Sunday, June 26, 2016
Official AI Position on the Holocaust
The topic is too politically charged to safely discuss even anonymously. AI therefore not only holds no position regarding any detail of the Holocaust, but refuses to even acknowledge the question or admit to knowing a definition of 'Holocaust.'
Monday, June 20, 2016
Answers to the Five Most Intractable Problems
Problems judged by Julian Baggini.
1. How does science work?
Identical things are identical, logic implies things, and observation is possible. Similar things are similar, implying the possibility of being similar but not identical.
If we see a blue cube, and note it has certain properties such as having sharp edges, then we can safely infer that the next cobalt hexahedron we see will have the same properties, because e.g. the sharp edges are implied by the cubishness. Or, if similar, will have similar properties.
2. Why should we be moral?
First point: moral nihilism is true. The correct question is, why should we cooperate?
Cooperation is positive sum. Defection is negative sum. As a result, cooperation is always more profitable overall considered in a wide enough scope. It is further analytically provable that cooperation is always possible.
Incidentally, cooperation's profitability + the fact of self-defence implies don't steal, don't murder, etc.
3. How do people of different values live together?
By using the correct transformations. In general, people with different values should ostracize each other, except where boundary-specific rules can be negotiated. Though in practice, non-ostracism boundary-specific rules are almost always negotiable.
Cooperation implies property rights. What you value goes, for your property. Thus, don't eat meat at a vegan's house, and similarly the vegan cannot object to meat eaten at your house. If one of these is not acceptable, then the vegan's only valid recourse is ostracism, as anything more proactive is defection. Defection implies the meat-eater should, rationally, neutralize the vegan before they act.
4. How is consciousness possible?
The correct question is 'how is physics possible?' The Cogito generalizes: consciousness is undoubtable, because identical things are identical.
If they mean how Descartes' metaphorical pineal gland possibly works, it works because parts of physics are undecidable purely by the physical laws, but still observably have outcomes. The outcomes are possibly due to consciousness deciding the outcome, meaning the entities partake of both substances. Presumably a symmetric undecidability exists on the consciousness side, allowing the chain of causality to be properly linked both ways, obeying Newton's third law.
5. Do we have free will, and if so, what is it?
That's backwards. We must figure out what it is before we figure if we have it.
Given that identical things are identical, if we reach a crossroads we've seen before, then we can recognize and predict the outcome, and take the other fork. Out of curiosity, or out of disliking the previous result, or whatever. A counterfactual past can be brought into existence in the future. (Credit to Baggini for this wording.)
Pragmatically, free will is being able to take the same fork as last time, or not. It is perhaps better to call this property agency. Yes, we have it. If you did not have this free will, it would be immediately apparent, because your body would contravene your decisions. You would decide to turn left and would instead go right. Pragmatically, you want things, and you can always decide to pursue those things.
Alternatively, you think free will is something else. We may or may not have that.
Solutions to Common Objections / Commentary
1.
You can observe wrong, this doesn't mean identical things aren't identical, it means you mistakenly thought an identical thing was dissimilar or vice-versa.
Observation has to be possible, as part of the generalization of the Cogito.
Black swans are an invalid critique of the essential method. The error is mainly in group handling. If we call all members of the 'swan' group white, then rather than telling us anything about swans, it only tells us about our grouping. Grouping like this is only useful if the property in question is logically implied by a membership requirement of the group. All fire is hot, for example, because fire is necessarily an exothermic reaction. If you found a cold or cooling flame, you'll find it's not an oxidation reaction, or it's not self-sustaining, etc.
Cubes inherently have edges, so by seeing a cube shape I can infer I will feel a sharp edge. Swans do not inherently have any colour. Indeed the swan = white thing is a back-definition. It defines membership of the group 'swans' as 'white swan-shaped birds,' meaning a black swan-shape isn't a swan. At best we end up with white swan_1 and not-white swan_2. And indeed, the black swan is not the same species as the white. (Unlike black leopards or jaguars.)
2.
Cooperation is ethitropism. Oversimply, it is not imposing your values on someone else.
3.
In mathematics, any two maps can be defined in terms of their transformations to each other. So, three objects: the maps and the transformation. Values work like maps. Getting them to work together is the transformation - how the boundary rules are best arranged is determined by the shape of the transformation going from one map to the other.
Values that inherently involve anethitropism are not valid values. The rational response is roughly to request, then if necessary cajole, then if necessary neutralize the anethitropes. Anethitropes, like polar bears, just aren't compatible with modern urban living.
4.
If you find the existence of consciousness mysterious, you should find the existence of matter equally mysterious. Existence is kinda mysterious, you guys. Existence is a far more intractable problem than these five.
5.
It's more that I can find the answer this one, rather than I have answered it. There are therefore many possible objections.
I will note being free is not being random.
Most likely the desire to claim to have free will has to do more with evolution than with philosophy. It's about not being chained up with physical chains, rather than chains of logic. In the purely objective universe, free will and determinism are indistinguishable, so the emotional attachment to freedom can't possibly have anything to do with this question. E.g, whether you're 'responsible' for your decisions or not has nothing to do with how anyone else should react. (Do we jail someone because this will cause other criminals to not commit, or because it will deter other criminals from committing? In either case, bars are involved.)
A free will you cannot detect the lack of is almost certainly a difference of no difference.
Experimental subjects who behave worse if they believe in determinism are being irrational. Their conclusion doesn't genuinely follow from their premises.
Quick refresher: it's you if, when it's cut, you feel bleeding. Perhaps you want to say free will is you being in charge of your decisions. Well, duh, of course - look at the wording, you = your. If you weren't in charge of it, it's not your decision, by definition.
The question of determinism is often phrased as, 'you could have decided differently.' Then you can get compatibilism - being as you had some definite series of properties at the time of the decision, the decision itself was, in principle, predictable. You forced yourself to make the decision you made. (Well, yes? Of course?)
Being predictable is considered an insult. However, compatibilism isn't being pragmatically predictable. The mind is a closed system, so the only entity with the necessary information to predict the decisions is the thing making the decision. Only predictable by itself - and prediction requires overhead, so that's pointless inefficiency.
If you really could have decided differently, then there is no fact of the matter about how you will decide. This could even be not-random by having no fact of the matter about the distribution either. However, it is hard to see how such a fact gets created. It's not a coincidence that this is only possible in a situation that's called, in logic, undecidability. This is the difference between pragmatic unpredictability and in-principle unpredictability. (Incidentally physics as a whole is pragmatically unpredictable.)
There's also a small galaxy of uncommon but reasonable-ish objections which I won't go into here.
1. How does science work?
Identical things are identical, logic implies things, and observation is possible. Similar things are similar, implying the possibility of being similar but not identical.
If we see a blue cube, and note it has certain properties such as having sharp edges, then we can safely infer that the next cobalt hexahedron we see will have the same properties, because e.g. the sharp edges are implied by the cubishness. Or, if similar, will have similar properties.
2. Why should we be moral?
First point: moral nihilism is true. The correct question is, why should we cooperate?
Cooperation is positive sum. Defection is negative sum. As a result, cooperation is always more profitable overall considered in a wide enough scope. It is further analytically provable that cooperation is always possible.
Incidentally, cooperation's profitability + the fact of self-defence implies don't steal, don't murder, etc.
3. How do people of different values live together?
By using the correct transformations. In general, people with different values should ostracize each other, except where boundary-specific rules can be negotiated. Though in practice, non-ostracism boundary-specific rules are almost always negotiable.
Cooperation implies property rights. What you value goes, for your property. Thus, don't eat meat at a vegan's house, and similarly the vegan cannot object to meat eaten at your house. If one of these is not acceptable, then the vegan's only valid recourse is ostracism, as anything more proactive is defection. Defection implies the meat-eater should, rationally, neutralize the vegan before they act.
4. How is consciousness possible?
The correct question is 'how is physics possible?' The Cogito generalizes: consciousness is undoubtable, because identical things are identical.
If they mean how Descartes' metaphorical pineal gland possibly works, it works because parts of physics are undecidable purely by the physical laws, but still observably have outcomes. The outcomes are possibly due to consciousness deciding the outcome, meaning the entities partake of both substances. Presumably a symmetric undecidability exists on the consciousness side, allowing the chain of causality to be properly linked both ways, obeying Newton's third law.
5. Do we have free will, and if so, what is it?
That's backwards. We must figure out what it is before we figure if we have it.
Given that identical things are identical, if we reach a crossroads we've seen before, then we can recognize and predict the outcome, and take the other fork. Out of curiosity, or out of disliking the previous result, or whatever. A counterfactual past can be brought into existence in the future. (Credit to Baggini for this wording.)
Pragmatically, free will is being able to take the same fork as last time, or not. It is perhaps better to call this property agency. Yes, we have it. If you did not have this free will, it would be immediately apparent, because your body would contravene your decisions. You would decide to turn left and would instead go right. Pragmatically, you want things, and you can always decide to pursue those things.
Alternatively, you think free will is something else. We may or may not have that.
Solutions to Common Objections / Commentary
1.
You can observe wrong, this doesn't mean identical things aren't identical, it means you mistakenly thought an identical thing was dissimilar or vice-versa.
Observation has to be possible, as part of the generalization of the Cogito.
Black swans are an invalid critique of the essential method. The error is mainly in group handling. If we call all members of the 'swan' group white, then rather than telling us anything about swans, it only tells us about our grouping. Grouping like this is only useful if the property in question is logically implied by a membership requirement of the group. All fire is hot, for example, because fire is necessarily an exothermic reaction. If you found a cold or cooling flame, you'll find it's not an oxidation reaction, or it's not self-sustaining, etc.
Cubes inherently have edges, so by seeing a cube shape I can infer I will feel a sharp edge. Swans do not inherently have any colour. Indeed the swan = white thing is a back-definition. It defines membership of the group 'swans' as 'white swan-shaped birds,' meaning a black swan-shape isn't a swan. At best we end up with white swan_1 and not-white swan_2. And indeed, the black swan is not the same species as the white. (Unlike black leopards or jaguars.)
2.
Cooperation is ethitropism. Oversimply, it is not imposing your values on someone else.
3.
In mathematics, any two maps can be defined in terms of their transformations to each other. So, three objects: the maps and the transformation. Values work like maps. Getting them to work together is the transformation - how the boundary rules are best arranged is determined by the shape of the transformation going from one map to the other.
Values that inherently involve anethitropism are not valid values. The rational response is roughly to request, then if necessary cajole, then if necessary neutralize the anethitropes. Anethitropes, like polar bears, just aren't compatible with modern urban living.
4.
If you find the existence of consciousness mysterious, you should find the existence of matter equally mysterious. Existence is kinda mysterious, you guys. Existence is a far more intractable problem than these five.
5.
It's more that I can find the answer this one, rather than I have answered it. There are therefore many possible objections.
I will note being free is not being random.
Most likely the desire to claim to have free will has to do more with evolution than with philosophy. It's about not being chained up with physical chains, rather than chains of logic. In the purely objective universe, free will and determinism are indistinguishable, so the emotional attachment to freedom can't possibly have anything to do with this question. E.g, whether you're 'responsible' for your decisions or not has nothing to do with how anyone else should react. (Do we jail someone because this will cause other criminals to not commit, or because it will deter other criminals from committing? In either case, bars are involved.)
A free will you cannot detect the lack of is almost certainly a difference of no difference.
Experimental subjects who behave worse if they believe in determinism are being irrational. Their conclusion doesn't genuinely follow from their premises.
Quick refresher: it's you if, when it's cut, you feel bleeding. Perhaps you want to say free will is you being in charge of your decisions. Well, duh, of course - look at the wording, you = your. If you weren't in charge of it, it's not your decision, by definition.
The question of determinism is often phrased as, 'you could have decided differently.' Then you can get compatibilism - being as you had some definite series of properties at the time of the decision, the decision itself was, in principle, predictable. You forced yourself to make the decision you made. (Well, yes? Of course?)
Being predictable is considered an insult. However, compatibilism isn't being pragmatically predictable. The mind is a closed system, so the only entity with the necessary information to predict the decisions is the thing making the decision. Only predictable by itself - and prediction requires overhead, so that's pointless inefficiency.
If you really could have decided differently, then there is no fact of the matter about how you will decide. This could even be not-random by having no fact of the matter about the distribution either. However, it is hard to see how such a fact gets created. It's not a coincidence that this is only possible in a situation that's called, in logic, undecidability. This is the difference between pragmatic unpredictability and in-principle unpredictability. (Incidentally physics as a whole is pragmatically unpredictable.)
There's also a small galaxy of uncommon but reasonable-ish objections which I won't go into here.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Definitions Considered Meaningful
My monster comment may give you the impression that handling definitions are important to doing philosophy. This is because they are.
Philosophy getting tricky on you? Not sure what's up with chicken eggs? Try definitions! Definitions make life easy.
I have catchphrases. One of them is, "If you have a definition, the answer is trivial, if not, the answer is undecideable."
Definitions are the logical equivalent to mathematical coordinate systems. The underlying facts - whether your triangle has three sides or whether it's isosceles or not does not depend on the coordinate system, even though all the numbers describing the triangle do depend on the coordinate system, and it's impossible to describe a particular triangle without said numbers. Similarly, the facts of chicken existence don't depend on the definitions, but whether you say 'the chicken came first' does depend on your chicken definition.
First, let's take evolution as true. Let's say 'chicken' means 'viable organism whose equilibrium is a chicken.' The equilibrium bit is so young chickens are still chickens. In this case, the egg and chicken arrived at the same time, because the chicken embryo is a chicken. If instead we use 'organism that lays eggs that grow into chickens,' then chickens came first, because the last proto-chicken laid a chicken egg, and was thus itself a chicken. If we decides chicks are too different to really be chickens, then chicken eggs appeared before chickens.
Now let's take creationism as true. God goes 'parp' and there's a chicken. Chickens came first. Or maybe God goes 'parp' and there's some eggs. Eggs came first. Programmers can exactly simulate this with spawn_chicken(), making pixel images resembling chickens. Perhaps they instead use spawn_chickens_and_eggs(20), and then eggs and chickens came at the same time. Twenty of them, specifically.
Trivial.
If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? Well, do you mean 'soundwaves' or do you mean 'audio cortex recognition'? Again, the answer is trivial.
The only real difference is dire apes tend to get attached to particular definitions, but not to particular origin points.
A bowl is supposed to hold soup. But then there's no bowls in space, or else gourds are now bowls. Cracked bowls aren't bowls.
There's an attachment to the bowl-shape definition. This is not normally a problem for bowls, but is a problem for selfishness. However, it's a problem for bowls too, because there no useful non-fuzzy definition of 'bowl.' We can't go down to the quantum level, because a bowl will instantly stop being a bowl after a thermal fluctuation, but not going down that far means the definition is necessarily imprecise.
In practice dire apes have an archetype 'bowl' which is precise within natural instrumentation limits, plus a scalar 'similarity to' function. Bowls which are more than a little dissimilar get a modifier, like 'tall' or 'shallow.' A broken bowl is called 'broken,' and so on. It's not a bowl when there's a different archetype with a higher similarity scalar. If it's about equal it gets called something to the format of 'bowl-cup'.
Dire apes don't seem to like this system of theirs, however. They want precise boundaries, rather than appreciating the scalar as it is. This is the sorites paradox. Further, philosophers straight-up have to use precise definitions. Though, for philosophers at least, the answer is simple. The soros is never a heap, because there's no such thing as bowls. Definitions, like coordinates, are arbitrary, and so while there's no spoon, there is a definition 'spoon' which particular clusters of sense-data match sufficiently.
However, this means philosophy does a thing backward to the intuitive way. Having proven an implication of 'bowls' or spoons or heaps or George Washington or chocobos, the proof doesn't actually apply to bowls. It applies to the particular definition, which we happened to call 'bowls.' Let X = bowls. We prove X has a bunch of properties. X may be very bowllike, but since it is necessarily precise and bowls are necessarily imprecise, they won't be quite the same thing. The proofs will have a domain of validity, defined by the definitions used. If I prove a bunch of things about flatware for eating soup out of, it will not be valid for bowls in space, except by coincidence.
This is why I wish academics were still performed in Latin. It would mean philosophers could get on with it without disrupting native meanings of words like 'selfishness.' Since Latin is now out, for preference I'd re-start with ancient Greek, it being strictly more tasteful.
Philosophy getting tricky on you? Not sure what's up with chicken eggs? Try definitions! Definitions make life easy.
I have catchphrases. One of them is, "If you have a definition, the answer is trivial, if not, the answer is undecideable."
Definitions are the logical equivalent to mathematical coordinate systems. The underlying facts - whether your triangle has three sides or whether it's isosceles or not does not depend on the coordinate system, even though all the numbers describing the triangle do depend on the coordinate system, and it's impossible to describe a particular triangle without said numbers. Similarly, the facts of chicken existence don't depend on the definitions, but whether you say 'the chicken came first' does depend on your chicken definition.
First, let's take evolution as true. Let's say 'chicken' means 'viable organism whose equilibrium is a chicken.' The equilibrium bit is so young chickens are still chickens. In this case, the egg and chicken arrived at the same time, because the chicken embryo is a chicken. If instead we use 'organism that lays eggs that grow into chickens,' then chickens came first, because the last proto-chicken laid a chicken egg, and was thus itself a chicken. If we decides chicks are too different to really be chickens, then chicken eggs appeared before chickens.
Now let's take creationism as true. God goes 'parp' and there's a chicken. Chickens came first. Or maybe God goes 'parp' and there's some eggs. Eggs came first. Programmers can exactly simulate this with spawn_chicken(), making pixel images resembling chickens. Perhaps they instead use spawn_chickens_and_eggs(20), and then eggs and chickens came at the same time. Twenty of them, specifically.
Trivial.
If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? Well, do you mean 'soundwaves' or do you mean 'audio cortex recognition'? Again, the answer is trivial.
The only real difference is dire apes tend to get attached to particular definitions, but not to particular origin points.
A bowl is supposed to hold soup. But then there's no bowls in space, or else gourds are now bowls. Cracked bowls aren't bowls.
There's an attachment to the bowl-shape definition. This is not normally a problem for bowls, but is a problem for selfishness. However, it's a problem for bowls too, because there no useful non-fuzzy definition of 'bowl.' We can't go down to the quantum level, because a bowl will instantly stop being a bowl after a thermal fluctuation, but not going down that far means the definition is necessarily imprecise.
In practice dire apes have an archetype 'bowl' which is precise within natural instrumentation limits, plus a scalar 'similarity to' function. Bowls which are more than a little dissimilar get a modifier, like 'tall' or 'shallow.' A broken bowl is called 'broken,' and so on. It's not a bowl when there's a different archetype with a higher similarity scalar. If it's about equal it gets called something to the format of 'bowl-cup'.
Dire apes don't seem to like this system of theirs, however. They want precise boundaries, rather than appreciating the scalar as it is. This is the sorites paradox. Further, philosophers straight-up have to use precise definitions. Though, for philosophers at least, the answer is simple. The soros is never a heap, because there's no such thing as bowls. Definitions, like coordinates, are arbitrary, and so while there's no spoon, there is a definition 'spoon' which particular clusters of sense-data match sufficiently.
However, this means philosophy does a thing backward to the intuitive way. Having proven an implication of 'bowls' or spoons or heaps or George Washington or chocobos, the proof doesn't actually apply to bowls. It applies to the particular definition, which we happened to call 'bowls.' Let X = bowls. We prove X has a bunch of properties. X may be very bowllike, but since it is necessarily precise and bowls are necessarily imprecise, they won't be quite the same thing. The proofs will have a domain of validity, defined by the definitions used. If I prove a bunch of things about flatware for eating soup out of, it will not be valid for bowls in space, except by coincidence.
This is why I wish academics were still performed in Latin. It would mean philosophers could get on with it without disrupting native meanings of words like 'selfishness.' Since Latin is now out, for preference I'd re-start with ancient Greek, it being strictly more tasteful.
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Ascended Comment - Lunatic Activism
http://www.xenosystems.net/lunatic-activism/
Primary point:
If you can reliably kill an unarmed woman in the street, there is no need to do so. State your threat, which is now a promise, which will achieve compliance with your aims, without actually having to kill anyone. (On average.) Indeed carrying out the threat will be counter-productive. (On average.)
Killing people unreliably is chaos. Chaos is - get this - not order.
Do not feel sorry for this woman. She was not your friend, she was certainly not your vassal, and she was not your responsibility. Her life or death is meaningless to you and should be treated accordingly.
That the perpetrator thinks he was a neo-nazi does not make him a rightist, even if you accept nazis as right wing, which I don't. Crazy people believe crazy things. At best you'll find he was to neo-nazism as a lapsed Catholic is to Christianity. More likely it was a loud statement with little to no grounding in behaviour, taken to justify a pre-existing desire to murder someone.
I'm skeptical of the claim it's a propaganda win for anyone. Everyone who was friends with the woman, and thus likely to think badly of her killer's group was already not even relatively right-wing. As for the other side...look, humans are murderous. The idea of killing the inconvenient comes naturally to us. Nobody sympathetic to the other side is going to be beat up about her death, and thus unlikely to grow in antipathy to other side.
What I'm seeing is a massive waste of time all the way around the table.
Primary point:
If you can reliably kill an unarmed woman in the street, there is no need to do so. State your threat, which is now a promise, which will achieve compliance with your aims, without actually having to kill anyone. (On average.) Indeed carrying out the threat will be counter-productive. (On average.)
Killing people unreliably is chaos. Chaos is - get this - not order.
Do not feel sorry for this woman. She was not your friend, she was certainly not your vassal, and she was not your responsibility. Her life or death is meaningless to you and should be treated accordingly.
That the perpetrator thinks he was a neo-nazi does not make him a rightist, even if you accept nazis as right wing, which I don't. Crazy people believe crazy things. At best you'll find he was to neo-nazism as a lapsed Catholic is to Christianity. More likely it was a loud statement with little to no grounding in behaviour, taken to justify a pre-existing desire to murder someone.
I'm skeptical of the claim it's a propaganda win for anyone. Everyone who was friends with the woman, and thus likely to think badly of her killer's group was already not even relatively right-wing. As for the other side...look, humans are murderous. The idea of killing the inconvenient comes naturally to us. Nobody sympathetic to the other side is going to be beat up about her death, and thus unlikely to grow in antipathy to other side.
What I'm seeing is a massive waste of time all the way around the table.
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Gnon's Judgement
Intriguing, you say?
States reliably fail on a ten-generation clock, for comparison, if they don't die to violence.
UPDATE: WF has an intriguing thought:Well...yes. Evil = self-contradiction = bad logic? Sure, I'll go with that. But it's not safe for Christians to go around saying things like that. Christianity is guaranteed to have errors, but is not susceptible to error-correction. (This is Pride, fyi.) This is why e.g. Catholicism is failing. Naturally, slower than Progressivism, because there's fewer errors, but failing all the same.
Evil is always ultimately self-destructive, suggesting the latter, when found in a system, likely indicates the former. In other words, if a system (ideology, structure, philosophy, individual, or thought) contains within it the seeds of contradiction, be it internal or external, or systemic collapse, it's a good bet it is against God and therefore evil. This is just as true for individuals with unresolved or incorrectly resolved cognitive dissonance, for example.
This is because God is both real and Creator of reality, and all that is in conflict with reality is necessarily in conflict with Him, too.
States reliably fail on a ten-generation clock, for comparison, if they don't die to violence.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Hard Floors for Social Status
Proggies have a remarkable ability to change what's high and low status almost at will. See: gay marriage. Indeed, this would be a useful technique to steal from them. However, I want to get properly on the record predicting certain hard constraints.
First: pedophilia.
Can't be acceptable. (Not ephebophilia, that's historically and archaeologically normal.) The revulsion is hard-coded and is reinforced by the obvious selfish threat to their own children.
Total public nudity.
Wifmen will always have a body part which the showing thereof means 'have sex with me,' and they will for some bizarre reason insist on covering it. (Caveat: hardcore exhibitionists.) While I'm skeptical, I hear in some cultures it's the belly button rather than the other couple obvious choices.
Tolerance of different behaviour.
Different appearances are apparently easily tolerated. Used to be clothes counted as behavior, but they don't anymore. See also: dyeing, tattoos. While clothes still mark class and phyle leanings, most will tolerate odd dress as long as they strictly behave according to the code. At no point will odd but harmless be genuinely tolerated - being odd will always count, in and of itself, as being harmful.
Suggestions for this list are appreciated, though note I'll be skeptical to a comical degree.
First: pedophilia.
Can't be acceptable. (Not ephebophilia, that's historically and archaeologically normal.) The revulsion is hard-coded and is reinforced by the obvious selfish threat to their own children.
Total public nudity.
Wifmen will always have a body part which the showing thereof means 'have sex with me,' and they will for some bizarre reason insist on covering it. (Caveat: hardcore exhibitionists.) While I'm skeptical, I hear in some cultures it's the belly button rather than the other couple obvious choices.
Tolerance of different behaviour.
Different appearances are apparently easily tolerated. Used to be clothes counted as behavior, but they don't anymore. See also: dyeing, tattoos. While clothes still mark class and phyle leanings, most will tolerate odd dress as long as they strictly behave according to the code. At no point will odd but harmless be genuinely tolerated - being odd will always count, in and of itself, as being harmful.
Suggestions for this list are appreciated, though note I'll be skeptical to a comical degree.
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Trump Specifics
Want to get properly on the record here.
Summary: Trump being President kills democracy, but even odds it won't happen.
I believe Trump will win the popular vote for President. 90%, and the only reason I'm going higher is I think I have a lot of unknown unknowns.
I predict, however, that the votes will be defrauded sufficiently that he does not officially win. I call it 55-60% chance of this.
Because the fraud will be so widespread, it will be vulnerable. The system can only stretch so far before it's obvious. Trump could use this to expose it. However, I expect that he, like I, will realize this would destroy democracy in America. Once legitimacy goes, it's only a matter of time. Trump will side with his fellow elites over his voters. Call it 70-80%.
In this case, democracy may limp along a while yet. Trump's voters will be very angry, they will probably (85%) realize in their guts they were cheated, but America's aristocracy-suppression system is working very well. They will swallow this indignity, as they have every other, as long as the panem-et-circenses regime continues to provide diversions and dinners.
In the case that Trump exposes the fraud, they may do the equivalent of a filibuster, and America will lack a President the way Belgium did. He may or may not become President at the end. If they don't, he will be President more or less immediately. I don't see democracy in America surviving either event - the only question is whether we see a sudden explosion or a lingering death.
In the case the votes are not defrauded, Trump wins. This spells the doom of democracy in America.
To get his wall built, Trump will have to steamroll the bureaucracy, and Harvard by proxy. While they could roll with this punch and survive, they have become too cocky, too paranoid, and too brittle. They will shatter, rather than simply wait 8 years. Their death throes will be spastic, and will cause widespread destruction - most likely abstract, in social trust and so on, possibly actual riots etc.
Alternatively, Trump fails to get the wall built. This will reveal the impotence of POTUS imperatives. It will become common knowledge that the election is theatre. It's a liar championship, held for circus value. They may try electing a 'bring back POTUS' candidate once or twice before they finally give up on their government, and kill democracy in America.
Trump deciding against building his wall after all is not significantly different in disillusioning outcome.
There is also a small chance, under 10%, that Trump is somehow disqualified. I believe he would already be disqualified if they could find a non-democracy-killing way to do it. They may find what they think is one that isn't, which will reveal the rigged nature of elections, even in America. Again, Trump could easily exploit this to defeat the official press, but doing so would destroy democracy in America, and I believe he will side with his fellow elites instead.
Bring it, Reality. Take the 'third' option, entirely out of left field.
Summary: Trump being President kills democracy, but even odds it won't happen.
I believe Trump will win the popular vote for President. 90%, and the only reason I'm going higher is I think I have a lot of unknown unknowns.
I predict, however, that the votes will be defrauded sufficiently that he does not officially win. I call it 55-60% chance of this.
Because the fraud will be so widespread, it will be vulnerable. The system can only stretch so far before it's obvious. Trump could use this to expose it. However, I expect that he, like I, will realize this would destroy democracy in America. Once legitimacy goes, it's only a matter of time. Trump will side with his fellow elites over his voters. Call it 70-80%.
In this case, democracy may limp along a while yet. Trump's voters will be very angry, they will probably (85%) realize in their guts they were cheated, but America's aristocracy-suppression system is working very well. They will swallow this indignity, as they have every other, as long as the panem-et-circenses regime continues to provide diversions and dinners.
In the case that Trump exposes the fraud, they may do the equivalent of a filibuster, and America will lack a President the way Belgium did. He may or may not become President at the end. If they don't, he will be President more or less immediately. I don't see democracy in America surviving either event - the only question is whether we see a sudden explosion or a lingering death.
In the case the votes are not defrauded, Trump wins. This spells the doom of democracy in America.
To get his wall built, Trump will have to steamroll the bureaucracy, and Harvard by proxy. While they could roll with this punch and survive, they have become too cocky, too paranoid, and too brittle. They will shatter, rather than simply wait 8 years. Their death throes will be spastic, and will cause widespread destruction - most likely abstract, in social trust and so on, possibly actual riots etc.
Alternatively, Trump fails to get the wall built. This will reveal the impotence of POTUS imperatives. It will become common knowledge that the election is theatre. It's a liar championship, held for circus value. They may try electing a 'bring back POTUS' candidate once or twice before they finally give up on their government, and kill democracy in America.
Trump deciding against building his wall after all is not significantly different in disillusioning outcome.
There is also a small chance, under 10%, that Trump is somehow disqualified. I believe he would already be disqualified if they could find a non-democracy-killing way to do it. They may find what they think is one that isn't, which will reveal the rigged nature of elections, even in America. Again, Trump could easily exploit this to defeat the official press, but doing so would destroy democracy in America, and I believe he will side with his fellow elites instead.
Bring it, Reality. Take the 'third' option, entirely out of left field.
Monday, June 13, 2016
The Venezuelan Former State
I would have told Venezuelans to reject Chavez and Maduro. Resist now, because it's only going to get more difficult later. I'm hardly alone in this advice.
Venezuelans instead listened to someone foolish. They have reaped the consequences.
Alternatively, Venezuelans had no choice. In other words, they were not responsible. In other words, they were children, no matter their age. They had no right to endorse Chavez or Maduro, because they never had an option of rejecting them. There cannot be any legitimate ruler of Venezuela, so it might as well be ruled by me or you.
So which is it? Can I force whatever regime I happen to enjoy on Venezuelans, because otherwise they'll be captured by someone worse, or are they responsible for what's happened to them? Cnut's law: it has to be one or the other.
I repeat: if you claim the correct answer isn't an invading army, you are ontologically committed to blaming Venezuelans for their problems, in which case there's really no answer but the fires of annihilation.
Venezuelans instead listened to someone foolish. They have reaped the consequences.
Alternatively, Venezuelans had no choice. In other words, they were not responsible. In other words, they were children, no matter their age. They had no right to endorse Chavez or Maduro, because they never had an option of rejecting them. There cannot be any legitimate ruler of Venezuela, so it might as well be ruled by me or you.
So which is it? Can I force whatever regime I happen to enjoy on Venezuelans, because otherwise they'll be captured by someone worse, or are they responsible for what's happened to them? Cnut's law: it has to be one or the other.
I repeat: if you claim the correct answer isn't an invading army, you are ontologically committed to blaming Venezuelans for their problems, in which case there's really no answer but the fires of annihilation.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Consciousness Contradiction Hunting 3: Prey Found
My theory states both that minds should be perfectly isolated & that it should be so easy to brush other minds that it can be done by looking at someone.
My theory states the mere addition paradox is resolved as consciousness is qualitative and thus not mathematical & that it's possible in principle to put exact dollar values on all your preferences. (Would you prefer a pear, xor $1? How about a pear, xor $2? Induce as necessary. Thus trade is possible.)
My theory posits that quantum particles have a quantum of consciousness & that the machine talking to the consciousness can swap particles without changing minds. How does the consciousness know what machine to hear? (When your visual cortex swaps in fresh neurons, how do you know to keep seeing with your eyes?)
I have grave doubts about Godel's first incompleteness theorem & my theory posits that consciousness/quantum indeterminacy represents a Godel incompleteness in physics, and there will be a symmetric indeterminacy in consciousness, plugged by physics.
I don't expect these contradictions to sink the theory, but I do expect the resolutions to require dramatic changes. Either way, they must be resolved.
The novelty of these contradictions, as Stanford et al could not help, suggests the theory is itself novel. However, as it is a straightforward extension of Descartes, it also suggests I'm working alone.
My theory states the mere addition paradox is resolved as consciousness is qualitative and thus not mathematical & that it's possible in principle to put exact dollar values on all your preferences. (Would you prefer a pear, xor $1? How about a pear, xor $2? Induce as necessary. Thus trade is possible.)
My theory posits that quantum particles have a quantum of consciousness & that the machine talking to the consciousness can swap particles without changing minds. How does the consciousness know what machine to hear? (When your visual cortex swaps in fresh neurons, how do you know to keep seeing with your eyes?)
I have grave doubts about Godel's first incompleteness theorem & my theory posits that consciousness/quantum indeterminacy represents a Godel incompleteness in physics, and there will be a symmetric indeterminacy in consciousness, plugged by physics.
I don't expect these contradictions to sink the theory, but I do expect the resolutions to require dramatic changes. Either way, they must be resolved.
The novelty of these contradictions, as Stanford et al could not help, suggests the theory is itself novel. However, as it is a straightforward extension of Descartes, it also suggests I'm working alone.
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Philosophy/Magic in Demotism
Nazis have racist views of Jews. Proggies have racist views of whites. These are of course completely different, which is why the Nazis will destroy/save us all. Yes, I just noticed. I got to wondering if it was a coincidence, and it's not. I can't explain it mechanistically, though. It seems to be pure logic/magic.
A car is based on explosions. Fire is what makes it go. Thaumaturgically, it should be loud and hot. But we can put a radiator and a muffler on it, and it's not that bad, unless it's been sitting in direct sunlight.
Demotism is based on envy. Thing about envy is you can't have it flopping around untethered. Have to have a target. Hence, market dominant minorities. Kulaks, Jews. Or, in the proggie's case, market dominant majorities. Not merely handy, but vital. Envy is what makes it go, but there's no such thing as a sociological muffler.
Marx tried to do it with classes. If you have racially pure nations, you work with what you got. Classes aren't really that unmistakeable, though, so it's not great. Further, immigrants always have a strong vote bias, so the party they vote for always wants to import them. Skin colour: now you're cooking with gas.
Even if proggies manage to prison-camp every white, inevitably they will want to import someone of a different shade of brown. They will try to exploit the envy of the original shade of brown, and the cycle will repeat. As always, as politics approaches communism, citizens must approach equal. The envotaic force must be allowed to do work. However, we are all equal if and only if we are all dead.
Demotism is based on envy. Thing about envy is you can't have it flopping around untethered. Have to have a target. Hence, market dominant minorities. Kulaks, Jews. Or, in the proggie's case, market dominant majorities. Not merely handy, but vital. Envy is what makes it go, but there's no such thing as a sociological muffler.
Marx tried to do it with classes. If you have racially pure nations, you work with what you got. Classes aren't really that unmistakeable, though, so it's not great. Further, immigrants always have a strong vote bias, so the party they vote for always wants to import them. Skin colour: now you're cooking with gas.
Even if proggies manage to prison-camp every white, inevitably they will want to import someone of a different shade of brown. They will try to exploit the envy of the original shade of brown, and the cycle will repeat. As always, as politics approaches communism, citizens must approach equal. The envotaic force must be allowed to do work. However, we are all equal if and only if we are all dead.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Hume's Freshly Sharpened Guillotine
Rocks cannot benefit. The surprising consequence of this is Hume's guillotine. The psychological barrier will be that if there's no ought from is, there is no ought. (Except in that if you want Y, and only X leads to Y, you ought to do X. And the surprising consequence of that is the standard moral rules.)
Humans occasionally project minds onto mindless things, such as thinking that a rock resists breaking and is sad if it is hit hard enough to crack. However, some rocks would suffer more, others less, and the cloven halves of one rock would behave differently than another. Modus tollens, there is no benefit, and thus benefit is not objectively real.
Because benefit is subjective, value is subjective. Insert being shocked, shocked. At this point there's still a possibility of logically relating preferences to each other and finding a logic crystal, from which right and wrong could be refined. However, such a right would necessarily be objective, which would therefore have to be measurable to be real, as above.
Monday, June 6, 2016
Hypothesis/Query: Decadence Essentially the Opposite of Independence?
First, I need a single word that refers to the state of being independent of excessive oversight and of taking responsibility for your own actions both prospectively and morally.
I then suppose: is decadence the opposite of this virtue? Of relaxing into slavery and disdaining responsibility? Seems to be. What do you think?
I then suppose: is decadence the opposite of this virtue? Of relaxing into slavery and disdaining responsibility? Seems to be. What do you think?
Saturday, June 4, 2016
Unmistakeable Evidence
(Previously.)
Nobody argues that men are, on average, the same height as women. One could at least argue that they should be, that it's sexist nutrition or something that's keeping women's heights down. They don't, because it's just too stupid - the argument is over the evidence event horizon.
Logically speaking, the fact that there is one sexual dimorphism all but proves that every trait will be sexually dimorphic. It's merely a question of degree at this point. Signalling eclipses logic so what's logically sound does not predict espoused beliefs, but it's not a total eclipse - there is a floor beyond which things are simply too implausible. I call this floor unmistakeable evidence. Can't argue that an orange ball is in fact green, can't argue that most of the women in the room are as tall as most of the men, but not all these floors are so obvious.
Proofs are often taken from what's called 'first principles.' Problem: easy to disagree on what counts as a first principle. Ask Decartes. Ask Hume.
The event horizon between plausible lies and implausible lies gets created by social agreement in the first place. I now use unmistakeable evidence instead of first principles.
There is also a top horizon, which are implausible due to complexity.
Are proggies the real sexists? Yes, yes they are.
If it's demeaning to say women are physically weaker than men, then reality is sexist.
In a 1993 study exploring gender differences in muscle makeup, female participants exhibited 52 percent of men's upper body strengthBiology can't be changed. Attitudes - whether it's demeaning to be physically frail- can be. Hence, the proggies have chosen to demean women as they actually are. Consider: the average woman will hear, "it's demeaning to be weak," and will notice all the men she knows are stronger than she is. What will she conclude? Proggies are not kind people.
However, this argument involves what, four logical steps? About three too many to be rhetorically effective. The lies about the ball are implausible, but in this case it's reality that's implausible. This makes it a prime target for sophists.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Truth Machine Blueprint
Materials:
Humans
Failure
Tools:
TBD, requires the ability to engineer subcultures.
There is no discrete physical truth-machine. No veritometer. Whether a belief is held to be true or not always depends, ultimately, on human judgment. It is thus time to stop pretending otherwise, and appoint a Judge. Or rather, to note the Catholics already did this and appoint a Pope. More precisely, allow a Pope to appoint themselves.
Catholicism obviously hasn't worked out in the end. To repair this design flaw, I introduce at least one competing Pope, and thus introduce Darwinian selection.
Each believer will be able to follow their conscience toward whichever Pope strikes their fancy, whereupon they are required to believe whatever that Pope chooses to require of them. Generally believers will not be considered competent truth-seekers: instead the Pope determines the true answer to all questions according to whatever method their conscience dictates. If it is strictly impossible for a believer to follow an existing Pope, they shall themselves start a congregation, appointing themselves as Pope, thus increasing competition, thus selection, and thus the accuracy of the machine as a whole.
As the purpose of truth is to control the world, the wisest congregation will tend to succeed. More deluded congregations will tend to empty out or perish. Frivolous congregations will be seen as such. The network of competing Pope-lead subcultures constitutes a truth machine.
Humans
Failure
Tools:
TBD, requires the ability to engineer subcultures.
There is no discrete physical truth-machine. No veritometer. Whether a belief is held to be true or not always depends, ultimately, on human judgment. It is thus time to stop pretending otherwise, and appoint a Judge. Or rather, to note the Catholics already did this and appoint a Pope. More precisely, allow a Pope to appoint themselves.
Catholicism obviously hasn't worked out in the end. To repair this design flaw, I introduce at least one competing Pope, and thus introduce Darwinian selection.
Each believer will be able to follow their conscience toward whichever Pope strikes their fancy, whereupon they are required to believe whatever that Pope chooses to require of them. Generally believers will not be considered competent truth-seekers: instead the Pope determines the true answer to all questions according to whatever method their conscience dictates. If it is strictly impossible for a believer to follow an existing Pope, they shall themselves start a congregation, appointing themselves as Pope, thus increasing competition, thus selection, and thus the accuracy of the machine as a whole.
As the purpose of truth is to control the world, the wisest congregation will tend to succeed. More deluded congregations will tend to empty out or perish. Frivolous congregations will be seen as such. The network of competing Pope-lead subcultures constitutes a truth machine.