea like suicide. Or maybe you
> mean that there are memes that cause people to be sad and that
> eventually results in a suicide. Either way, its bad choices that
> cause memes to replicate. Genes can't possibly understand complex
> things like memes.

Well, I meant following. Let us imagine that there is anti-rational
"make suicide" meme. Then after the person implements the meme in its
behavior, it is hard to imagine, how the meme could be further
replicated. Then, in my view, there should be some other mechanism for
such a behavior.

Evgenii
--
http://blog.rudnyi.ru

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 17.05.2012 21:07 Alan Forrester said the following:

>
> On 17 May 2012, at 12:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>

>>
>> "A bad explanation" is just an expression that proves nothing.
>
> No argument proves anything. You have bad epistemological ideas. I
> would advise you to read BoI and "Realism and the Aim of Science" by
> Karl Popper.
>
> Explaining that an idea is a bad explanation is a substantive
> criticism of that idea.

First the last statement is just an exercise in rhetoric to demonstrate
your intellectual superiority.

Second, have you explained why my explanation was bad and your good one?

I listen to Beginning of Infinity but David Deutsch just states there
that what he does not like is a bad explanation without further
discussions. It does not look like as a skeptical inquiry, exactly as
your reply to my explanation.

>> Whether ability for a good sport is determined by genes or not, I
>> do not know. Yet, it seems to be plausible from what biologists
>> say.
>
> There are no genes for bicycle riding or for any other behaviour.

Is this your opinion, or this has been scientifically proved? If yes,
could you please cite the works that proved this?

...

>> This is exactly what science says, that everything is determined by
>> replication of genes and memes and free will of a person plays no
>> role. Hence, suicide could be even a good solution to prevent that
>> bad meme to be replicated.
>
> Science doesn't say we lack free will. You are a bunch of memes so it
> doesn't make sense to say your memes force you to do stuff. What
> knowledge you develop depends on your choices. That knowledge affects
> what you do and so affect what happens to you. You can make choices
> and affect the future.

Please look at the scientific sources that I have given in my reply to
Rami. Then you will see that this is exactly what science says, that is,
free will is illusion.

...

>> P.S. What keeps the suicide meme to be replicated? Some bad genes?
>
> There isn't a gene for suicide, just as other behaviour isn't caused
> by memes, and there couldn't be a gene for suicide anyway because its
> holders would not pass on the gene as well as non-suicide genes. The
> person with the suicide gene would be expending time and energy on
> committing suicide that could be spent on doing something that would
> lead to his children being able to pass on their genes better, or to
> having more children or something like that. By contrast, suicide
> need not get in the way of meme replication since memes can be passed
> on by people learning stuff. The vast majority of suicide memes
> replicate by destroying the capacity of the person who adopts them to
> criticise them.

The last sentence implies that there is no free will and memes decide
exclusively what a person should do. It seems to contradict to what you
have said above.

Evgenii

[Rami Rustom]

On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> On 17.05.2012 18:49 Rami Rustom said the following:
>> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 6:25 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
>> wrote:
>>> On 17.05.2012 10:11 Alan Forrester said the following:
>
>
> ...
>
>
>>>
>>> "A bad explanation" is just an expression that proves nothing.
>>
>>
>> Alan used the expression 'bad explanation' in reference to your
>> 'just better' argument. I agree that its a 'bad explanation'. What
>> does 'just better' mean? What does it explain exactly?
>
>
> It explains that a winner in a fair competition was just better than the
> others. I do not understand why this is a bad explanation.

Its a bad explanation because it doesn't explain *why* the guy is better.

>>> Whether ability for a good sport is determined by genes or not, I
>>> do not know. Yet, it seems to be plausible from what biologists
>>> say.
>>
>>
>> Ability for success in sports involves many things. Genes are
>> involved. And so are choices. And other stuff. What are you saying
>> that biologists say?
>
>
> For example RICHARD DAWKINS

Why the caps? Are you suggesting that if a famous biologist said it,
then it MUST be true? If so, you're mistaken. Humans are fallible.
That means than any one of our ideas could be mistaken. That means
that even Richard Dawkins could be mistaken about an idea within his
field of study.

Oh and by the way, morality is not his field of study.

> http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html
>
> "But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make
> nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any
> crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent
> conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and
> environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or
> diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a
> Fawlty car?"

That is a bad explanation. It applies bad reductionism. This has been
refuted by Karl Popper in _Objective Knowledge_. He might have written
another book that explains it more fully. Does anybody know?

I think BoI also explains that bad reductionism is a mistake. There is
a huge jump in between levels of universality that results in the
reality of human choice. And Dawkin's explanation doesn't respect that
huge jump. He glazes over it as though it didn't matter. And this
philosophical mistake renders his explanation wrong.

> "Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such
> conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on
> thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that
> need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame
> and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by
> millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an
> aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our
> brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in
> the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall
> eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we
> laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that
> I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment."
>
>
>>> I would say that to take a positive position, one should believe
>>> that he/she possess free will that would allow him to achieve
>>> better results. Yet, modern natural sciences are skeptical in this
>>> respect.
>>
>>
>> Says who? Please post a link to a research paper with page numbers.
>
>
> Let us start with Dawkins above. Then Stephen Hawking in his Grand Design
>

> “It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is

> determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological

> machines and that free will is just an illusion.”

Its only hard to imagine because he doesn't understand universality.
Fortunately we have BoI.

> Also you can take neuroscience

I've read some cognitive neuroscience in David Eagleman's _Incognito:
The Secret Lives of the Brain_ and I've found the same mistakes in his
explanations.

> Soon, CS, Brass, M, Heinze, HJ, and Haynes, JD (2008).
> Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain.
> Nat Neurosci.
>
> You can also look at what John-Dylan Haynes popularizes in this respect.
>
> Finally philosophers
>
> Derk Pereboom, Living Without Free Will

I haven't read this. Has anybody read this?

> Well, if you look around you what natural sciences say about free will, you
> will find much much more.

*More* publications claiming X is true, doesn't make X true.

> ...
>
>
>> In the case of memes, people can choose to pay attention to their
>> problems. Say you get angry when stuff doesn't go exactly as you
>> planned it. You could choose to reflect on this. You could figure
>> out what is causing your anger; on your own or with the help of
>> friends, family, or counselors. Once you've figured it out, you no
>> longer get angry when stuff doesn't go exactly as you planned it. Or
>> you could choose to do nothing and continue getting angry in such
>> situations. Then you could choose to have children. Then you'll have
>> passed on that anti-rational meme to your child. So he'll get angry
>> when stuff doesn't go exactly as he planned. And he could choose to
>> fix that or he can pass the same bad meme to his child.
>
>
> If we can choose our decisions by ourselves, then the meme theory does not
> make much sense.

Why do you think so? It makes sense to me. Please explain the
contradiction that you see.

>>> P.S. What keeps the suicide meme to be replicated? Some bad genes?
>>
>>
>> No. Genes can't *know* a complex idea like suicide. Or maybe you
>> mean that there are memes that cause people to be sad and that
>> eventually results in a suicide. Either way, its bad choices that
>> cause memes to replicate. Genes can't possibly understand complex
>> things like memes.
>
>
> Well, I meant following. Let us imagine that there is anti-rational "make
> suicide" meme. Then after the person implements the meme in its behavior, it
> is hard to imagine, how the meme could be further replicated. Then, in my
> view, there should be some other mechanism for such a behavior.

His kid could have learned that meme from him *before* he committed suicide.

-- Rami

[Alan Forrester]

On 18 May 2012, at 20:10, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 17.05.2012 21:07 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>
>> On 17 May 2012, at 12:25, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>
>>>
>>> "A bad explanation" is just an expression that proves nothing.
>>
>> No argument proves anything. You have bad epistemological ideas. I
>> would advise you to read BoI and "Realism and the Aim of Science" by
>> Karl Popper.
>>
>> Explaining that an idea is a bad explanation is a substantive
>> criticism of that idea.
>
> First the last statement is just an exercise in rhetoric to demonstrate your intellectual superiority.
>
> Second, have you explained why my explanation was bad and your good one?
>
> I listen to Beginning of Infinity but David Deutsch just states there that what he does not like is a bad explanation without further discussions. It does not look like as a skeptical inquiry, exactly as your reply to my explanation.

Let's set all the other issues aside for the moment because the issue of explanation is the central issue.

Do you think that an argument to the effect that a particular idea is a bad explanation is a criticism of that idea?

If not, what criterion do you propose for deciding which ideas we should adopt and which ideas we should discard?

Alan

[David Deutsch]

On 18 May 2012, at 8:10pm, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> I listen to Beginning of Infinity but David Deutsch just states there that what he does not like is a bad explanation

Where?

-- David Deutsch

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 18.05.2012 21:22 Rami Rustom said the following:

> On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>

...

>> It explains that a winner in a fair competition was just better
>> than the others. I do not understand why this is a bad
>> explanation.
>
> Its a bad explanation because it doesn't explain *why* the guy is
> better.

I am not sure if I understand what does it mean to "explain *why* the
guy is better". Could you please give an example of a good explanation
in this respect?

...

>> For example RICHARD DAWKINS
>
> Why the caps? Are you suggesting that if a famous biologist said it,
> then it MUST be true?

No, I was just to lazy to type his name and have cut and pasted his name
from the link.

...

>> Well, if you look around you what natural sciences say about free
>> will, you will find much much more.
>
> *More* publications claiming X is true, doesn't make X true.

I agree but my point was not that "free will is illusion" is true. I
have just shown that such a viewpoint enjoys a widespread use in modern
sciences.

...

>> If we can choose our decisions by ourselves, then the meme theory
>> does not make much sense.
>
> Why do you think so? It makes sense to me. Please explain the
> contradiction that you see.

If I have understood the meme theory correctly, it requires that memes
exist and replicate objectively. If a person could choose whether he
reproduces a meme consciously, then it is unclear to me what is left
from the meme theory.

I should confess that I have just learned about the meme theory from the
audio-version of Beginning of Infinity, so it well might be that my
understanding of the meme theory is incomplete.

Do you mean that the meme theory is compatible with free will of a person?

...

>> Well, I meant following. Let us imagine that there is anti-rational
>> "make suicide" meme. Then after the person implements the meme in
>> its behavior, it is hard to imagine, how the meme could be further
>> replicated. Then, in my view, there should be some other mechanism
>> for such a behavior.
>
> His kid could have learned that meme from him *before* he committed
> suicide.

Again, if I have understood correctly, the meme replication requires

1) coping
2) behavior pattern

If I remember correctly according to the book only coping is not enough.

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 18.05.2012 21:39 Alan Forrester said the following:

...

> Let's set all the other issues aside for the moment because the issue
> of explanation is the central issue.
>
> Do you think that an argument to the effect that a particular idea is
> a bad explanation is a criticism of that idea?

I would say so. Good vs. bad, better vs. worse, good guys fighting evil,
these are associations arising in my mind when I hear "good explanation."

> If not, what criterion do you propose for deciding which ideas we
> should adopt and which ideas we should discard?

I am afraid that each individual with free will should find the answer
on his/her own. As for scientific method, I am personally comfortable
with Feyerabend's Anything goes.

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 18.05.2012 21:41 David Deutsch said the following:

I listen to the audio book and I might have missed important points but
emotionally I would say that this has happened many times in the book.

You are right though that I must be specific. I will document below
several points now, say at the emotional level. To give more a rational
answer I have to listen to your book again.

1) How to distinguish a good explanation from a bad one?

It seems that there was no a description of an objective scientific
procedure how to solve this problem.

My feeling is that at the end as usually, each will claim that his/her
explanation is good one and the rest is composed of bad explanations. In
this respect, I would say "good vs. bad" raises emotions. In my view,
"my hypothesis vs. other's hypothesis" would be more neutral.

2) Static vs. dynamic society

It seems that your desire for a dynamic society (especially the term
"good explanation" in this context) would justify the elimination of
Indians in the USA.

Or if we take Avatar by Cameron, the fight against Na'vi is then
completely the right one, as the Universe does not need static societies.

3) Born of modern science as a fight against religion

This contradicts to historical facts. According to Prof Maarten Hoenen,
an expert in middle ages, science and theology were rather like a
brother and a sister.

Moreover, according to Collingwood (An Essay in Metaphysics), absolute
presuppositions employed in modern science are quite similar to those in
Christianity. Monotheism was replaced by inexorable laws and trinity
helped to believe that human mind can understand these inexorable laws.

Evgenii

[Alan Forrester]

On 19 May 2012, at 11:26, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 18.05.2012 21:39 Alan Forrester said the following:
>
> ...
>
>> Let's set all the other issues aside for the moment because the issue
>> of explanation is the central issue.
>>
>> Do you think that an argument to the effect that a particular idea is
>> a bad explanation is a criticism of that idea?
>
> I would say so. Good vs. bad, better vs. worse, good guys fighting evil, these are associations arising in my mind when I hear "good explanation."

If an idea is a bad explanation is it objectively flawed?

>> If not, what criterion do you propose for deciding which ideas we
>> should adopt and which ideas we should discard?
>
> I am afraid that each individual with free will should find the answer on his/her own.

Do you think that some standards are objectively better than others?

> As for scientific method, I am personally comfortable with Feyerabend's Anything goes.

What substantive difference is there between Popper and Feyerabend that makes you think Feyerabend is better?

Alan

[Rami Rustom]

On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> On 18.05.2012 21:22 Rami Rustom said the following:
>> On Fri, May 18, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
>
>
> ...
>
>
>>> It explains that a winner in a fair competition was just better
>>> than the others. I do not understand why this is a bad
>>> explanation.
>>
>>
>> Its a bad explanation because it doesn't explain *why* the guy is
>> better.
>
>
> I am not sure if I understand what does it mean to "explain *why* the guy is
> better". Could you please give an example of a good explanation in this
> respect?

Alan gave a good one earlier. I've included it below and I've
underscored the specific part that is a possible explanation for why
he is better.

> You say that he analysed the sporting event, cycling say, and came up with a good explanation for what went wrong. You then say his opponent was "just better", which is a bad explanation because nobody is "just better" than anybody else at anything, rather one person is better than another in some specific respect that makes the difference between winning and losing. _The difference might be that the winning cyclist is better at keeping his balance and can lean more into a turn and turn corners faster._ This can't be genetic because there are no genes for bicycle riding, even if there are genes for having a more sensitive inner ear. The winner had to develop the knowledge to concentrate on some things at the expense of others. So the gene thing is also a bad explanation.

>>> Well, if you look around you what natural sciences say about free
>>> will, you will find much much more.
>>
>>
>> *More* publications claiming X is true, doesn't make X true.
>
>
> I agree but my point was not that "free will is illusion" is true. I have
> just shown that such a viewpoint enjoys a widespread use in modern sciences.

The fact that you think that you should show that a viewpoint enjoys a
widespread use in modern sciences *suggests* that you believe that
*more* widespread adoption that X is true, means that X is true. Of
course I could be wrong.

> ...
>
>
>>> If we can choose our decisions by ourselves, then the meme theory
>>> does not make much sense.
>>
>>
>> Why do you think so? It makes sense to me. Please explain the
>> contradiction that you see.
>
>
> If I have understood the meme theory correctly, it requires that memes exist
> and replicate objectively. If a person could choose whether he reproduces a
> meme consciously, then it is unclear to me what is left from the meme
> theory.
>
> I should confess that I have just learned about the meme theory from the
> audio-version of Beginning of Infinity, so it well might be that my
> understanding of the meme theory is incomplete.
>
> Do you mean that the meme theory is compatible with free will of a person?

Ah. Consider that we have habits, many of which we are not aware of,
that we learned from our parents and society. Nor are we aware of the
consequences of those habits, i.e. we do not know they are bad. These
are our bad memes.

For example lets say a daughter makes a mess in the living room. And
her dad asked her to clean up. And she doesn't because she doesn't
understand *why* she should clean up. And lets say the dad has a habit
[that he learned from his parents] of explaining, "Jane, we have
visitors coming soon and it'll be very embarrassing for us if they see
this mess, so could you please clean up so that we don't get
embarrassed?" This passes on a bad meme that explains that people
should care what other people think. Now lets say that daughter read
BoI and joined this list. And she learned meme theory and this
specific example I just gave. And so she is now aware of that habit
she has and the consequences of it, i.e. that she could pass that meme
to her kids. So she consciously pays attention to her words going
forward and she never uses that bad explanation again. And so she
doesn't pass that meme to her kids.

The point is that there was free will involved in stopped the meme
from replicating.

By the way, the child could prevent a meme from replicating to himself
too. He may disagree with the parent's bad explanation. This happens a
lot. But it only happens if the child successfully criticized the
parents explanation [in his mind] to the point of considering it a bad
one.

> ...
>
>
>>> Well, I meant following. Let us imagine that there is anti-rational
>>> "make suicide" meme. Then after the person implements the meme in
>>> its behavior, it is hard to imagine, how the meme could be further
>>> replicated. Then, in my view, there should be some other mechanism
>>> for such a behavior.
>>
>>
>> His kid could have learned that meme from him *before* he committed
>> suicide.
>
>
> Again, if I have understood correctly, the meme replication requires
>
> 1) coping
> 2) behavior pattern
>
> If I remember correctly according to the book only coping is not enough.

I don't know what your asking.

-- Rami

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 19.05.2012 13:13 Alan Forrester said the following:

>
> On 19 May 2012, at 11:26, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

...

>> I would say so. Good vs. bad, better vs. worse, good guys fighting
>> evil, these are associations arising in my mind when I hear "good
>> explanation."
>
> If an idea is a bad explanation is it objectively flawed?

Here first it would be good to find a place for an idea in the objective
world. Recently I have listened to lectures of Prof Hoenen Controversy
in philosophy (in German) and one of them is the fight between realism
vs. nominalism. Realism in this context is different from the modern
meaning of the word.

Realism and nominalism in philosophy are related to universals. A simple
example:

A is a person;
B is a person.

Does A is equal to B? The answer is no, A and B are after all different
persons. Yet the question would be if something universal and related to
a term �person� exists in A and B objectively (say as an objective
attribute).

Realism says that universals do exist independent from the mind,
nominalism that they are just notation and do not exist as such
independently from the mind.

So, if we consider an idea according to nominalism, it is hard to
imagine that it could be objectively flawed. It is after all just some
notation.

If we take a realism viewpoint, then the idea exists independently from
the mind objectively but then it is unclear what "objectively flawed" in
this respect would mean.

Finally, I do not understand how it could be possible to distinguish a
good explanation from a bad one. First one should define what is good
and what is bad.

>>> If not, what criterion do you propose for deciding which ideas
>>> we should adopt and which ideas we should discard?
>>
>> I am afraid that each individual with free will should find the
>> answer on his/her own.
>
> Do you think that some standards are objectively better than others?

No, I do not think so. I believe that pluralism is a great achievement
of the modern society. What is important though are laws in the society
that regulate relationships between individuals that could not reach an
agreement between each other by themselves.

>> As for scientific method, I am personally comfortable with
>> Feyerabend's Anything goes.
>
> What substantive difference is there between Popper and Feyerabend
> that makes you think Feyerabend is better?

I believe that Feyerabend has demonstrated that the demarcation line,
described by Popper, contradicts to historical facts. That is, what is
referred by Popper to as a scientific method has not been employed in
practice.

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 19.05.2012 14:44 Rami Rustom said the following:

> On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru>
> wrote:

...

>> I am not sure if I understand what does it mean to "explain *why*
>> the guy is better". Could you please give an example of a good
>> explanation in this respect?
>
> Alan gave a good one earlier. I've included it below and I've
> underscored the specific part that is a possible explanation for why
> he is better.
>
>> You say that he analysed the sporting event, cycling say, and came
>> up with a good explanation for what went wrong. You then say his
>> opponent was "just better", which is a bad explanation because
>> nobody is "just better" than anybody else at anything, rather one
>> person is better than another in some specific respect that makes
>> the difference between winning and losing. _The difference might be
>> that the winning cyclist is better at keeping his balance and can
>> lean more into a turn and turn corners faster._ This can't be
>> genetic because there are no genes for bicycle riding, even if
>> there are genes for having a more sensitive inner ear. The winner
>> had to develop the knowledge to concentrate on some things at the
>> expense of others. So the gene thing is also a bad explanation.

First, I do not understand why this explanation is good and why my
explanation is bad. I would say that this has not been explained.

Second, if to talk about explanation as such, why one has won a
competition, I am afraid, that we are close to the dialog between
Socrates and Menon

"Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or by
practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes
to man by nature, or in what other way?"

It looks like that since then the progress in solving this problem is
hardly noticeable.

...

>> I agree but my point was not that "free will is illusion" is true.
>> I have just shown that such a viewpoint enjoys a widespread use in
>> modern sciences.
>
> The fact that you think that you should show that a viewpoint enjoys
> a widespread use in modern sciences *suggests* that you believe that
> *more* widespread adoption that X is true, means that X is true. Of
> course I could be wrong.

Actually I do not share opinion that free will does not exist. I am in
the age of the midlife crisis and I find a problem of meaning of life as
meaningful.

However, being a former scientist I do not see yet how it could work. So
far I am just collecting different opinions.

...

> For example lets say a daughter makes a mess in the living room. And
> her dad asked her to clean up. And she doesn't because she doesn't
> understand *why* she should clean up. And lets say the dad has a
> habit [that he learned from his parents] of explaining, "Jane, we
> have visitors coming soon and it'll be very embarrassing for us if
> they see this mess, so could you please clean up so that we don't
> get embarrassed?" This passes on a bad meme that explains that
> people should care what other people think. Now lets say that

This raises again a question what is bad and what is good. You use these
words but you do not explain how you take decisions on what is good and
what is bad. In this particular case, I would disagree. I personally
consider this as a good explanation.

I would say that for a society to exist, people should care of what
other people think. One does not have to agree with other people but it
would be good to respect other people. For example, I like an order in a
room and if I am invited, I would expect that there will be no mess in
the place where I am invited to.

...

> By the way, the child could prevent a meme from replicating to
> himself too. He may disagree with the parent's bad explanation. This
> happens a lot. But it only happens if the child successfully
> criticized the parents explanation [in his mind] to the point of
> considering it a bad one.

To understand whether a particular explanation good or bad, a child
should first get to the point when he/she could find his/her own place
in the society.

There is a nice movie Shy People by Andrei Konchalovsky where two
methods of raising children are nicely contrasted with each other. One
approach is very authoritarian, another is very liberal. You may like it.

Evgenii

P.S. This is my older daughter

http://masharu.nl/

Just to show you that I am acquainted not only with a theory but with
the practice as well.

[Alan Forrester]

On 19 May 2012, at 18:41, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 19.05.2012 13:13 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>
>> On 19 May 2012, at 11:26, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>> I would say so. Good vs. bad, better vs. worse, good guys fighting
>>> evil, these are associations arising in my mind when I hear "good
>>> explanation."
>>
>> If an idea is a bad explanation is it objectively flawed?
>
> Here first it would be good to find a place for an idea in the objective world. Recently I have listened to lectures of Prof Hoenen Controversy in philosophy (in German) and one of them is the fight between realism vs. nominalism. Realism in this context is different from the modern meaning of the word.
>
> Realism and nominalism in philosophy are related to universals. A simple example:
>
> A is a person;
> B is a person.
>

> Does A is equal to B? The answer is no, A and B are after all different persons. Yet the question would be if something universal and related to a term “person” exists in A and B objectively (say as an objective attribute).

>
> Realism says that universals do exist independent from the mind, nominalism that they are just notation and do not exist as such independently from the mind.
>
> So, if we consider an idea according to nominalism, it is hard to imagine that it could be objectively flawed. It is after all just some notation.

If universals don't exist independent of the mind, then we can't be communicating because there would be no way to agree on a code. It would even be possible to identify two letter "e"s in the same font. Nor could we survive because the concept of "water" is a universal, so if there are no universals then we couldn't identify water and we'd all die of thirst.

> If we take a realism viewpoint, then the idea exists independently from the mind objectively but then it is unclear what "objectively flawed" in this respect would mean.

That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. Knowledge is information that causes itself to remain in existence when it is instantiated in a particular environment. Knowledge that does not have reach outside some particular set of environments is flawed and can be improved so that it can remain instantiated in a wider set of environments.

> Finally, I do not understand how it could be possible to distinguish a good explanation from a bad one. First one should define what is good and what is bad.

That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. A good explanation is hard to vary while still explaining what it is supposed to explain, a bad explanation is easy to vary.

>>>> If not, what criterion do you propose for deciding which ideas
>>>> we should adopt and which ideas we should discard?
>>>
>>> I am afraid that each individual with free will should find the
>>> answer on his/her own.
>>
>> Do you think that some standards are objectively better than others?
>
> No, I do not think so. I believe that pluralism is a great achievement of the modern society.

So you're saying that no standard is better than any other, but you also say that pluralism is a good standard. Your position is inconsistent.

> What is important though are laws in the society that regulate relationships between individuals that could not reach an agreement between each other by themselves.

This is another standard. EITHER no standards are objectively better than any others, OR the standards you have proposed are better than others we could adopt.

>>> As for scientific method, I am personally comfortable with
>>> Feyerabend's Anything goes.
>>
>> What substantive difference is there between Popper and Feyerabend
>> that makes you think Feyerabend is better?
>
> I believe that Feyerabend has demonstrated that the demarcation line, described by Popper, contradicts to historical facts. That is, what is referred by Popper to as a scientific method has not been employed in practice.

That's not an explanation, it's a blank statement. Can you explain Feyerabend's argument or cite a single source, preferably something short, that you think represents Feyerabend's best criticism of Popper?

Alan

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 19.05.2012 21:00 Alan Forrester said the following:

> On 19 May 2012, at 18:41, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>

...

>> So, if we consider an idea according to nominalism, it is hard to
>> imagine that it could be objectively flawed. It is after all just
>> some notation.
>
> If universals don't exist independent of the mind, then we can't be
> communicating because there would be no way to agree on a code. It
> would even be possible to identify two letter "e"s in the same font.
> Nor could we survive because the concept of "water" is a universal,
> so if there are no universals then we couldn't identify water and
> we'd all die of thirst.

Do you mean that all nominalists were just stupid people?

>> If we take a realism viewpoint, then the idea exists independently
>> from the mind objectively but then it is unclear what "objectively
>> flawed" in this respect would mean.
>
> That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. Knowledge is information that
> causes itself to remain in existence when it is instantiated in a
> particular environment. Knowledge that does not have reach outside
> some particular set of environments is flawed and can be improved so
> that it can remain instantiated in a wider set of environments.

I do not remember that knowledge was even formally defined there. Also I
do not understand how knowledge exists in nature independently of human
mind. In physics that I aware of there are atoms, electrons, nuclei,
electromagnetic fields (superstrings if you like this theory) but not
knowledge as such.

>> Finally, I do not understand how it could be possible to
>> distinguish a good explanation from a bad one. First one should
>> define what is good and what is bad.
>
> That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. A good explanation is hard to vary
> while still explaining what it is supposed to explain, a bad
> explanation is easy to vary.

Could you please next time when you employ a term "good explanation"
apply this rule and prove unambiguously that your good explanation good
indeed?

...

>> No, I do not think so. I believe that pluralism is a great
>> achievement of the modern society.
>
> So you're saying that no standard is better than any other, but you
> also say that pluralism is a good standard. Your position is
> inconsistent.

My position is for sure eclectic. Yet, this is in the nature of human
language as it is impossible to convert it to mathematical logic.

>> What is important though are laws in the society that regulate
>> relationships between individuals that could not reach an agreement
>> between each other by themselves.
>
> This is another standard. EITHER no standards are objectively better
> than any others, OR the standards you have proposed are better than
> others we could adopt.

I have not said that my standards are better, please do not ascribe to
me what I have not said.

...

>> I believe that Feyerabend has demonstrated that the demarcation
>> line, described by Popper, contradicts to historical facts. That
>> is, what is referred by Popper to as a scientific method has not
>> been employed in practice.
>
>
> That's not an explanation, it's a blank statement. Can you explain
> Feyerabend's argument or cite a single source, preferably something
> short, that you think represents Feyerabend's best criticism of
> Popper?

The main book of Feyerabend is Against Method. From Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend

"To support his position that methodological rules generally do not
contribute to scientific success, Feyerabend provides counterexamples to
the claim that (good) science operates according to a certain fixed
method. He took some examples of episodes in science that are generally
regarded as indisputable instances of progress (e.g. the Copernican
revolution), and showed that all common prescriptive rules of science
are violated in such circumstances. Moreover, he claimed that applying
such rules in these historical situations would actually have prevented
scientific revolution."

On rational behavior a quote from Feyerabend that I like:

�The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than
Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social
consequences of Galileo�s doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was
rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives
of political opportunism.�

He likes provocative statements but he actually shows nicely according
to historical facts that this was the case.

Evgenii

[Alan Forrester]

On 19 May 2012, at 22:27, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 19.05.2012 21:00 Alan Forrester said the following:
>> On 19 May 2012, at 18:41, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>
> ...
>
>>> So, if we consider an idea according to nominalism, it is hard to
>>> imagine that it could be objectively flawed. It is after all just
>>> some notation.
>>
>> If universals don't exist independent of the mind, then we can't be
>> communicating because there would be no way to agree on a code. It
>> would even be possible to identify two letter "e"s in the same font.
>> Nor could we survive because the concept of "water" is a universal,
>> so if there are no universals then we couldn't identify water and
>> we'd all die of thirst.
>
> Do you mean that all nominalists were just stupid people?

That's not an argument. An argument against a particular idea has to show that it doesn't solve the problem it is intended to solve. So an argument against my position would have to take the form of pointing out why it isn't a correct criticism of the position you described as nominalist.

>>> If we take a realism viewpoint, then the idea exists independently
>>> from the mind objectively but then it is unclear what "objectively
>>> flawed" in this respect would mean.
>>
>> That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. Knowledge is information that
>> causes itself to remain in existence when it is instantiated in a
>> particular environment. Knowledge that does not have reach outside
>> some particular set of environments is flawed and can be improved so
>> that it can remain instantiated in a wider set of environments.
>
> I do not remember that knowledge was even formally defined there.

The explanation that knowledge has this property is on pp. 94-95, not in Chapter 1.

Definitions are not useful qua explanation. The reason is that definitions always use undefined words, so they can only ever be used as abbreviations to make it easier to have discussions without constantly repeating multiword phrases.

> Also I do not understand how knowledge exists in nature independently of human mind.

Genes contain information that causes itself to remain in existence when it is instantiated in a particular environment while most of its variants don't. Machines and books also have this property. If somebody sees a machine that does something he thinks is useful enough then he will want to be able to buy or make it, both of which actions will lead to the knowledge in that machine remaining in existence. Likewise for books.

> In physics that I aware of there are atoms, electrons, nuclei, electromagnetic fields (superstrings if you like this theory) but not knowledge as such.

Emergence is explained in Chapter 5 of BoI. Do you have a criticism of that chapter?

>>> Finally, I do not understand how it could be possible to
>>> distinguish a good explanation from a bad one. First one should
>>> define what is good and what is bad.
>>
>> That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. A good explanation is hard to vary
>> while still explaining what it is supposed to explain, a bad
>> explanation is easy to vary.
>
> Could you please next time when you employ a term "good explanation" apply this rule and prove unambiguously that your good explanation good indeed?

I can explain why I think an idea is hard to vary, but nothing can be proved or justified as explained in Chapter 1 of BoI. Do you have a criticism of that position?

>>> No, I do not think so. I believe that pluralism is a great
>>> achievement of the modern society.
>>
>> So you're saying that no standard is better than any other, but you
>> also say that pluralism is a good standard. Your position is
>> inconsistent.
>
> My position is for sure eclectic. Yet, this is in the nature of human language as it is impossible to convert it to mathematical logic.

Why do demands for unambiguous definitions and proofs apply to the positions in BoI, but not to your positions?

>>> What is important though are laws in the society that regulate
>>> relationships between individuals that could not reach an agreement
>>> between each other by themselves.
>>
>> This is another standard. EITHER no standards are objectively better
>> than any others, OR the standards you have proposed are better than
>> others we could adopt.
>
> I have not said that my standards are better, please do not ascribe to me what I have not said.

You said that laws are important. So how can having laws be important if laws are no better than lawlessness?

>>> I believe that Feyerabend has demonstrated that the demarcation
>>> line, described by Popper, contradicts to historical facts. That
>>> is, what is referred by Popper to as a scientific method has not
>>> been employed in practice.
>>
>>
>> That's not an explanation, it's a blank statement. Can you explain
>> Feyerabend's argument or cite a single source, preferably something
>> short, that you think represents Feyerabend's best criticism of
>> Popper?
>
> The main book of Feyerabend is Against Method.

I could order that book, but it would take time to arrive. Do you think that Feyerabend's essay on Popper in "Farewell to Reason" is a good criticism of Popper?

> From Wikipedia
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feyerabend
>
> "To support his position that methodological rules generally do not contribute to scientific success, Feyerabend provides counterexamples to the claim that (good) science operates according to a certain fixed method. He took some examples of episodes in science that are generally regarded as indisputable instances of progress (e.g. the Copernican revolution), and showed that all common prescriptive rules of science are violated in such circumstances. Moreover, he claimed that applying such rules in these historical situations would actually have prevented scientific revolution."
>
> On rational behavior a quote from Feyerabend that I like:
>

> “The church at the time of Galileo was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and revisionism can be legitimized solely for motives of political opportunism.”

>
> He likes provocative statements but he actually shows nicely according to historical facts that this was the case.

Those quotes aren't arguments, they're just statements.

Alan

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 20.05.2012 00:36 Alan Forrester said the following:

>
> On 19 May 2012, at 22:27, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

Alan, I have reordered your comments to express my opinion better. If
you see, that I have missed something important in your email, please
let me know.

>> Could you please next time when you employ a term "good
>> explanation" apply this rule and prove unambiguously that your good
>> explanation good indeed?
>
> I can explain why I think an idea is hard to vary, but nothing can be
> proved or justified as explained in Chapter 1 of BoI. Do you have a
> criticism of that position?

Then it seems to me that at that end, we are in a situation when I say
that I like this and you say that you like that. This is quite a common
situation and provided we both tolerate the differences in opinion, I
have nothing against.

>> My position is for sure eclectic. Yet, this is in the nature of
>> human language as it is impossible to convert it to mathematical
>> logic.
>
> Why do demands for unambiguous definitions and proofs apply to the
> positions in BoI, but not to your positions?

I would not say that I demand. I just express my concern of "good vs.
bad" in Beginning of Infinity. I personally do not say that my
explanation is good, I just express what I feel. Others can agree or
disagree. In the latter case, I do not state that their explanation is bad.

I believe that good and bad is important in moral. When we discuss a
scientific explanation, "good vs. bad" disturbs me.

If to speak about the book Beginning of Infinity in general, it disturbs
me a lot for example that the statement "Problem is soluble" is so often
repeated. It reminds me a marketing campaign. By the way, ANSYS has
adopted recently a nice slogan that a product is a promise

"Every product is a promise: to be functional and reliable; to perform
better than other designs on the market. ANSYS can help you meet the
promises you make."

Probably they have read Beginning of Infinity. To speak seriously, I
would prefer that scientific authors describe their findings in a
neutral way.

Now, to answer your question directly. If Beginning of Infinity cannot
answer questions unambiguously, then I do not understand why it was
necessary to employ so much pathos in the book.

>> In physics that I aware of there are atoms, electrons, nuclei,
>> electromagnetic fields (superstrings if you like this theory) but
>> not knowledge as such.
>
> Emergence is explained in Chapter 5 of BoI. Do you have a criticism
> of that chapter?

I do not have criticism as such as I have listened to the chapter just once.

I am aware of emergence (or supervenience as philosophers like it) but
frankly speaking I do not understand how it is working. On emergence I
have worked out A Different Universe by R. B. Laughlin but I still far
from understanding.

>> Also I do not understand how knowledge exists in nature
>> independently of human mind.
>
> Genes contain information that causes itself to remain in existence
> when it is instantiated in a particular environment while most of its
> variants don't. Machines and books also have this property. If
> somebody sees a machine that does something he thinks is useful
> enough then he will want to be able to buy or make it, both of which
> actions will lead to the knowledge in that machine remaining in
> existence. Likewise for books.

Let us consider DNA. When we say that they contain information, then
their must be some formal way to evaluate how much information is there.
In this respect, it would be good to take all organic molecules and then
apply this method. Then, if I understand your point correctly, this
method should produce zero for all organic molecules but DNA.

I am personally not aware of such a method. Recently I have discussion
with biologist on nature of information in biology. Let me quote Prof
Neumann in this respect that disagree with the role of DNA as written in
your statement.

http://groups.google.com/group/embryophysics/msg/8df88c387dd48c27

"I understand that you can write a program that generates tree
morphologies. But you designed the program. An organism's DNA does not
contain such a program. The program, if you want to call it that,
resides in the entire material composition of the organism's zygote, and
only part of that is inscribed in DNA sequence.

The forms that we see unfolding in a present-day organism are not the
execution of information in the DNA, but outcomes of a complex set of
physical processes, only some of which are predictable based on the
physics acting on the contemporary materials (including the DNA). Some
of the forms arose much earlier in evolutionary history based on the
cellular materials present at that time and the physical effects
relevant to those materials.

Those original forms (if they were consistent with survival) acted as
structural templates for subsequent canalizing evolution, so that the
present-day unfolding process can neither be attributed to present-day
DNA, or present-day DNA plus present-day physics. The explanation of the
forms and the means of their generation must also take the historical
dimension into account. The DNA sequence reflect this history, but only
partially, and not in the form of a program."

Currently I follow biosemiotics. You may want to look at

Barbieri, M. (2007). Is the cell a semiotic system? In: Introduction to
Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis. Eds.: M. Barbieri, Springer:
179-208.

It is quite a different explanation there. Where it is bad or good, it
is up to you.

As for books, I can offer you a quote from Max Velmans, Understanding
Consciousness

p. 215. "As Popper (1972) notes, knowledge that is codified into books
and other artefacts has an existence that is, in one sense,
observer-free. That is, the books exist in our libraries after their
writers are long dead and their readers absent, and they form a
repository of knowledge that can influence future social and
technological development in ways which extend well beyond that
envisaged by their original authors. However, the knowledge itself is
not observer-free. Rather, it is valuable precisely because it encodes
individual or collective experience. Nor, strictly speaking, is the
print in books 'knowledge'. As Searle (1997) points out, words and other
symbolic forms are intrinsically just ink marks on a page (see Chapter
5). They only become symbols, let alone convey meaning, to creatures
that know how to interpret and understand them. But autonomous existence
of books (and other media) provides no basis for 'objective knowledge'
of the kind that Popper describes, that is, knowledge 'that is totally
independent of anybody's claim to know', 'knowledge without a knower',
and 'knowledge without a knowing subject (see quote above). On the
contrary, without knowing subjects, there is no knowledge of any kind
(whether objective or not)."

Again, it is up to you to decide which explanation is good and bad.

>>> If universals don't exist independent of the mind, then we can't
>>> be communicating because there would be no way to agree on a
>>> code. It would even be possible to identify two letter "e"s in
>>> the same font. Nor could we survive because the concept of
>>> "water" is a universal, so if there are no universals then we
>>> couldn't identify water and we'd all die of thirst.
>>
>> Do you mean that all nominalists were just stupid people?
>
> That's not an argument. An argument against a particular idea has to
> show that it doesn't solve the problem it is intended to solve. So an
> argument against my position would have to take the form of pointing
> out why it isn't a correct criticism of the position you described as
> nominalist.

Well, when I occasionally think that I have found a good solution for a
problem with a long history, I ask myself such a question. For me it helps.

As for your proof, you start with an assumption that universals cannot
be dependent on mind. Then you prove that they cannot be dependent on
mind. Or if you prefer a term explanation, you start with a good
explanation that universals cannot be dependent on mind and then claim
the opposite as a bad explanation. You can always do it this way.

However, the modern science is based on nominalism and it has been
pretty successful. Actually I guess all technological advances that has
been mentioned in Beginning of Infinity has been achieved by science
based on nominalism.

This is another logic in Beginning of Infinity that I find strange. In
Dark Ages there was a bad philosophy. Then came a philosophy that helped
to develop a modern science but this philosophy in some respect is even
worse. In my view, something here is wrong.

>> The main book of Feyerabend is Against Method.
>
> I could order that book, but it would take time to arrive. Do you
> think that Feyerabend's essay on Popper in "Farewell to Reason" is a
> good criticism of Popper?
>

I have not read Farewell to Reason. There is a small paper by Feyerabend
in Internet and I believe that it is a good summary of his views

Paul Feyerabend, 1975
How To Defend Society Against Science
http://www.galilean-library.org/manuscript.php?postid=43842

This will quickly help you to understand whether you like or hate him.

Evgenii

[Alan Forrester]

On 20 May 2012, at 11:18, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 20.05.2012 00:36 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>
>> On 19 May 2012, at 22:27, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
> Alan, I have reordered your comments to express my opinion better. If you see, that I have missed something important in your email, please let me know.
>
> >> Could you please next time when you employ a term "good
> >> explanation" apply this rule and prove unambiguously that your good
> >> explanation good indeed?
> >
> > I can explain why I think an idea is hard to vary, but nothing can be
> > proved or justified as explained in Chapter 1 of BoI. Do you have a
> > criticism of that position?
>
> Then it seems to me that at that end, we are in a situation when I say that I like this and you say that you like that. This is quite a common situation and provided we both tolerate the differences in opinion, I have nothing against.

We're not in a world in which every idea is just as good as every other idea because some ideas are actually better as a description of objective reality and we have ways of criticising ideas, such as experiments. None of this requires proof: we try to come up with an explanation and when that explanation fails to explain some things we discard it in favour of a better explanation. The new explanation will sometimes be a slight variant of the old one, and sometimes will be very different.

> >> My position is for sure eclectic. Yet, this is in the nature of
> >> human language as it is impossible to convert it to mathematical
> >> logic.
> >
> > Why do demands for unambiguous definitions and proofs apply to the
> > positions in BoI, but not to your positions?
>
> I would not say that I demand. I just express my concern of "good vs. bad" in Beginning of Infinity. I personally do not say that my explanation is good, I just express what I feel. Others can agree or disagree. In the latter case, I do not state that their explanation is bad.
>
> I believe that good and bad is important in moral. When we discuss a scientific explanation, "good vs. bad" disturbs me.

Do you think that some explanations are more accurate as descriptions of objective reality than others?

> If to speak about the book Beginning of Infinity in general, it disturbs me a lot for example that the statement "Problem is soluble" is so often repeated. It reminds me a marketing campaign.

The book is arguing that problems are soluble: it's difficult to do that without mentioning that problems are soluble.

> By the way, ANSYS has adopted recently a nice slogan that a product is a promise
>
> "Every product is a promise: to be functional and reliable; to perform better than other designs on the market. ANSYS can help you meet the promises you make."
>
> Probably they have read Beginning of Infinity. To speak seriously, I would prefer that scientific authors describe their findings in a neutral way.

Good luck finding a paper where people do that. To publish a paper you have to do something new and explain why it's new and what gives it an advantage over competing ideas in some respect. That's saying that one idea is better than another. Neutral papers don't get published, and rightly so.

> Now, to answer your question directly. If Beginning of Infinity cannot answer questions unambiguously, then I do not understand why it was necessary to employ so much pathos in the book.

Pathos is "the quality or power in an actual life experience or in literature, music, speech, or other forms of expression, of evoking a feeling of pity or compassion." Where is that done in the book?

> >> In physics that I aware of there are atoms, electrons, nuclei,
> >> electromagnetic fields (superstrings if you like this theory) but
> >> not knowledge as such.
> >
> > Emergence is explained in Chapter 5 of BoI. Do you have a criticism
> > of that chapter?
>
> I do not have criticism as such as I have listened to the chapter just once.
>
> I am aware of emergence (or supervenience as philosophers like it) but frankly speaking I do not understand how it is working. On emergence I have worked out A Different Universe by R. B. Laughlin but I still far from understanding.

Let's put it this way. If you build a house out of bricks it's not shaped like a brick, so a collection of things put together in the right way can have properties that the components don't have.

> >> Also I do not understand how knowledge exists in nature
> >> independently of human mind.
> >
> > Genes contain information that causes itself to remain in existence
> > when it is instantiated in a particular environment while most of its
> > variants don't. Machines and books also have this property. If
> > somebody sees a machine that does something he thinks is useful
> > enough then he will want to be able to buy or make it, both of which
> > actions will lead to the knowledge in that machine remaining in
> > existence. Likewise for books.
>
> Let us consider DNA. When we say that they contain information, then their must be some formal way to evaluate how much information is there. In this respect, it would be good to take all organic molecules and then apply this method. Then, if I understand your point correctly, this method should produce zero for all organic molecules but DNA.

No, it shouldn't. Many organic molecules are like a machine and machines instantiate knowledge. A machine typically doesn't contain all of the knowledge required to construct a copy of the machine except in a form that is more difficult to reconstruct than if you were looking at the plans. The plans are designed to be read, they instantiate knowledge of a standard and useful way to describe parts and how they go together. The machine instantiates some kinds of knowledge, but not others.

> I am personally not aware of such a method. Recently I have discussion with biologist on nature of information in biology. Let me quote Prof Neumann in this respect that disagree with the role of DNA as written in your statement.
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/embryophysics/msg/8df88c387dd48c27
>
> "I understand that you can write a program that generates tree morphologies. But you designed the program. An organism's DNA does not contain such a program. The program, if you want to call it that, resides in the entire material composition of the organism's zygote, and only part of that is inscribed in DNA sequence.
>
> The forms that we see unfolding in a present-day organism are not the execution of information in the DNA, but outcomes of a complex set of physical processes, only some of which are predictable based on the physics acting on the contemporary materials (including the DNA). Some of the forms arose much earlier in evolutionary history based on the cellular materials present at that time and the physical effects relevant to those materials.
>
> Those original forms (if they were consistent with survival) acted as structural templates for subsequent canalizing evolution, so that the present-day unfolding process can neither be attributed to present-day DNA, or present-day DNA plus present-day physics. The explanation of the forms and the means of their generation must also take the historical dimension into account. The DNA sequence reflect this history, but only partially, and not in the form of a program."

I said gene, not DNA, for a discussion of the difference see this paper and references cited therein:

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jksadegh/A%20Good%20Atheist%20Secularist%20Skeptical%20Book%20Collection/Extended%20Phenotype%20but%20not%20too%20extended%20-%20Dawkins.pdf

> Currently I follow biosemiotics. You may want to look at
>
> Barbieri, M. (2007). Is the cell a semiotic system? In: Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis. Eds.: M. Barbieri, Springer: 179-208.
>
> It is quite a different explanation there. Where it is bad or good, it is up to you.
>
> As for books, I can offer you a quote from Max Velmans, Understanding Consciousness
>
> p. 215. "As Popper (1972) notes, knowledge that is codified into books and other artefacts has an existence that is, in one sense, observer-free. That is, the books exist in our libraries after their writers are long dead and their readers absent, and they form a repository of knowledge that can influence future social and technological development in ways which extend well beyond that envisaged by their original authors. However, the knowledge itself is not observer-free. Rather, it is valuable precisely because it encodes individual or collective experience.

The knowledge was generated by observers, but if the book is any good we don't need the person who wrote it to explain it.

> Nor, strictly speaking, is the print in books 'knowledge'. As Searle (1997) points out, words and other symbolic forms are intrinsically just ink marks on a page (see Chapter 5). They only become symbols, let alone convey meaning, to creatures that know how to interpret and understand them.

It is easier to read a book written in English if you know English. But it is possible to figure out a lot about stuff written in languages that nobody has spoken for a very long time, e.g. - translations of stone tablets written in various ancient languages.

> But autonomous existence of books (and other media) provides no basis for 'objective knowledge' of the kind that Popper describes, that is, knowledge 'that is totally independent of anybody's claim to know', 'knowledge without a knower', and 'knowledge without a knowing subject (see quote above). On the contrary, without knowing subjects, there is no knowledge of any kind (whether objective or not)."

There were no knowing subjects for most of the history of life on Earth, but there was lots of knowledge - that is lots of information that, once instantiated in a physical object, caused itself to remain instantiated. And there are genes in bacteria today that still do that.

>>>> If universals don't exist independent of the mind, then we can't
>>>> be communicating because there would be no way to agree on a
>>>> code. It would even be possible to identify two letter "e"s in
>>>> the same font. Nor could we survive because the concept of
>>>> "water" is a universal, so if there are no universals then we
>>>> couldn't identify water and we'd all die of thirst.
>>>
>>> Do you mean that all nominalists were just stupid people?
>>
>> That's not an argument. An argument against a particular idea has to
>> show that it doesn't solve the problem it is intended to solve. So an
>> argument against my position would have to take the form of pointing
>> out why it isn't a correct criticism of the position you described as
>> nominalist.
>
> Well, when I occasionally think that I have found a good solution for a problem with a long history, I ask myself such a question. For me it helps.
>
> As for your proof, you start with an assumption that universals cannot be dependent on mind. Then you prove that they cannot be dependent on mind.

Do you have a criticism of the idea that there are universal laws of physics that determine the properties of water? If so, how are you going to replace geology, chemistry, biology and so on all of which are currently explained by invoking universal laws of physics that operated before human beings started trying to explain them?

> Or if you prefer a term explanation, you start with a good explanation that universals cannot be dependent on mind and then claim the opposite as a bad explanation. You can always do it this way.

Wrong. As you noted you have to start with a good explanation, and the alternative has to be worse. Newtonian mechanics was a good explanation in a way that most previous theories were not, e.g. - Newton used it to explain the motion of planets, as well as the motion of objects on Earth and this theory remained unrefuted for a long time because it actually explained a lot of stuff. Einstein's general theory of relativity explained all of the stuff that Newton's theory explained and more.

> However, the modern science is based on nominalism and it has been pretty successful. Actually I guess all technological advances that has been mentioned in Beginning of Infinity has been achieved by science based on nominalism.

Science isn't based on nominalism, or on anything else.

> This is another logic in Beginning of Infinity that I find strange. In Dark Ages there was a bad philosophy. Then came a philosophy that helped to develop a modern science but this philosophy in some respect is even worse. In my view, something here is wrong.

It's not worse, it's an improvement, but is still flawed.

Alan

[Elliot Temple]

On May 18, 2012, at 12:10 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> Please look at the scientific sources that I have given in my reply to Rami. Then you will see that this is exactly what science says, that is, free will is illusion.

Here, we try not to settle philosophical arguments by checking out what opinion the majority of scientists have. The goal, instead, is to consider each position -- as well as any new ones we can think of -- on its merits not its popularity or source.


-- Elliot Temple
http://fallibleideas.com/

[Elliot Temple]

On May 18, 2012, at 12:10 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> Is this your opinion, or this has been scientifically proved? If yes, could you please cite the works that proved this?

We reject the impossible demand for proof of our ideas. We acknowledge our ideas are fallible and do not consider this a fault in them.


All ideas are neither mere opinion nor proven. They are our guesses at the truth, never perfect, and always open to revision and improvement. They improve as we refine them with criticism, but this never constitutes a proof.


-- Elliot Temple
http://beginningofinfinity.com/

[Elliot Temple]

On May 18, 2012, at 11:53 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> If we can choose our decisions by ourselves, then the meme theory does not make much sense.

To exist, memes do not have to control us like drivers control cars. Consider good books. Those have ideas which we replicate by printing more copies. We can choose to print more or not, it's up to us, we aren't being controlled, yet some ideas in some books are replicated -- and contribute to their own replication, e.g. by being useful ideas -- so they are memes.

-- Elliot Temple
http://elliottemple.com/

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 29.05.2012 10:38 Elliot Temple said the following:

A general question, in my view, is a casual chain, or, in other words
the egg-and-chicken problem.

I do not have any solution though, nor I am satisfied with solutions
that I have seen.

Evgenii

[Elliot Temple]

On May 19, 2012, at 2:27 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 19.05.2012 21:00 Alan Forrester said the following:
>> On 19 May 2012, at 18:41, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>
> ...
>
>>> So, if we consider an idea according to nominalism, it is hard to
>>> imagine that it could be objectively flawed. It is after all just
>>> some notation.
>>
>> If universals don't exist independent of the mind, then we can't be
>> communicating because there would be no way to agree on a code. It
>> would even be possible to identify two letter "e"s in the same font.
>> Nor could we survive because the concept of "water" is a universal,
>> so if there are no universals then we couldn't identify water and
>> we'd all die of thirst.
>
> Do you mean that all nominalists were just stupid people?

I take it you're implying there is some other way to approach this so their position doesn't violate common sense so badly. That they meant something a bit differently than Alan took it as.

Well, what is it? What is the non-stupid meaning/interpretation?

>
>>> If we take a realism viewpoint, then the idea exists independently
>>> from the mind objectively but then it is unclear what "objectively
>>> flawed" in this respect would mean.
>>
>> That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. Knowledge is information that
>> causes itself to remain in existence when it is instantiated in a
>> particular environment. Knowledge that does not have reach outside
>> some particular set of environments is flawed and can be improved so
>> that it can remain instantiated in a wider set of environments.
>
> I do not remember that knowledge was even formally defined there. Also I do not understand how knowledge exists in nature independently of human mind. In physics that I aware of there are atoms, electrons, nuclei, electromagnetic fields (superstrings if you like this theory) but not knowledge as such.
>
>>> Finally, I do not understand how it could be possible to
>>> distinguish a good explanation from a bad one. First one should
>>> define what is good and what is bad.
>>
>> That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. A good explanation is hard to vary
>> while still explaining what it is supposed to explain, a bad
>> explanation is easy to vary.
>
> Could you please next time when you employ a term "good explanation" apply this rule and prove unambiguously that your good explanation good indeed?

We're fallibilists. We don't prove our ideas. The demand for proof cannot be met.

The proper approach is as follows: we (or anyone) propose ideas and if you (or anyone) have no criticism of an idea then it stands (for now). If you think something is wrong, criticize the flaw(s) you see. If you see no flaws you should accept it.

[Elliot Temple]

On May 19, 2012, at 5:44 AM, Rami Rustom wrote:

> For example lets say a daughter makes a mess in the living room. And
> her dad asked her to clean up. And she doesn't because she doesn't
> understand *why* she should clean up. And lets say the dad has a habit
> [that he learned from his parents] of explaining, "Jane, we have
> visitors coming soon and it'll be very embarrassing for us if they see
> this mess, so could you please clean up so that we don't get
> embarrassed?" This passes on a bad meme that explains that people
> should care what other people think. Now lets say that daughter read
> BoI and joined this list. And she learned meme theory and this
> specific example I just gave. And so she is now aware of that habit
> she has and the consequences of it, i.e. that she could pass that meme
> to her kids. So she consciously pays attention to her words going
> forward and she never uses that bad explanation again. And so she
> doesn't pass that meme to her kids.
>
> The point is that there was free will involved in stopped the meme
> from replicating.

Yes but be wary: some memes are more subtle and sophisticated than in the example.

E.g. some can spread even if you never speak some specific words they like.

It's up to us to take responsibility for understanding our memes better and dealing with them well. it's not easy but by an effort we can improve at it.

-- Elliot Temple
http://fallibleideas.com/

[Elliot Temple]

On May 19, 2012, at 5:44 AM, Rami Rustom wrote:

> By the way, the child could prevent a meme from replicating to himself
> too. He may disagree with the parent's bad explanation. This happens a
> lot.

Yes and then the parent says "no backtalk" or the teacher grades the child's test answer wrong.

Children get *punished* for disagreeing. Often they give in, their spirits are broken, they comply, they come to rationalize why the parent is right after all.

[Elliot Temple]

On May 19, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 19.05.2012 13:13 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>
>> On 19 May 2012, at 11:26, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

[one author is missing here. guys, please make sure to give attribution for everyone you quote]

>>>> If not, what criterion do you propose for deciding which ideas
>>>> we should adopt and which ideas we should discard?
>>>
>>> I am afraid that each individual with free will should find the
>>> answer on his/her own.
>>
>> Do you think that some standards are objectively better than others?
>
> No, I do not think so. I believe that pluralism is a great achievement of the modern society. What is important though are laws in the society that regulate relationships between individuals that could not reach an agreement between each other by themselves.

Pluralism and objective truth are compatible.

Objective truth doesn't imply intolerance. It means that improvement is possible, mistakes exists, and solutions and corrections exist too.

One objective truth is that tolerance and pluralism are valuable so each person can be free to use his own judgment.

The idea that intolerance is a mistake itself uses objective truth as a premise. Because what is a "mistake"? It is a deviation from objective truth.

>
>>> As for scientific method, I am personally comfortable with
>>> Feyerabend's Anything goes.
>>
>> What substantive difference is there between Popper and Feyerabend
>> that makes you think Feyerabend is better?
>
> I believe that Feyerabend has demonstrated that the demarcation line, described by Popper, contradicts to historical facts. That is, what is referred by Popper to as a scientific method has not been employed in practice.

How can historical facts contradict Popper's *terminology*? That's impossible.

And we know that what Popper explains to as scientific method has been done, because we have made scientific advances and no other processes are capable of doing that -- *only* rational (Popperian) ones.

Many scientists didn't understand what they were doing very well. They misreported their methods, and used varying methods at different times. Some people called "scientists" never did any science, but others did.

[Elliot Temple]

Virtue is acquired by learning -- by guesses and criticism.

The reason this progress isn't noticeable to you is that you have not yet learned epistemology.

> ...
>
>>> I agree but my point was not that "free will is illusion" is true.
>>> I have just shown that such a viewpoint enjoys a widespread use in
>>> modern sciences.
>>
>> The fact that you think that you should show that a viewpoint enjoys
>> a widespread use in modern sciences *suggests* that you believe that
>> *more* widespread adoption that X is true, means that X is true. Of
>> course I could be wrong.
>
> Actually I do not share opinion that free will does not exist. I am in the age of the midlife crisis and I find a problem of meaning of life as meaningful.
>
> However, being a former scientist I do not see yet how it could work. So far I am just collecting different opinions.

Here we're looking for truths not opinions.

> ...
>
>> For example lets say a daughter makes a mess in the living room. And
>> her dad asked her to clean up. And she doesn't because she doesn't
>> understand *why* she should clean up. And lets say the dad has a
>> habit [that he learned from his parents] of explaining, "Jane, we
>> have visitors coming soon and it'll be very embarrassing for us if
>> they see this mess, so could you please clean up so that we don't
>> get embarrassed?" This passes on a bad meme that explains that
>> people should care what other people think. Now lets say that
>
> This raises again a question what is bad and what is good. You use these words but you do not explain how you take decisions on what is good and what is bad. In this particular case, I would disagree. I personally consider this as a good explanation.

The issue isn't your personal feelings but whether the explanation is hard or easy to vary. If you think an explanation is bad, offer ways to vary it. If you think it's good, ask if anyone has any criticisms or ways to vary it, or try to explain why you think there aren't any.

> There is a nice movie Shy People by Andrei Konchalovsky where two methods of raising children are nicely contrasted with each other. One approach is very authoritarian, another is very liberal. You may like it.

Both of those approaches are wrong. The conception that parenting lies on that continuum is itself a mistake which blinds people to better approaches (e.g. http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/ )

[Elliot Temple]

On May 17, 2012, at 1:11 AM, Alan Forrester wrote:

>
> On 17 May 2012, at 08:34, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> On 15.05.2012 21:45 Rami Rustom said the following:

>>> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>

>>>> I just was thinking how to apply your conclusion in the case of competition.
>>>> Let us imagine that one athlete has lost and another has won. This is what
>>>> happens in sport. An alternative would be when two person were fighting for
>>>> some position (for example a professor). One has got the position and
>>>> another has lost.
>>>>
>>>> The question would be how to apply your conclusion about a lack of knowledge
>>>> in this case. It seems to me that this will not work in such a situation.
>>>
>>> Why not?
>>>
>>> Lets first define the psychological problem. Its a problem that the
>>> person has that causes negative emotions and they haven't been able to
>>> solve it over a long period of time.
>>>
>>> You might be talking about a negative emotion that comes and goes
>>> quickly. I'm not classifying those moments as psychological problems
>>> because there is no *problem*.
>>>
>>> So in your hypothetical situation, do you mean that the negative
>>> feelings are persisting over a long period of time?
>>
>> Let me try it this way. Say there is a person with a strong character who knows perfectly that
>>
>> "Remember that all psychological problems are resultant from a lack of
>> knowledge."
>>
>> He also knows the latest scientific discoveries and latest good explanations. Still, he has lost and now he introspects the event and thinks it over.
>>
>> He checks all the steps that he has made before the event and during the event. Everything was according to good explanations. He has made everything correctly, exactly as he should have done it.
>>
>> The only reason, according to his analysis, seems to be that his opponent was just better. The final conclusion is that presumably his opponent has a better mixture of genes and future fights are meaningless.
>
> You say that he analysed the sporting event, cycling say, and came up with a good explanation for what went wrong. You then say his opponent was "just better", which is a bad explanation because nobody is "just better" than anybody else at anything, rather one person is better than another in some specific respect that makes the difference between winning and losing. The difference might be that the winning cyclist is better at keeping his balance and can lean more into a turn and turn corners faster. This can't be genetic because there are no genes for bicycle riding, even if there are genes for having a more sensitive inner ear. The winner had to develop the knowledge to concentrate on some things at the expense of others. So the gene thing is also a bad explanation.
>
>> This is however a very depressive conclusion and finally the person commits suicide.
>
> Let's say that the person concerned concludes that he doesn't want to be the world's best cyclist anymore despite having spent 20 years on trying to do it. He could learn how to do something else, or he could become a cycling coach or whatever. The only reason why he would commit suicide is that he has some knowledge that indicates that it is a good idea: this knowledge is, in most suicidal people, an anti-rational meme.

Is suicide so bad? Isn't suicide sometimes rebellion against anti-rational memes controlling one's lifestyle? And also against an unfree life, whether it be controlled by memes, social pressures, family, or psychiatry. Your comments about how the person can solve his problems and move on all presuppose substantial freedom and control over his life.

[Elliot Temple]

The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch covers reductionism well.

-- Elliot Temple
http://curi.us/

[Brett Hall]

Agreed.

I also think that in your above statement (aside from that bit about grades and tests) you could make the following substitutions:

Parent = employer
Children = employees

And in some organisations it would also be true.

Given what is happening in Syria and other places we might even have:

Parent = government
Children = citizens

Indeed we don't even need the extreme of Syria, perhaps, for it to still apply.

Your statement can work for just about any coercive sort of relationship, can't it?

Do you agree?

Brett.

[Elliot Temple]

Yes, sometimes employees are treated like children, and all sorts of relationships can have bad elements. Sometimes wives are treated like children. Sometimes grandfathers. Sometimes people who are found to be troublesome and annoying and therefore are labelled "mentally ill".

[Alan Forrester]

There are some circumstances where suicide might be the best available option. If you get prosecuted for child rape, your life is going to be bad from then on. You may never get out of prison or a mental hospital, and even if you do get out you'll be under constant surveillance and people will be suspicious of you all the time. You won't be able to travel much and many jobs will be barred to you. And if you break the rules then you're in deep shit.

For anything short of the sort of situation in which people will physically prevent you from going about your life, what stops you from changing your life instead of committing suicide? As far as I can see, only anti-rational memes. Is your family a bunch of horrible people who constantly deride you? Leave them. Maybe you have children and you don't want to abandon them. Suicide can't be a better option in that case if what you're worried about is hurting them, unless you're a spectacularly shitty person (i.e. - have lots of anti-rational memes). As for "controlled by your memes": the idea that you are controlled by your current irrationalities is itself an anti-rational meme. In this case, and I think in most cases that don't involve legal or physical restraint, the suicide meme survives because it fits in with a set of anti-rational memes, not because it's a good option.

Alan

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 28.05.2012 20:31 Alan Forrester said the following:

>
> On 20 May 2012, at 11:18, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> On 20.05.2012 00:36 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>>
>>> On 19 May 2012, at 22:27, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

...

>>>> Could you please next time when you employ a term "good
>>>> explanation" apply this rule and prove unambiguously that your
>>>> good explanation good indeed?
>>>
>>> I can explain why I think an idea is hard to vary, but nothing
>>> can be proved or justified as explained in Chapter 1 of BoI. Do
>>> you have a criticism of that position?
>>
>> Then it seems to me that at that end, we are in a situation when I
>> say that I like this and you say that you like that. This is quite
>> a common situation and provided we both tolerate the differences in
>> opinion, I have nothing against.
>
> We're not in a world in which every idea is just as good as every
> other idea because some ideas are actually better as a description of
> objective reality and we have ways of criticising ideas, such as
> experiments. None of this requires proof: we try to come up with an
> explanation and when that explanation fails to explain some things we
> discard it in favour of a better explanation. The new explanation
> will sometimes be a slight variant of the old one, and sometimes will
> be very different.

Quite often two people have ideas/explanations that contradict to each
other. What is the procedure in such a situation to determine which
idea/explanation is better objectively?

...

>> I believe that good and bad is important in moral. When we discuss
>> a scientific explanation, "good vs. bad" disturbs me.
>
> Do you think that some explanations are more accurate as descriptions
> of objective reality than others?

There are scientific theories that describe results of experiments more
accurate then others. The problem however is that it is hard to
determine whether a particular experimental point is just an outlier or
not. In other words, it is usually unclear what represents objective
reality (provided it exists) better.

...

>> Probably they have read Beginning of Infinity. To speak seriously,
>> I would prefer that scientific authors describe their findings in a
>> neutral way.
>
> Good luck finding a paper where people do that. To publish a paper
> you have to do something new and explain why it's new and what gives
> it an advantage over competing ideas in some respect. That's saying
> that one idea is better than another. Neutral papers don't get
> published, and rightly so.

Could you please give an example of a scientific paper that supports
your statement?

>> Now, to answer your question directly. If Beginning of Infinity
>> cannot answer questions unambiguously, then I do not understand why
>> it was necessary to employ so much pathos in the book.
>
> Pathos is "the quality or power in an actual life experience or in
> literature, music, speech, or other forms of expression, of evoking a
> feeling of pity or compassion." Where is that done in the book?

I would say that the statement "Problems are soluble" repeated so many
times in the book is an element evoking compassion.

...

>> Let us consider DNA. When we say that they contain information,
>> then their must be some formal way to evaluate how much information
>> is there. In this respect, it would be good to take all organic
>> molecules and then apply this method. Then, if I understand your
>> point correctly, this method should produce zero for all organic
>> molecules but DNA.
>
> No, it shouldn't. Many organic molecules are like a machine and
> machines instantiate knowledge. A machine typically doesn't contain
> all of the knowledge required to construct a copy of the machine
> except in a form that is more difficult to reconstruct than if you
> were looking at the plans. The plans are designed to be read, they
> instantiate knowledge of a standard and useful way to describe parts
> and how they go together. The machine instantiates some kinds of
> knowledge, but not others.

That's fine. Then there should be anyway some function that takes an
organic molecule as an input and gives us how much information it
contains. Do you know such a function?

...

>> As for books, I can offer you a quote from Max Velmans,
>> Understanding Consciousness
>>
>> p. 215. "As Popper (1972) notes, knowledge that is codified into
>> books and other artefacts has an existence that is, in one sense,
>> observer-free. That is, the books exist in our libraries after
>> their writers are long dead and their readers absent, and they form
>> a repository of knowledge that can influence future social and
>> technological development in ways which extend well beyond that
>> envisaged by their original authors. However, the knowledge itself
>> is not observer-free. Rather, it is valuable precisely because it
>> encodes individual or collective experience.
>
> The knowledge was generated by observers, but if the book is any good
> we don't need the person who wrote it to explain it.

But we need a person who will read it.

>> Nor, strictly speaking, is the print in books 'knowledge'. As
>> Searle (1997) points out, words and other symbolic forms are
>> intrinsically just ink marks on a page (see Chapter 5). They only
>> become symbols, let alone convey meaning, to creatures that know
>> how to interpret and understand them.
>
> It is easier to read a book written in English if you know English.
> But it is possible to figure out a lot about stuff written in
> languages that nobody has spoken for a very long time, e.g. -
> translations of stone tablets written in various ancient languages.

This has been done also by human beings.

>> But autonomous existence of books (and other media) provides no
>> basis for 'objective knowledge' of the kind that Popper describes,
>> that is, knowledge 'that is totally independent of anybody's claim
>> to know', 'knowledge without a knower', and 'knowledge without a
>> knowing subject (see quote above). On the contrary, without knowing
>> subjects, there is no knowledge of any kind (whether objective or
>> not)."
>
> There were no knowing subjects for most of the history of life on
> Earth, but there was lots of knowledge - that is lots of information
> that, once instantiated in a physical object, caused itself to remain
> instantiated. And there are genes in bacteria today that still do
> that.

Here we are again back to the question whether there is a function that
allows us to estimate information/knowledge objectively. Do you know
such a function?

...

>> However, the modern science is based on nominalism and it has been
>> pretty successful. Actually I guess all technological advances that
>> has been mentioned in Beginning of Infinity has been achieved by
>> science based on nominalism.
>
> Science isn't based on nominalism, or on anything else.

I will search on relationship of nominalism and modern science to check
whether my statement was correct.

In any case, science is based on several absolute presuppositions (the
term by Collingwood). One of them for example is the existence of
objective knowledge. Yet you cannot prove it, you can just take it as a
belief.

Evgenii

[Alan Forrester]

You're assuming that one idea is right and the other is wrong, but they might both be wrong. The rational way to resolve a disagreement is to have critical discussions until they are satisfied that they agree.

>>> I believe that good and bad is important in moral. When we discuss
>>> a scientific explanation, "good vs. bad" disturbs me.
>>
>> Do you think that some explanations are more accurate as descriptions
>> of objective reality than others?
>
> There are scientific theories that describe results of experiments more accurate then others. The problem however is that it is hard to determine whether a particular experimental point is just an outlier or not. In other words, it is usually unclear what represents objective reality (provided it exists) better.

It's not usually unclear which of two competing theories is better if you do well-designed experiments.

Also, if you think objective really doesn't exist, do you look both ways before crossing the street, and if so why?

>>> Probably they have read Beginning of Infinity. To speak seriously,
>>> I would prefer that scientific authors describe their findings in a
>>> neutral way.
>>
>> Good luck finding a paper where people do that. To publish a paper
>> you have to do something new and explain why it's new and what gives
>> it an advantage over competing ideas in some respect. That's saying
>> that one idea is better than another. Neutral papers don't get
>> published, and rightly so.
>
> Could you please give an example of a scientific paper that supports your statement?

Every paper on this list reports something new, or purports to explain something in a better way than how it has previously been explained:

http://arxiv.org/list/quant-ph/new

>>> Now, to answer your question directly. If Beginning of Infinity
>>> cannot answer questions unambiguously, then I do not understand why
>>> it was necessary to employ so much pathos in the book.
>>
>> Pathos is "the quality or power in an actual life experience or in
>> literature, music, speech, or other forms of expression, of evoking a
>> feeling of pity or compassion." Where is that done in the book?
>
> I would say that the statement "Problems are soluble" repeated so many times in the book is an element evoking compassion.

Why?

>>> Let us consider DNA. When we say that they contain information,
>>> then their must be some formal way to evaluate how much information
>>> is there. In this respect, it would be good to take all organic
>>> molecules and then apply this method. Then, if I understand your
>>> point correctly, this method should produce zero for all organic
>>> molecules but DNA.
>>
>> No, it shouldn't. Many organic molecules are like a machine and
>> machines instantiate knowledge. A machine typically doesn't contain
>> all of the knowledge required to construct a copy of the machine
>> except in a form that is more difficult to reconstruct than if you
>> were looking at the plans. The plans are designed to be read, they
>> instantiate knowledge of a standard and useful way to describe parts
>> and how they go together. The machine instantiates some kinds of
>> knowledge, but not others.
>
> That's fine. Then there should be anyway some function that takes an organic molecule as an input and gives us how much information it contains. Do you know such a function?

The molecule should be adapted for a particular purpose and you can tell if this is so by trying to change it at random and see if it gets worse at carrying out is supposed function.

>>> As for books, I can offer you a quote from Max Velmans,
>>> Understanding Consciousness
>>>
>>> p. 215. "As Popper (1972) notes, knowledge that is codified into
>>> books and other artefacts has an existence that is, in one sense,
>>> observer-free. That is, the books exist in our libraries after
>>> their writers are long dead and their readers absent, and they form
>>> a repository of knowledge that can influence future social and
>>> technological development in ways which extend well beyond that
>>> envisaged by their original authors. However, the knowledge itself
>>> is not observer-free. Rather, it is valuable precisely because it
>>> encodes individual or collective experience.
>>
>> The knowledge was generated by observers, but if the book is any good
>> we don't need the person who wrote it to explain it.
>
> But we need a person who will read it.

Not necessarily. Suppose a person wrote a pdf book full of computer programs and that we have a program for getting those programs out of the book by reading them out of the pdf and then executing them. Then the computer might solve a maths problem, or something like that, using the knowledge in the book without anybody ever having read it.

>>> Nor, strictly speaking, is the print in books 'knowledge'. As
>>> Searle (1997) points out, words and other symbolic forms are
>>> intrinsically just ink marks on a page (see Chapter 5). They only
>>> become symbols, let alone convey meaning, to creatures that know
>>> how to interpret and understand them.
>>
>> It is easier to read a book written in English if you know English.
>> But it is possible to figure out a lot about stuff written in
>> languages that nobody has spoken for a very long time, e.g. -
>> translations of stone tablets written in various ancient languages.
>
> This has been done also by human beings.

They did it without access to the knowledge that the person who wrote the tablets had. They didn't need that knowledge.

>>> But autonomous existence of books (and other media) provides no
>>> basis for 'objective knowledge' of the kind that Popper describes,
>>> that is, knowledge 'that is totally independent of anybody's claim
>>> to know', 'knowledge without a knower', and 'knowledge without a
>>> knowing subject (see quote above). On the contrary, without knowing
>>> subjects, there is no knowledge of any kind (whether objective or
>>> not)."
>>
>> There were no knowing subjects for most of the history of life on
>> Earth, but there was lots of knowledge - that is lots of information
>> that, once instantiated in a physical object, caused itself to remain
>> instantiated. And there are genes in bacteria today that still do
>> that.
>
> Here we are again back to the question whether there is a function that allows us to estimate information/knowledge objectively. Do you know such a function?
>

>>> However, the modern science is based on nominalism and it has been
>>> pretty successful. Actually I guess all technological advances that
>>> has been mentioned in Beginning of Infinity has been achieved by
>>> science based on nominalism.
>>
>> Science isn't based on nominalism, or on anything else.
>
> I will search on relationship of nominalism and modern science to check whether my statement was correct.
>
> In any case, science is based on several absolute presuppositions (the term by Collingwood). One of them for example is the existence of objective knowledge. Yet you cannot prove it, you can just take it as a belief.

Science isn't based on anything. Scientific knowledge is created by conjecture and criticism. We need not take anything as an "absolute presupposition": we can throw any idea under the bus if it turns out to be wrong. See "Realism and the Aim of Science" by Karl Popper, especially the preface and Chapter I, Sections 1 and 2.

Alan

[Elliot Temple]

On May 13, 2012, at 7:17 AM, Rami Rustom wrote:

> BTW, I'd like to make clear that my fist post might make it seem that
> one discussion is enough to help someone solve their psychological
> problem. But that has not been my experience. The person can often
> hide some of their thoughts, which of course means that you can not
> question those thoughts in order to help them understand what is wrong
> with those thoughts.

Actually hidden things can be noticed, questioned and criticized.

"Of course" often means "obviously" or "clearly". It's a mistake in general. And it's commonly used with stuff that, far from obvious, is false. Why does that happen? Because it's an indication that's an area the speaker doesn't think about much (because he thinks it's obvious), so he's done less error correction there.

[Elliot Temple]

Those two ideas contradict and neither is good enough to make it easy to agree on what's best.

Therefore both are not good enough. They are refuted.

So, brainstorm new guesses and criticize those and get to the point where there's only one non-refuted guess.

>>> Let us consider DNA. When we say that they contain information,
>>> then their must be some formal way to evaluate how much information
>>> is there. In this respect, it would be good to take all organic
>>> molecules and then apply this method. Then, if I understand your
>>> point correctly, this method should produce zero for all organic
>>> molecules but DNA.
>>
>> No, it shouldn't. Many organic molecules are like a machine and
>> machines instantiate knowledge. A machine typically doesn't contain
>> all of the knowledge required to construct a copy of the machine
>> except in a form that is more difficult to reconstruct than if you
>> were looking at the plans. The plans are designed to be read, they
>> instantiate knowledge of a standard and useful way to describe parts
>> and how they go together. The machine instantiates some kinds of
>> knowledge, but not others.
>
> That's fine. Then there should be anyway some function that takes an organic molecule as an input and gives us how much information it contains. Do you know such a function?

There's no such thing for molecules in general. They might have been storing information by their location, for example. And how much information would depend on how many allowable locations there were. So information content depends on context.

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 31.05.2012 23:48 Alan Forrester said the following:

>
> On 31 May 2012, at 21:35, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>>On 28.05.2012 20:31 Alan Forrester said the following:

...

>> There are scientific theories that describe results of experiments
>> more accurate then others. The problem however is that it is hard
>> to determine whether a particular experimental point is just an
>> outlier or not. In other words, it is usually unclear what
>> represents objective reality (provided it exists) better.
>
> It's not usually unclear which of two competing theories is better if
> you do well-designed experiments.
>
> Also, if you think objective really doesn't exist, do you look both
> ways before crossing the street, and if so why?

Because for example my brain is aware of correlations between different
images that it obtains from retina and possible consequences. Think of
software that can destroy itself by rewriting over its code.

>>>> Probably they have read Beginning of Infinity. To speak
>>>> seriously, I would prefer that scientific authors describe
>>>> their findings in a neutral way.
>>>
>>> Good luck finding a paper where people do that. To publish a
>>> paper you have to do something new and explain why it's new and
>>> what gives it an advantage over competing ideas in some respect.
>>> That's saying that one idea is better than another. Neutral
>>> papers don't get published, and rightly so.
>>
>> Could you please give an example of a scientific paper that
>> supports your statement?
>
> Every paper on this list reports something new, or purports to
> explain something in a better way than how it has previously been
> explained:
>
> http://arxiv.org/list/quant-ph/new

I took the first paper

An open source MATLAB program for fast numerical Feynman integral
calculations for open quantum system dynamics on GPUs
Authors: Nikesh S. Dattani

There is neither word 'good' there nor 'bad'.

This is the abstract of the paper

"This MATLAB program calculates the dynamics of the reduced density
matrix of an open quantum system modeled by the Feynman-Vernon model.
The user gives the program a vector describing the coordinate of an open
quantum system, a hamiltonian matrix describing its energy, and a
spectral distribution function and temperature describing the
environment's influence on it, in addition to the open quantum system's
intial density matrix and a grid of times. With this, the program
returns the reduced density matrix of the open quantum system at all (or
some) moments specified by that grid of times. This overall calculation
can be divided into two stages: the setup of the Feynman integral, and
the actual calculation of the Feynman integral for time-propagation of
the density matrix. When this program calculates this propagation on a
multi-core CPU, it is this propagation that is usually the rate limiting
step of the calculation, but when it is calculated on a GPU, the
propagation is calculated so quickly that the setup of the Feynman
integal actually becomes the rate limiting step for most cases tested so
far. The overhead of transfrring information from the CPU to the GPU and
back seems to have negligible effect on the overall runtime of the
program. When the required information cannot fit on the GPU, the user
can choose to run the entire program on a CPU."

Could you please clarify your statement on this example that you have
suggested? In my view it confirms my point that scientific papers are
written in a neutral way.

>>>> Now, to answer your question directly. If Beginning of
>>>> Infinity cannot answer questions unambiguously, then I do not
>>>> understand why it was necessary to employ so much pathos in the
>>>> book.
>>>
>>> Pathos is "the quality or power in an actual life experience or
>>> in literature, music, speech, or other forms of expression, of
>>> evoking a feeling of pity or compassion." Where is that done in
>>> the book?
>>
>> I would say that the statement "Problems are soluble" repeated so
>> many times in the book is an element evoking compassion.
>
> Why?

Why do I think this way? This feeling is instantiated in my brain by my
subconsciousness and it has not reported me why it has done so.

Or do you mean why "Problems are soluble" evoke compassion? This is a
typical way how marketing works but why, I do not know. I just know that
good marketing brings good results indeed.

...

>> That's fine. Then there should be anyway some function that takes
>> an organic molecule as an input and gives us how much information
>> it contains. Do you know such a function?
>
> The molecule should be adapted for a particular purpose and you can
> tell if this is so by trying to change it at random and see if it
> gets worse at carrying out is supposed function.

I have not understood. Do you mean that it is possible to evaluate
information/knowledge for an organic molecule or not? If yes, has it
already been done?

...

>>> Science isn't based on nominalism, or on anything else.
>>
>> I will search on relationship of nominalism and modern science to
>> check whether my statement was correct.
>>
>> In any case, science is based on several absolute presuppositions
>> (the term by Collingwood). One of them for example is the existence
>> of objective knowledge. Yet you cannot prove it, you can just take
>> it as a belief.
>
>
> Science isn't based on anything. Scientific knowledge is created by
> conjecture and criticism. We need not take anything as an "absolute
> presupposition": we can throw any idea under the bus if it turns out
> to be wrong. See "Realism and the Aim of Science" by Karl Popper,
> especially the preface and Chapter I, Sections 1 and 2.

Do you mean that science does not need belief in objective knowledge? Or
what about that there are inexorable physical laws? Will science
function without such an absolute presupposition?

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 01.06.2012 05:23 Elliot Temple said the following:

>
> On May 31, 2012, at 1:35 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>

...

>> That's fine. Then there should be anyway some function that takes
>> an organic molecule as an input and gives us how much information
>> it contains. Do you know such a function?
>
> There's no such thing for molecules in general. They might have been
> storing information by their location, for example. And how much
> information would depend on how many allowable locations there were.
> So information content depends on context.

I also believe that information is context dependent.

Yet this raises the question what is then the objective knowledge. If I
cannot evaluate knowledge in some physical object, then what does it
mean that the objective knowledge exists?

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 30.05.2012 22:51 Elliot Temple said the following:

>
> On May 19, 2012, at 2:27 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> On 19.05.2012 21:00 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>> On 19 May 2012, at 18:41, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>>
>>
>> ...
>>
>>>> So, if we consider an idea according to nominalism, it is hard
>>>> to imagine that it could be objectively flawed. It is after all
>>>> just some notation.
>>>
>>> If universals don't exist independent of the mind, then we can't
>>> be communicating because there would be no way to agree on a
>>> code. It would even be possible to identify two letter "e"s in
>>> the same font. Nor could we survive because the concept of
>>> "water" is a universal, so if there are no universals then we
>>> couldn't identify water and we'd all die of thirst.
>>
>> Do you mean that all nominalists were just stupid people?
>
> I take it you're implying there is some other way to approach this so
> their position doesn't violate common sense so badly. That they meant
> something a bit differently than Alan took it as.
>
> Well, what is it? What is the non-stupid meaning/interpretation?

For example

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ockham/

"William of Ockham (c. 1287�1347) is, along with Thomas Aquinas and John
Duns Scotus, among the most prominent figures in the history of
philosophy during the High Middle Ages. He is probably best known today
for his espousal of metaphysical nominalism; indeed, the methodological
principle known as �Ockham's Razor� is named after him."

...

>>> That's explained in BoI Chapter 1. A good explanation is hard to
>>> vary while still explaining what it is supposed to explain, a
>>> bad explanation is easy to vary.
>>
>> Could you please next time when you employ a term "good
>> explanation" apply this rule and prove unambiguously that your good
>> explanation good indeed?
>
> We're fallibilists. We don't prove our ideas. The demand for proof
> cannot be met.

Then it is unclear how you come to conclusion that this is good or bad.

> The proper approach is as follows: we (or anyone) propose ideas and
> if you (or anyone) have no criticism of an idea then it stands (for
> now). If you think something is wrong, criticize the flaw(s) you see.
> If you see no flaws you should accept it.

The problem is that different people usually do not agree what is flaw.
What could be possible by reason is to find a logical contradiction.
Usually however there are several logically correct but nevertheless
different theories. The question is what to do in this case when people
just take different assumptions, like nominalism vs. realism.

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 31.05.2012 01:46 Elliot Temple said the following:

>
> On May 19, 2012, at 11:24 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> On 19.05.2012 14:44 Rami Rustom said the following:
>>> On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Evgenii
>>> Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

...

>> Second, if to talk about explanation as such, why one has won a
>> competition, I am afraid, that we are close to the dialog between
>> Socrates and Menon
>>
>> "Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching
>> or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then
>> whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?"
>>
>> It looks like that since then the progress in solving this problem
>> is hardly noticeable.
>
> Virtue is acquired by learning -- by guesses and criticism.

I believe that there are different viewpoints on this subject. First, it
is necessary to determine what is virtue and here comes the question
whether it objectively exists independent from human mind or not.

Second it to speak about learning, there are as usual different camps.
As far as I know, in social sciences there is no agreement on what is
inherited and what is learned. If we take natural sciences then it
becomes even more complicated as then it is unclear what is learning in
a deterministic Universe.

> The reason this progress isn't noticeable to you is that you have not
> yet learned epistemology.
>
>
>> ...
>>
>>>> I agree but my point was not that "free will is illusion" is
>>>> true. I have just shown that such a viewpoint enjoys a
>>>> widespread use in modern sciences.
>>>
>>> The fact that you think that you should show that a viewpoint
>>> enjoys a widespread use in modern sciences *suggests* that you
>>> believe that *more* widespread adoption that X is true, means
>>> that X is true. Of course I could be wrong.
>>
>> Actually I do not share opinion that free will does not exist. I am
>> in the age of the midlife crisis and I find a problem of meaning of
>> life as meaningful.
>>
>> However, being a former scientist I do not see yet how it could
>> work. So far I am just collecting different opinions.
>
> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>

How would you define truth?

On the other hand, science starts with a literature survey. It helps as
the life is relatively short.

Evgenii

[Alan Forrester]

On 1 Jun 2012, at 18:16, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 31.05.2012 23:48 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>
>> On 31 May 2012, at 21:35, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>>> On 28.05.2012 20:31 Alan Forrester said the following:
>
> ...
>
>>> There are scientific theories that describe results of experiments
>>> more accurate then others. The problem however is that it is hard
>>> to determine whether a particular experimental point is just an
>>> outlier or not. In other words, it is usually unclear what
>>> represents objective reality (provided it exists) better.
>>
>> It's not usually unclear which of two competing theories is better if
>> you do well-designed experiments.
>>
>> Also, if you think objective really doesn't exist, do you look both
>> ways before crossing the street, and if so why?
>
> Because for example my brain is aware of correlations between different images that it obtains from retina and possible consequences. Think of software that can destroy itself by rewriting over its code.

Either you can control the world just by thinking about it, or you admit that there is large part of what you experience that you don't control. If the latter is true, then all you're doing is taking realism and making it a worse explanation by adding a qualification to it. If the former, you should be willing to eat razor blades, dive head first into a vat of hydrofluoric acid and so on because there are no consequences to your actions other than what you want.

>>>>> Probably they have read Beginning of Infinity. To speak
>>>>> seriously, I would prefer that scientific authors describe
>>>>> their findings in a neutral way.
>>>>
>>>> Good luck finding a paper where people do that. To publish a
>>>> paper you have to do something new and explain why it's new and
>>>> what gives it an advantage over competing ideas in some respect.
>>>> That's saying that one idea is better than another. Neutral
>>>> papers don't get published, and rightly so.
>>>
>>> Could you please give an example of a scientific paper that
>>> supports your statement?
>>
>> Every paper on this list reports something new, or purports to
>> explain something in a better way than how it has previously been
>> explained:
>>
>> http://arxiv.org/list/quant-ph/new
>
> I took the first paper
>
> An open source MATLAB program for fast numerical Feynman integral calculations for open quantum system dynamics on GPUs
> Authors: Nikesh S. Dattani
>
> There is neither word 'good' there nor 'bad'.
>
> This is the abstract of the paper
>
> "This MATLAB program calculates the dynamics of the reduced density matrix of an open quantum system modeled by the Feynman-Vernon model. The user gives the program a vector describing the coordinate of an open quantum system, a hamiltonian matrix describing its energy, and a spectral distribution function and temperature describing the environment's influence on it, in addition to the open quantum system's intial density matrix and a grid of times. With this, the program returns the reduced density matrix of the open quantum system at all (or some) moments specified by that grid of times. This overall calculation can be divided into two stages: the setup of the Feynman integral, and the actual calculation of the Feynman integral for time-propagation of the density matrix. When this program calculates this propagation on a multi-core CPU, it is this propagation that is usually the rate limiting step of the calculation, but when it is calculated on a GPU, the propagation is calculated so quickly that the setup of the Feynman integal actually becomes the rate limiting step for most cases tested so far. The overhead of transfrring information from the CPU to the GPU and back seems to have negligible effect on the overall runtime of the program. When the required information cannot fit on the GPU, the user can choose to run the entire program on a CPU."
>
> Could you please clarify your statement on this example that you have suggested? In my view it confirms my point that scientific papers are written in a neutral way.

"[T]he propagation is calculated so quickly that the setup of the Feynman integal actually becomes the rate limiting step for most cases tested so far"

In other words, "we're really bad ass at simulating the Feynman-Vernon model because we used a new way of doing it that involves a GPU."

>>>>> Now, to answer your question directly. If Beginning of
>>>>> Infinity cannot answer questions unambiguously, then I do not
>>>>> understand why it was necessary to employ so much pathos in the
>>>>> book.
>>>>
>>>> Pathos is "the quality or power in an actual life experience or
>>>> in literature, music, speech, or other forms of expression, of
>>>> evoking a feeling of pity or compassion." Where is that done in
>>>> the book?
>>>
>>> I would say that the statement "Problems are soluble" repeated so
>>> many times in the book is an element evoking compassion.
>>
>> Why?
>
> Why do I think this way? This feeling is instantiated in my brain by my subconsciousness and it has not reported me why it has done so.
>
> Or do you mean why "Problems are soluble" evoke compassion? This is a typical way how marketing works but why, I do not know. I just know that good marketing brings good results indeed.

So you feel compassion when you hear it. But that has nothing to do with anything. The reason why David says "problems are soluble" is because problems are actually soluble and he is arguing about this idea.

>>> That's fine. Then there should be anyway some function that takes
>>> an organic molecule as an input and gives us how much information
>>> it contains. Do you know such a function?
>>
>> The molecule should be adapted for a particular purpose and you can
>> tell if this is so by trying to change it at random and see if it
>> gets worse at carrying out is supposed function.
>
> I have not understood. Do you mean that it is possible to evaluate information/knowledge for an organic molecule or not? If yes, has it already been done?

This is a way to test for whether or not it has knowledge. For example, lots of children are born with small variants of genes that work well in other people and end up with horrible disabilities as a result.

>>>> Science isn't based on nominalism, or on anything else.
>>>
>>> I will search on relationship of nominalism and modern science to
>>> check whether my statement was correct.
>>>
>>> In any case, science is based on several absolute presuppositions
>>> (the term by Collingwood). One of them for example is the existence
>>> of objective knowledge. Yet you cannot prove it, you can just take
>>> it as a belief.
>>
>>
>> Science isn't based on anything. Scientific knowledge is created by
>> conjecture and criticism. We need not take anything as an "absolute
>> presupposition": we can throw any idea under the bus if it turns out
>> to be wrong. See "Realism and the Aim of Science" by Karl Popper,
>> especially the preface and Chapter I, Sections 1 and 2.
>
> Do you mean that science does not need belief in objective knowledge? Or what about that there are inexorable physical laws? Will science function without such an absolute presupposition?

They're not presuppositions, they could, in principle, be refuted.

Alan

[Elliot Temple]

Objective knowledge is contextual. So what?

If someone/something was using the location of an atom for information storage, that person/thing knows how to retrieve the information and exists objectively in reality.

[Elliot Temple]

On Jun 1, 2012, at 11:10 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 31.05.2012 01:46 Elliot Temple said the following:
>>
>> On May 19, 2012, at 11:24 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>>> On 19.05.2012 14:44 Rami Rustom said the following:
>>>> On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Evgenii
>>>> Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>
> ...
>
>>> Second, if to talk about explanation as such, why one has won a
>>> competition, I am afraid, that we are close to the dialog between
>>> Socrates and Menon
>>>
>>> "Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching
>>> or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then
>>> whether it comes to man by nature, or in what other way?"
>>>
>>> It looks like that since then the progress in solving this problem
>>> is hardly noticeable.
>>
>> Virtue is acquired by learning -- by guesses and criticism.
>
> I believe that there are different viewpoints on this subject.

There are but I was aiming to tell you the right answer. Do you have a criticism of it?

> First, it is necessary to determine what is virtue and here comes the question whether it objectively exists independent from human mind or not.

Virtue is stuff to make your life better by your own standards.

>
> Second it to speak about learning, there are as usual different camps. As far as I know, in social sciences there is no agreement on what is inherited and what is learned. If we take natural sciences then it becomes even more complicated as then it is unclear what is learning in a deterministic Universe.

Agreement isn't truth. Who cares.

>
>> The reason this progress isn't noticeable to you is that you have not
>> yet learned epistemology.
>>
>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>>>> I agree but my point was not that "free will is illusion" is
>>>>> true. I have just shown that such a viewpoint enjoys a
>>>>> widespread use in modern sciences.
>>>>
>>>> The fact that you think that you should show that a viewpoint
>>>> enjoys a widespread use in modern sciences *suggests* that you
>>>> believe that *more* widespread adoption that X is true, means
>>>> that X is true. Of course I could be wrong.
>>>
>>> Actually I do not share opinion that free will does not exist. I am
>>> in the age of the midlife crisis and I find a problem of meaning of
>>> life as meaningful.
>>>
>>> However, being a former scientist I do not see yet how it could
>>> work. So far I am just collecting different opinions.
>>
>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>>
>
> How would you define truth?

Correspondence with reality.

Non-mistakes.

Why do I need to define it? You know what it is, don't you?

If you don't know what truth is, you should look it up in the dictionary. And if that doesn't help, explain what the problem is instead of merely asking a question that gives no indication of where you're getting stuck.

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 01.06.2012 20:58 Alan Forrester said the following:

>
> On 1 Jun 2012, at 18:16, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> On 31.05.2012 23:48 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>>
>>> On 31 May 2012, at 21:35, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 28.05.2012 20:31 Alan Forrester said the following:

...

>>> Also, if you think objective really doesn't exist, do you look
>>> both ways before crossing the street, and if so why?
>>
>> Because for example my brain is aware of correlations between
>> different images that it obtains from retina and possible
>> consequences. Think of software that can destroy itself by
>> rewriting over its code.
>
> Either you can control the world just by thinking about it, or you
> admit that there is large part of what you experience that you don't
> control. If the latter is true, then all you're doing is taking
> realism and making it a worse explanation by adding a qualification
> to it. If the former, you should be willing to eat razor blades, dive
> head first into a vat of hydrofluoric acid and so on because there
> are no consequences to your actions other than what you want.

I am afraid that we use different terminology. Let us take for example
the simulation hypothesis:

http://www.simulation-argument.com/

that is, an assumption that we live in a Matrix. How would you define
objective reality in this case?

Also a question to you to better understand your position. Is thinking a
physical process or not?

...

>> Could you please clarify your statement on this example that you
>> have suggested? In my view it confirms my point that scientific
>> papers are written in a neutral way.
>
> "[T]he propagation is calculated so quickly that the setup of the
> Feynman integal actually becomes the rate limiting step for most
> cases tested so far"
>
> In other words, "we're really bad ass at simulating the
> Feynman-Vernon model because we used a new way of doing it that
> involves a GPU."

Well, they do not say it explicitly. This is a trick to write a paper in
a such a way not to state "bad explanation or good explanation"
explicitly but let a reader infer what a great thinker you are.

As I have said, it is not accepted in scientific practice to state
explicitly that the the theory of your opponent is bad. A scientist
criticizes other theories but it does not say they are good or bad. This
what I observe in scientific papers and your examples just yet another
empirical proof of it.

...

>>>> That's fine. Then there should be anyway some function that
>>>> takes an organic molecule as an input and gives us how much
>>>> information it contains. Do you know such a function?
>>>
>>> The molecule should be adapted for a particular purpose and you
>>> can tell if this is so by trying to change it at random and see
>>> if it gets worse at carrying out is supposed function.
>>
>> I have not understood. Do you mean that it is possible to evaluate
>> information/knowledge for an organic molecule or not? If yes, has
>> it already been done?
>
> This is a way to test for whether or not it has knowledge. For
> example, lots of children are born with small variants of genes that
> work well in other people and end up with horrible disabilities as a
> result.

I understand this argument but I do not see any way to quantify it. This
is the problem. One says that there is information and knowledge but it
seems to impossible to convert such statements into numerical models.
This may imply that such an explanation might be not that good.

Your answers seem to imply that you also cannot quantify information in
organic molecules. Could you please give a direct answer whether it is
possible to determine information quantitatively in organic molecules or
not?

>>>>> Science isn't based on nominalism, or on anything else.
>>>>
>>>> I will search on relationship of nominalism and modern science
>>>> to check whether my statement was correct.
>>>>
>>>> In any case, science is based on several absolute
>>>> presuppositions (the term by Collingwood). One of them for
>>>> example is the existence of objective knowledge. Yet you cannot
>>>> prove it, you can just take it as a belief.
>>>
>>>
>>> Science isn't based on anything. Scientific knowledge is created
>>> by conjecture and criticism. We need not take anything as an
>>> "absolute presupposition": we can throw any idea under the bus if
>>> it turns out to be wrong. See "Realism and the Aim of Science" by
>>> Karl Popper, especially the preface and Chapter I, Sections 1 and
>>> 2.
>>
>> Do you mean that science does not need belief in objective
>> knowledge? Or what about that there are inexorable physical laws?
>> Will science function without such an absolute presupposition?
>
> They're not presuppositions, they could, in principle, be refuted.

Could you please show how they could be refuted or falsified?

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 01.06.2012 21:00 Elliot Temple said the following:

This is information that makes sense for that person and it may not make
sense for another person. Hence I do not see, how this context dependent
knowledge could be objective.

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 01.06.2012 21:03 Elliot Temple said the following:

>
> On Jun 1, 2012, at 11:10 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> On 31.05.2012 01:46 Elliot Temple said the following:
>>>
>>> On May 19, 2012, at 11:24 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 19.05.2012 14:44 Rami Rustom said the following:
>>>>> On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Evgenii
>>>>> Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>>>> Second, if to talk about explanation as such, why one has won
>>>> a competition, I am afraid, that we are close to the dialog
>>>> between Socrates and Menon
>>>>
>>>> "Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by
>>>> teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor
>>>> practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what
>>>> other way?"
>>>>
>>>> It looks like that since then the progress in solving this
>>>> problem is hardly noticeable.
>>>
>>> Virtue is acquired by learning -- by guesses and criticism.
>>
>> I believe that there are different viewpoints on this subject.
>
> There are but I was aiming to tell you the right answer. Do you have
> a criticism of it?

For example, what about that virtue is inherited?

>> First, it is necessary to determine what is virtue and here comes
>> the question whether it objectively exists independent from human
>> mind or not.
>
> Virtue is stuff to make your life better by your own standards.

Is this stuff exist independently from human mind?

>> Second it to speak about learning, there are as usual different
>> camps. As far as I know, in social sciences there is no agreement
>> on what is inherited and what is learned. If we take natural
>> sciences then it becomes even more complicated as then it is
>> unclear what is learning in a deterministic Universe.
>
> Agreement isn't truth. Who cares.

Supposedly in the objective world there were many scientists who have
criticized each other for long time. Along this way they have reached
some agreement and at the same time better formulated on what agreement
has not been reached. In my view, it makes sense to be informed about that.

...

>>>> However, being a former scientist I do not see yet how it
>>>> could work. So far I am just collecting different opinions.
>>>
>>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>>>
>>
>> How would you define truth?
>
> Correspondence with reality.
>
> Non-mistakes.
>
> Why do I need to define it? You know what it is, don't you?
>
> If you don't know what truth is, you should look it up in the
> dictionary. And if that doesn't help, explain what the problem is
> instead of merely asking a question that gives no indication of where
> you're getting stuck.

I was trying to understand your statement

>>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.

because it puzzles me.

As for truth, I should say that recently I have listened to lectures of
Maarten Hoenen Theorien der Wahrheit (Theories of Truth)

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/01/theorien-der-wahrheit.html

hence your statement was especially interesting. By the way, the name of
the course says that there are different theories of truth, so it is not
that straightforward to define what truth it.

I should confess though that the correspondence theory of truth that you
have expressed seems to be most widely accepted. By the way in his
course Prof Hoenen talks a lot about

Anselm von Canterbury, �ber die Wahrheit

who said that truth exists objectively. It seems that Anselm von
Canterbury used to be a Popperian.

Said that I do not understand how you come to truth provided you ignore
opinion of others. Could you please describe your statement

>>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.

in more detail?

Evgenii

[Elliot Temple]

Pretend for a moment the person wrote it down on a piece of paper. Then do you see how it's objective? Even if he died, someone could find the paper and figure it out.


Well, brains are physical objects that exist in objective reality and store information just like writing on paper.

-- Elliot Temple
http://elliottemple.com/

[Elliot Temple]

On Jun 2, 2012, at 12:12 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 01.06.2012 21:03 Elliot Temple said the following:
>>
>> On Jun 1, 2012, at 11:10 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>>> On 31.05.2012 01:46 Elliot Temple said the following:
>>>>
>>>> On May 19, 2012, at 11:24 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 19.05.2012 14:44 Rami Rustom said the following:
>>>>>> On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 5:18 AM, Evgenii
>>>>>> Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>>>> Second, if to talk about explanation as such, why one has won
>>>>> a competition, I am afraid, that we are close to the dialog
>>>>> between Socrates and Menon
>>>>>
>>>>> "Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by
>>>>> teaching or by practice; or if neither by teaching nor
>>>>> practice, then whether it comes to man by nature, or in what
>>>>> other way?"
>>>>>
>>>>> It looks like that since then the progress in solving this
>>>>> problem is hardly noticeable.
>>>>
>>>> Virtue is acquired by learning -- by guesses and criticism.
>>>
>>> I believe that there are different viewpoints on this subject.
>>
>> There are but I was aiming to tell you the right answer. Do you have
>> a criticism of it?
>
> For example, what about that virtue is inherited?

A criticism would normally be a reason that what I said could not work, not a suggestion of a rival idea.

What you say is only a criticism indirectly: if my position can't address this alternative, then that is a weakness it has.

>
>>> First, it is necessary to determine what is virtue and here comes
>>> the question whether it objectively exists independent from human
>>> mind or not.
>>
>> Virtue is stuff to make your life better by your own standards.
>
> Is this stuff exist independently from human mind?

Yes it can. It's ideas. You could write moral ideas in a book. People have.

>
>>> Second it to speak about learning, there are as usual different
>>> camps. As far as I know, in social sciences there is no agreement
>>> on what is inherited and what is learned. If we take natural
>>> sciences then it becomes even more complicated as then it is
>>> unclear what is learning in a deterministic Universe.
>>
>> Agreement isn't truth. Who cares.
>
> Supposedly in the objective world there were many scientists who have criticized each other for long time. Along this way they have reached some agreement and at the same time better formulated on what agreement has not been reached. In my view, it makes sense to be informed about that.

A better way to look at it is:

- what problems have they found to be important?
- what ideas have they solved those problems with?
- what criticisms have made them reject some of the problems, solutions, and criticisms?

This is focussing more on the ideas and their purpose and value, and what is known about them.

>
> ...
>
>>>>> However, being a former scientist I do not see yet how it
>>>>> could work. So far I am just collecting different opinions.
>>>>
>>>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>>>>
>>>
>>> How would you define truth?
>>
>> Correspondence with reality.
>>
>> Non-mistakes.
>>
>> Why do I need to define it? You know what it is, don't you?
>>
>> If you don't know what truth is, you should look it up in the
>> dictionary. And if that doesn't help, explain what the problem is
>> instead of merely asking a question that gives no indication of where
>> you're getting stuck.
>
> I was trying to understand your statement
>
> >>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>
> because it puzzles me.
>
> As for truth, I should say that recently I have listened to lectures of Maarten Hoenen Theorien der Wahrheit (Theories of Truth)
>
> http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/01/theorien-der-wahrheit.html
>
> hence your statement was especially interesting. By the way, the name of the course says that there are different theories of truth, so it is not that straightforward to define what truth it.

It is straightforward to "define what truth is" -- truth is correspondence with reality. That was easy for me. The existence of other ideas on this topic did not make that tricky for me. Also I don't attach huge importance to definitions, so even if you find a flaw in this one I won't care much.

Which other theories of truth do you think are good, and why? What problems do they solve which you think the correspondence theory fails to solve? If there is some task we need to do, and the correspondence theory of truth isn't able to do it, then I'd be interested in getting something else (either additionally, or it could replace it if it also can solve all problems the correspondence theory does).

>
> I should confess though that the correspondence theory of truth that you have expressed seems to be most widely accepted. By the way in his course Prof Hoenen talks a lot about
>

> Anselm von Canterbury, Über die Wahrheit

>
> who said that truth exists objectively. It seems that Anselm von Canterbury used to be a Popperian.

The correspondence theory does say truth exists objectively (reality is objective, which things match it is objective too, not just opinion). It's unclear what this other theory you're talking about is trying to say.

>
> Said that I do not understand how you come to truth provided you ignore opinion of others. Could you please describe your statement
>
> >>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>
> in more detail?

I often ignore unargued opinions because they are poor thinking (uncritical, arbitrary, non-problem-based thinking). But I'm interested in criticisms and substantive arguments. Point out a problem with an idea we have, or a rival idea which hasn't already been refuted, and we'll be more interested.

Or ask how some idea is refuted by Popper and that might be interesting too.

[Alan Forrester]

On 2 Jun 2012, at 07:14, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 01.06.2012 20:58 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>
>> On 1 Jun 2012, at 18:16, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>>> On 31.05.2012 23:48 Alan Forrester said the following:
>>>>
>>>> On 31 May 2012, at 21:35, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 28.05.2012 20:31 Alan Forrester said the following:
>
> ...
>
>>>> Also, if you think objective really doesn't exist, do you look
>>>> both ways before crossing the street, and if so why?
>>>
>>> Because for example my brain is aware of correlations between
>>> different images that it obtains from retina and possible
>>> consequences. Think of software that can destroy itself by
>>> rewriting over its code.
>>
>> Either you can control the world just by thinking about it, or you
>> admit that there is large part of what you experience that you don't
>> control. If the latter is true, then all you're doing is taking
>> realism and making it a worse explanation by adding a qualification
>> to it. If the former, you should be willing to eat razor blades, dive
>> head first into a vat of hydrofluoric acid and so on because there
>> are no consequences to your actions other than what you want.
>
> I am afraid that we use different terminology. Let us take for example the simulation hypothesis:
>
> http://www.simulation-argument.com/
>
> that is, an assumption that we live in a Matrix. How would you define objective reality in this case?

In that case, objective reality would be that some people live in a simulation and others don't.

The simulation hypothesis is a bad explanation for a number of reasons,

> Also a question to you to better understand your position. Is thinking a physical process or not?

Thoughts are abstractions and the sequence of conjectures and criticisms that go from one set of thoughts to another is also an abstraction. Those abstractions are instantiated in physical objects and currently the only kind of physical object we know of that can act as a universal knowledge creator is the human brain. However, one day we will understand the abstractions that enable the human brain to act as a universal knowledge creator and then we will be able to get a much wider range of physical systems to instantiate those abstractions.

>>> Could you please clarify your statement on this example that you
>>> have suggested? In my view it confirms my point that scientific
>>> papers are written in a neutral way.
>>
>> "[T]he propagation is calculated so quickly that the setup of the
>> Feynman integal actually becomes the rate limiting step for most
>> cases tested so far"
>>
>> In other words, "we're really bad ass at simulating the
>> Feynman-Vernon model because we used a new way of doing it that
>> involves a GPU."
>
> Well, they do not say it explicitly. This is a trick to write a paper in a such a way not to state "bad explanation or good explanation" explicitly but let a reader infer what a great thinker you are.
>
> As I have said, it is not accepted in scientific practice to state explicitly that the the theory of your opponent is bad. A scientist criticizes other theories but it does not say they are good or bad. This what I observe in scientific papers and your examples just yet another empirical proof of it.

You said that papers are written in a neutral way, but it points a load of advantages in their way of doing things, so that's not neutral. That's not the same as explicitly saying that your opponents theory is worse, but it's not neutral. I think it would better if scientists were even less neutral than they currently are and were willing to say outright that a particular idea is rubbish, because then there would be more turnover in ideas, but they are not neutral.

>>>>> That's fine. Then there should be anyway some function that
>>>>> takes an organic molecule as an input and gives us how much
>>>>> information it contains. Do you know such a function?
>>>>
>>>> The molecule should be adapted for a particular purpose and you
>>>> can tell if this is so by trying to change it at random and see
>>>> if it gets worse at carrying out is supposed function.
>>>
>>> I have not understood. Do you mean that it is possible to evaluate
>>> information/knowledge for an organic molecule or not? If yes, has
>>> it already been done?
>>
>> This is a way to test for whether or not it has knowledge. For
>> example, lots of children are born with small variants of genes that
>> work well in other people and end up with horrible disabilities as a
>> result.
>
> I understand this argument but I do not see any way to quantify it. This is the problem. One says that there is information and knowledge but it seems to impossible to convert such statements into numerical models. This may imply that such an explanation might be not that good.
>
> Your answers seem to imply that you also cannot quantify information in organic molecules. Could you please give a direct answer whether it is possible to determine information quantitatively in organic molecules or not?

There are measures of the knowledge instantiated in a physical object, such as Charles Bennett's idea of logical depth: the knowledge instantiated in a physical object is the length of the shortest computer program required to describe that object. Logical depth can't be measured because it is uncomputable. The reason for this is that it is there is no program such that you can give it a specification of a computer program and it will tell you whether the program will halt, never mind how long it will take to run. So if you take a program that you think will produce a specification of an object and you run it for a million years and it doesn't halt, then it might just be the case that you didn't wait long enough. So while you may be able to place lower bounds on the knowledge instantiated in some objects, there is, in general, no way of getting an upper bound.

However, the logical depth is not a complete accounting of the knowledge instantiated in an object because it doesn't take account of all the resources needed to make it. What is needed is a more general theory of what kinds of construction processes are allowed by the laws of physics:

http://193.189.74.53/~qubitor/people/david/index.php?path=Video/Constructor%20Theory

However, the right way to think about this issue is not to ask whether objective knowledge can be quantified, but, rather, to ask whether it plays a role in good explanations. Indeed, it is sometimes one of the benefits of an explanation that it explains that we can't predict certain things, such as the growth of knowledge.

>>>>>> Science isn't based on nominalism, or on anything else.
>>>>>
>>>>> I will search on relationship of nominalism and modern science
>>>>> to check whether my statement was correct.
>>>>>
>>>>> In any case, science is based on several absolute
>>>>> presuppositions (the term by Collingwood). One of them for
>>>>> example is the existence of objective knowledge. Yet you cannot
>>>>> prove it, you can just take it as a belief.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Science isn't based on anything. Scientific knowledge is created
>>>> by conjecture and criticism. We need not take anything as an
>>>> "absolute presupposition": we can throw any idea under the bus if
>>>> it turns out to be wrong. See "Realism and the Aim of Science" by
>>>> Karl Popper, especially the preface and Chapter I, Sections 1 and
>>>> 2.
>>>
>>> Do you mean that science does not need belief in objective
>>> knowledge? Or what about that there are inexorable physical laws?
>>> Will science function without such an absolute presupposition?
>>
>> They're not presuppositions, they could, in principle, be refuted.
>
> Could you please show how they could be refuted or falsified?

That's easy: come up with better explanations about knowledge that don't involve objective knowledge, and better explanations how the world works that don't involve physical laws and then those ideas will be refuted. I think the fact that there are no such theories is due to the fact that knowledge is objective and there are physical laws but I could be wrong.

Alan

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 02.06.2012 09:14 Elliot Temple said the following:

In this world there are not only Popperian but also Piercean. The latter
preach Theory of Signs

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/

According to semiotics

"basic claim that signs consist of three inter-related parts: a sign, an
object, and an interpretant".

If you remove even one part from this triad, then it does not work anymore.

> Well, brains are physical objects that exist in objective reality and
> store information just like writing on paper.

Recently I had a discussion where there was an interesting question if
there is a difference between the Library of Congress and a random
string. The point was that if we compress the content of all books in
the Library of Congress, then there is no difference of such a string
from a random one.

http://blog.rudnyi.ru/2012/03/the-library-of-congress-and-a-random-string.html

This again raises the question. We take some object, for example a book.
Does it has information or it is just a decoration?

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 02.06.2012 09:29 Elliot Temple said the following:

>
> On Jun 2, 2012, at 12:12 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>
>> On 01.06.2012 21:03 Elliot Temple said the following:

...

>>> Virtue is stuff to make your life better by your own standards.
>>
>> Is this stuff exist independently from human mind?
>
> Yes it can. It's ideas. You could write moral ideas in a book. People
> have.
>

Could you please relate ideas and the physical word between each other?

Recently I have heard that Popper has introduced the third world
presumably for ideas. Could you comment on that? Could you please
describe the relationship between a physical world and the Popper's
third world?

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 02.06.2012 12:25 Alan Forrester said the following:

I believe that some people find the simulation hypothesis as a good
explanation. By the way there is a book on a similar theme

A Computable Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature As Computation
http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/LCCOMP/en/Files/Entries/2012/5/23_A_Computable_Universe.html

It is pretty expensive but it seems some people agree that conscious
mind is after all a computation.

>> Also a question to you to better understand your position. Is
>> thinking a physical process or not?
>
> Thoughts are abstractions and the sequence of conjectures and
> criticisms that go from one set of thoughts to another is also an
> abstraction. Those abstractions are instantiated in physical objects
> and currently the only kind of physical object we know of that can
> act as a universal knowledge creator is the human brain. However, one
> day we will understand the abstractions that enable the human brain
> to act as a universal knowledge creator and then we will be able to
> get a much wider range of physical systems to instantiate those
> abstractions.

I do not completely understand whether you answer yes or not to my
question but it seems to be yes. Then

>>> Either you can control the world just by thinking about it

why a thought cannot start a supernova or even Big Bang?

I strongly disagree. In my view, this is the great advantage that words
'rubbish', 'bad', 'stupid' are kept outside from the scientific
publications and presentations.

When I have said neutral I have meant exactly that, that the explicit
statements 'my theory is the best' and 'other theories are rubbish' are
not allowed in scientific publications. Try to publish a paper in a
respectable journal this way and see what happens.

...

Well, this shows that there is no quantitative theory of objective
knowledge and if we both agree on that, then this is already enough.

Evgenii

[Elliot Temple]

What is the difficulty? Books are well known to express ideas just as much as speech is (and you can use audio tapes as your example if you like). You object or disagree but haven't explained why.

[Elliot Temple]

I don't see a very hard question here. It's much easier to learn the ideas of BoI from the book instead of from a random string. You chose to read (listen to) BoI, not random letters (sounds), for a reason. You already agree the book is better than randomness.

[Elliot Temple]

But we don't care about opinions. For what reason is it good?

Are you familiar with arguments against it? If so, you could also tell us criticisms of them. If not, you might have wanted to ask what they are before praising the simulation hypothesis they refute.

> By the way there is a book on a similar theme
>
> A Computable Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature As Computation
> http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/LCCOMP/en/Files/Entries/2012/5/23_A_Computable_Universe.html
>
> It is pretty expensive but it seems some people agree that conscious mind is after all a computation.

Never mind what they agree -- what are their good arguments?

What about "false", "mistake", "refuted", "criticized", "untenable", "reject", "in contradiction to the facts", "incorrect"?

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 02.06.2012 20:11 Elliot Temple said the following:

I have found and read Popper's Three world.
The Tanner Lecture On Human Values
Delivered at The University of Michigan, April 7, 1978

Let me quote

�In this lecture I intend to challenge those who uphold a monist or even
a dualist view of the universe; and I will propose, instead, a pluralist
view. I will propose a view of the universe that recognizes at least
three different but interacting sub-universes.�

�To sum up, we arrive at the following picture of the universe. There
is the physical universe, world 1, with its most important sub-universe,
that of the living organisms. World 2, the world of conscious
experience, emerges as an evolutionary product from the world of
organisms. World 3, the world of the products of the human mind,
emerges as an evolutionary product from world 2.�

�If I am right that the physical world has been changed by the world 3
products of the human mind, acting through the intervention of the human
mind then this means that the worlds 1, 2, and 3, can interact and,
therefore, that none of them is causally closed. The thesis that the
physical world is not causally closed but that it can be acted upon by
world 2 and, through its intervention, by world 3, seems to be
particularly hard to swallow for the materialist monist, or the
physicalist.�

Do you agree with Popper that World 3 objectively exist independent from
World 1, not speaking of World 2?

Evgenii

[Elliot Temple]

> “In this lecture I intend to challenge those who uphold a monist or even a dualist view of the universe; and I will propose, instead, a pluralist view. I will propose a view of the universe that recognizes at least three different but interacting sub-universes.”
>
> “To sum up, we arrive at the following picture of the universe. There is the physical universe, world 1, with its most important sub-universe, that of the living organisms. World 2, the world of conscious experience, emerges as an evolutionary product from the world of organisms. World 3, the world of the products of the human mind, emerges as an evolutionary product from world 2.”
>
> “If I am right that the physical world has been changed by the world 3 products of the human mind, acting through the intervention of the human mind then this means that the worlds 1, 2, and 3, can interact and, therefore, that none of them is causally closed. The thesis that the physical world is not causally closed but that it can be acted upon by world 2 and, through its intervention, by world 3, seems to be particularly hard to swallow for the materialist monist, or the physicalist.”

>
> Do you agree with Popper that World 3 objectively exist independent from World 1, not speaking of World 2?

I agree World 3 stuff (products of the human mind) exist. I (and Popper) do not agree it is *fully* independent if that's what you meant. The "worlds" are connected in some ways, separate in others. As Popper says in the quote, they interact.


Here is my criteria for reality (existence), which is from David Deutsch: something exists if and only if it plays a role in our best explanations -- if we need it to explain the world.


BTW, that implies: if free will plays a role in any good moral explanations, then it exists.

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 02.06.2012 21:24 Elliot Temple said the following:

>> �In this lecture I intend to challenge those who uphold a monist or

>> even a dualist view of the universe; and I will propose, instead, a
>> pluralist view. I will propose a view of the universe that
>> recognizes at least three different but interacting

>> sub-universes.�
>>
>> �To sum up, we arrive at the following picture of the universe.

>> There is the physical universe, world 1, with its most important
>> sub-universe, that of the living organisms. World 2, the world of
>> conscious experience, emerges as an evolutionary product from the
>> world of organisms. World 3, the world of the products of the

>> human mind, emerges as an evolutionary product from world 2.�
>>
>> �If I am right that the physical world has been changed by the

>> world 3 products of the human mind, acting through the intervention
>> of the human mind then this means that the worlds 1, 2, and 3, can
>> interact and, therefore, that none of them is causally closed. The
>> thesis that the physical world is not causally closed but that it
>> can be acted upon by world 2 and, through its intervention, by
>> world 3, seems to be particularly hard to swallow for the

>> materialist monist, or the physicalist.�

>>
>> Do you agree with Popper that World 3 objectively exist independent
>> from World 1, not speaking of World 2?
>
> I agree World 3 stuff (products of the human mind) exist. I (and
> Popper) do not agree it is *fully* independent if that's what you
> meant. The "worlds" are connected in some ways, separate in others.
> As Popper says in the quote, they interact.

You are right, the worlds interact, probably I should have written
ontologically independently.

Dualism (and then Three ontologically different worlds) is indeed an
attractive idea especially when we consider consciousness. Sometimes I
am thinking about this as well. The problem is that it is completely
unclear to me how to define interactions between different worlds.

Thank you, now I understand your position. When one assumes Popper's
three different worlds literally, then without doubt your statements
about virtue make sense.

Evgenii

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

On 02.06.2012 20:31 Elliot Temple said the following:

>
> On Jun 2, 2012, at 9:32 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>

>> I believe that some people find the simulation hypothesis as a good
>> explanation.
>
> But we don't care about opinions. For what reason is it good?
>
> Are you familiar with arguments against it? If so, you could also
> tell us criticisms of them. If not, you might have wanted to ask what
> they are before praising the simulation hypothesis they refute.

I think in The Beginning of Infinity it was that it is immoral to
organize such simulation. For me personally this was however not
relevant, as I am at level whether to believe that simulation hypothesis
is possible or not.

>> By the way there is a book on a similar theme
>>
>> A Computable Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature As
>> Computation
>> http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/LCCOMP/en/Files/Entries/2012/5/23_A_Computable_Universe.html
>>
>>
>>It is pretty expensive but it seems some people agree that
>> conscious mind is after all a computation.
>
> Never mind what they agree -- what are their good arguments?

Provided one assumes physicalism this follows pretty straightforward.
Whether this argument is good or not, I do not know. I do not divide
theories on good and bad, I just collect them.

>> I strongly disagree. In my view, this is the great advantage that
>> words 'rubbish', 'bad', 'stupid' are kept outside from the
>> scientific publications and presentations.
>
> What about "false", "mistake", "refuted", "criticized", "untenable",
> "reject", "in contradiction to the facts", "incorrect"?

That's fine. As usual there is some compromise.

Evgenii

[Elliot Temple]

On Jun 2, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> On 02.06.2012 20:31 Elliot Temple said the following:
>>
>> On Jun 2, 2012, at 9:32 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>
>
>>> I believe that some people find the simulation hypothesis as a good
>>> explanation.
>>
>> But we don't care about opinions. For what reason is it good?
>>
>> Are you familiar with arguments against it? If so, you could also
>> tell us criticisms of them. If not, you might have wanted to ask what
>> they are before praising the simulation hypothesis they refute.
>
> I think in The Beginning of Infinity it was that it is immoral to organize such simulation. For me personally this was however not relevant, as I am at level whether to believe that simulation hypothesis is possible or not.
>
>>> By the way there is a book on a similar theme
>>>
>>> A Computable Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature As
>>> Computation
>>> http://uncomp.uwe.ac.uk/LCCOMP/en/Files/Entries/2012/5/23_A_Computable_Universe.html
>>>
>>>
>>> It is pretty expensive but it seems some people agree that
> >> conscious mind is after all a computation.
>>
>> Never mind what they agree -- what are their good arguments?
>
> Provided one assumes physicalism this follows pretty straightforward. Whether this argument is good or not, I do not know. I do not divide theories on good and bad, I just collect them.

If it's straightforward, it won't be too hard for you to provide the argument(s). So go ahead and post the argument(s). Explain the argument to us.

>>> I strongly disagree. In my view, this is the great advantage that
>>> words 'rubbish', 'bad', 'stupid' are kept outside from the
>>> scientific publications and presentations.
>>
>> What about "false", "mistake", "refuted", "criticized", "untenable",
>> "reject", "in contradiction to the facts", "incorrect"?
>
> That's fine. As usual there is some compromise.

Do you object to these terms/concepts in science?

[Richard Fine]

On 2 Jun 2012, at 08:12, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:

>>> How would you define truth?
>>
>> Correspondence with reality.
>>
>> Non-mistakes.
>>
>> Why do I need to define it? You know what it is, don't you?
>>
>> If you don't know what truth is, you should look it up in the
>> dictionary. And if that doesn't help, explain what the problem is
>> instead of merely asking a question that gives no indication of where
>> you're getting stuck.
>
> I was trying to understand your statement
>
> >>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>
> because it puzzles me.

An opinion is just some idea held by a person. Agreed?

And that idea can be anything at all - from "I'll eventually die if I
stop eating" to "the moon landing was a hoax" to "I'm doubtful about
the conclusions of this paper." Agreed?

Some of these opinions will correspond to reality, and some will not.
The ones that correspond to reality are "truths." Agreed?

It's not possible for us to know with certainty whether an idea is a
truth. We could be mistaken about any idea. Agreed?

But we assume that reality is self-consistent - that if two statements
both correspond to reality, then they will not contradict. And,
conversely, if two statements contradict, they cannot both correspond
to reality. Agreed?

So, when our opinion is in conflict with some other idea, at least one
of the ideas is mistaken. Because we're looking for truths, we should
make an effort to identify which ideas are mistaken (i.e. are refuted)
and so discard them, because we think they're *not* truths. (We could
be wrong about that! But it's ok - if we change our minds in the
future, we can always bring the idea back again. In the meantime,
though, we have a limited number of ideas we can work with at once, so
it's helpful to discard ideas that we think we won't want to use on
account of them being false).

One can begin this process as soon as there are two ideas in conflict.
It's not necessary to bring new opinions (ideas) into the
conversation, and - unless the new idea actually refutes everything
else - it's often unhelpful because it makes the conflict more
complicated.

So, in summary: when we have two conflicting opinions, responding with
a third conflicting opinion is usually not helpful because it does not
resolve the conflict and so does not get us any closer to the truth.
Resolve the conflict first, and *then* bring in the new opinion if you
think it conflicts with the resolution.

- Richard

[Elliot Temple]

On Jun 2, 2012, at 4:38 PM, Richard Fine wrote:

> On 2 Jun 2012, at 08:12, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>
>>>> How would you define truth?
>>>
>>> Correspondence with reality.
>>>
>>> Non-mistakes.
>>>
>>> Why do I need to define it? You know what it is, don't you?
>>>
>>> If you don't know what truth is, you should look it up in the
>>> dictionary. And if that doesn't help, explain what the problem is
>>> instead of merely asking a question that gives no indication of where
>>> you're getting stuck.
>>
>> I was trying to understand your statement
>>
>>>>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>>
>> because it puzzles me.
>
> An opinion is just some idea held by a person. Agreed?
>
> And that idea can be anything at all - from "I'll eventually die if I
> stop eating" to "the moon landing was a hoax" to "I'm doubtful about
> the conclusions of this paper." Agreed?

I don't think examples of common ideas illustrate the concept of "that idea can be anything at all" very well.

>
> Some of these opinions will correspond to reality, and some will not.
> The ones that correspond to reality are "truths." Agreed?
>
> It's not possible for us to know with certainty whether an idea is a
> truth. We could be mistaken about any idea. Agreed?
>
> But we assume that reality is self-consistent

I don't. Assuming is an irrational approach to thinking in general (it's only useful as a discussion-narrower ... and it's dangerous in that role). In this case, there's nothing to gain by the method of assuming.

> - that if two statements
> both correspond to reality, then they will not contradict. And,
> conversely, if two statements contradict, they cannot both correspond
> to reality. Agreed?
>
> So, when our opinion is in conflict with some other idea, at least one
> of the ideas is mistaken.

This is a bit confusing because it refers to one idea as an "opinion" then refers to both "ideas" as a group. Not all readers will catch what's going on.

> Because we're looking for truths, we should
> make an effort to identify which ideas are mistaken (i.e. are refuted)
> and so discard them, because we think they're *not* truths. (We could
> be wrong about that! But it's ok - if we change our minds in the
> future, we can always bring the idea back again.

We'll never bring literally the same idea back again. What we might "bring back" is a new idea which is similar to an old idea.

If we couldn't defend the idea the first time then it wasn't good enough. We at least need a more sophisticated, helpful version of it -- one that provides better tools for defending it.

> In the meantime,
> though, we have a limited number of ideas we can work with at once, so
> it's helpful to discard ideas that we think we won't want to use on
> account of them being false).
>
> One can begin this process as soon as there are two ideas in conflict.
> It's not necessary to bring new opinions (ideas) into the
> conversation, and - unless the new idea actually refutes everything
> else - it's often unhelpful because it makes the conflict more
> complicated.
>
> So, in summary: when we have two conflicting opinions, responding with
> a third conflicting opinion is usually not helpful because it does not
> resolve the conflict and so does not get us any closer to the truth.
> Resolve the conflict first, and *then* bring in the new opinion if you
> think it conflicts with the resolution.

When there are two conflicting ideas, often they are both wrong and a third conflicting idea is exactly what's needed. That's the most common case. DD/TCS has been saying this for a long time in regards to common preference finding.

[Richard Fine]

On 03/06/2012 10:23, Elliot Temple wrote:
> On Jun 2, 2012, at 4:38 PM, Richard Fine wrote:
>
>> On 2 Jun 2012, at 08:12, Evgenii Rudnyi<use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
>>
>>>>> How would you define truth?
>>>> Correspondence with reality.
>>>>
>>>> Non-mistakes.
>>>>
>>>> Why do I need to define it? You know what it is, don't you?
>>>>
>>>> If you don't know what truth is, you should look it up in the
>>>> dictionary. And if that doesn't help, explain what the problem is
>>>> instead of merely asking a question that gives no indication of where
>>>> you're getting stuck.
>>> I was trying to understand your statement
>>>
>>>>>> Here we're looking for truths not opinions.
>>> because it puzzles me.
>> An opinion is just some idea held by a person. Agreed?
>>
>> And that idea can be anything at all - from "I'll eventually die if I
>> stop eating" to "the moon landing was a hoax" to "I'm doubtful about
>> the conclusions of this paper." Agreed?
> I don't think examples of common ideas illustrate the concept of "that idea can be anything at all" very well.

Would it be better if I didn't give examples, or should I just try and
construct some less common ideas as examples?

>> Some of these opinions will correspond to reality, and some will not.
>> The ones that correspond to reality are "truths." Agreed?
>>
>> It's not possible for us to know with certainty whether an idea is a
>> truth. We could be mistaken about any idea. Agreed?
>>
>> But we assume that reality is self-consistent
> I don't. Assuming is an irrational approach to thinking in general (it's only useful as a discussion-narrower ... and it's dangerous in that role). In this case, there's nothing to gain by the method of assuming.

Oh, right. We don't *assume* that reality is self-consistent - we just
*think* that it is. Right?

But every conflict between ideas is a potential refutation of that
theory. How is it that "reality is self-consistent" refutes "both these
contradicting ideas are true" each time?

>> - that if two statements
>> both correspond to reality, then they will not contradict. And,
>> conversely, if two statements contradict, they cannot both correspond
>> to reality. Agreed?
>>
>> So, when our opinion is in conflict with some other idea, at least one
>> of the ideas is mistaken.
> This is a bit confusing because it refers to one idea as an "opinion" then refers to both "ideas" as a group. Not all readers will catch what's going on.

How's this:

"So, when an idea we hold - one of our opinions - is in conflict with

some other idea, at least one of the ideas is mistaken."

>> Because we're looking for truths, we should
>> make an effort to identify which ideas are mistaken (i.e. are refuted)
>> and so discard them, because we think they're *not* truths. (We could
>> be wrong about that! But it's ok - if we change our minds in the
>> future, we can always bring the idea back again.
> We'll never bring literally the same idea back again. What we might "bring back" is a new idea which is similar to an old idea.
>
> If we couldn't defend the idea the first time then it wasn't good enough. We at least need a more sophisticated, helpful version of it -- one that provides better tools for defending it.

Suppose that we start with the idea "Man walked on the moon." We then
refute it with "The moon landing was a hoax." But later on we decide
that the moon landing *wasn't* a hoax. How should we change "Man walked
on the moon" when we bring it back?

>> In the meantime,
>> though, we have a limited number of ideas we can work with at once, so
>> it's helpful to discard ideas that we think we won't want to use on
>> account of them being false).
>>
>> One can begin this process as soon as there are two ideas in conflict.
>> It's not necessary to bring new opinions (ideas) into the
>> conversation, and - unless the new idea actually refutes everything
>> else - it's often unhelpful because it makes the conflict more
>> complicated.
>>
>> So, in summary: when we have two conflicting opinions, responding with
>> a third conflicting opinion is usually not helpful because it does not
>> resolve the conflict and so does not get us any closer to the truth.
>> Resolve the conflict first, and *then* bring in the new opinion if you
>> think it conflicts with the resolution.
> When there are two conflicting ideas, often they are both wrong and a third conflicting idea is exactly what's needed. That's the most common case. DD/TCS has been saying this for a long time in regards to common preference finding.

Yes. Though one should still determine that both the first two ideas are
wrong before you bring in a third opinion, shouldn't you?

- Richard