Bayesian Regress

I was fascinated to discover that the Bayesian reasoner's probability of Bayes' formula being true calculates to zero.

I should start by mentioning that my probability estimate for Bayes' formula being useful is 100%. At least I hope so, since I often use it.

To calculate the probability using Bayesian analysis requires assuming the Bayes formula - in classical terms, begging the question. But, I thought, perhaps the series can converge? Every run-through changes the probability assigned to the Bayes' formula step of the calculation, so it needs to be run until it settles down. However, any sub-unity number multiplied by itself enough times converges to zero. It's an article of Bayesian reasoning that no priors can be unity. Oops.

Bayes' formula was discovered and proved within the context of classical logic, and indeed even the Bayesian reasoner must use one prior step of classical logic before they go on their statistical voyage. They must assume that Bayes' formula is unconditionally true.

There's a similar problem estimating the odds of yourself being mistaken. If you run the calculation once, perhaps you get a reasonable number, like 2%. But this calculation is reflexive - the odds that you're mistaken about being that mistaken is 2%. Works out to a 3.96% chance of being mistaken. But it's reflexive, so...a Bayesian calculation shows I have a 100% chance of being mistaken on every subject. Therefore, I'm wrong that you can understand the individual words I'm now typing.

Though clearly nonsense, I enjoy this result because I've often suspected that self-doubt in the usual sense can't be logically upheld. Especially if I'm not evaluating evidence, but taking action, the correct course is insensitive to doubt. If I'm faced with a black box with several buttons, one of which will serve my goals if pushed, whether I assume I have a 30% chance of being wrong or a 0% chance, I push the same button. It only changes if I have a higher estimate of being right for some other button - but it changes instantly and entirely, so again my action indistinguishable from one with utter certainty.

Logicking at Black Holes 2, Digressing Onto LHC

So I was thinking about black holes some more, and I concluded that the nascent event horizon will indeed prevent its own formation...unless space is quantized. Infalling particles would jump directly from a region of finite time dilation to inside the event horizon. This gets interesting as Einstein's relativity is inconsistent with quantized space, so we'd need to update the theory of gravity, and quantized gravity may not have a black hole solution in the first place. Although if not, it is likely to have something similar, what with all those massive dark astral objects.


There's also some housekeeping regarding my previous post. I'm glad someone else has noticed that black holes should prevent themselves from forming. Truth is available to everyone, which means that independent discovery should happen with basically every true idea. Only lies can be truly creative and unique. (Indeed I just found an argument that the classical black hole would reverse its own time before an event horizon is formed...in short, nature abhors an infinity.)[1]


However, the large hadron collider is not dangerous. While Hawking's calculation may not be consistent with an actual unified quantum gravity, it is consistent with things like thermodynamics #2; even if Hawking is wrong in the details there is every reason to think that black holes decay. For example, using my ideas (or Pegrume's) the black hole is really a collection of almost-infinitely redshifted objects. Hawking relied on the sharp event horizon, but imagine instead that a virtual particle pair forms, one half annihilates a real particle, and the other tunnels out. Essentially this is a captured particle tunnelling out of the black hole, and thus a loss of mass, and thus, Hawking radiation, even though half of Hawking's assumptions were counter-assumed away. The result is robust like this in several ways.

Considering a micro black hole, I remember that matter is in fact mostly empty space, and that the thing which makes a black hole is gravitational gradient. So this micro black hole is basically a few massively redshifted particles very close together, but the dangerous volume they create is smaller than a proton; beyond this their fields appear completely normal, for example a black hole doesn't amplify gravity, so the gravitational attraction will be that of a few individual particles, exactly as they were before the atom smashing. Between small volumes and empty space, unless the phenomenon is completely stable, it will decay before it manages to grow enough to stabilize.

Using the maximum possible energy the LHC can produce, assuming all of the energy is captured by the black hole, it would have a Schwarzschild radius of less than a Planck length.
Let me say that again: less than a Planck length. A lot less, like ten orders of magnitude less. Don't forget that most neutrinos can make it through the entire Earth without touching anything. The cross section of a neutrino is way, way higher than a Planck length.

Further, virtual particles swarm around real particles; this phenomenon is responsible for shielding some of the naked charge of the electron, for example. Clouds of virtual particles should corrode the black holes.[2]

Similarly, the idea that the LHC will somehow do things not before seen in nature is preposterous human hubris. Every time before we thought we've been clever, we've been shown up, often by 'lowly' creatures like sea cucumbers, or random comets. While it's impossible to rule out total destruction, the correct odds for the LHC in particular are exactly those of any new technology, like internal combustion. Even assuming we do eventually manage global apocalypse, we're not going to know it might happen beforehand.

Every single factor is stacked against catastophe, even though consensus physics is wildly wrong about black holes.[3]


[1] Pegrume wants the index linked. First, he should say so on the individual pages, I was checking for crankishness when I found the request. (He certainly lacks a proofreader, as attested by a serious problem typing with 'none' instead of 'non.') Second, his request is unreasonable, but luckily he provided the reasons, so I'm interpreting it.

[2] Real black holes theoretically emit less Hawking radiation than they receive in cosmic radiation. They're big enough to have a noticeable cross section to catch radiation, and Hawking radiation drops with size.

[3] Physicists even suspect they're wrong, as in every other case a singularity is not a sign that nature breaks down, but rather a sign that the mathematical models break down, and are thus incomplete.

Weinburg Inspires Sailer to Flaunt Ignorance

The link has been sitting in my bookmarks for a while, taunting me. (And will remain there, as it's also useful.) I think the taunting is ultimately why I'm writing this post up, because as per the blog name, I should accept that most people are going to be ignorant of philosophy most of the time. I don't really think that there's much point in doing much more than pointing out that ignorance renders your opinion meaningless, and that the ignorant soul should study some philosophy if that bothers them. I would also warn that doing it properly is an incredible time sink.

Except there's a bit of paradox, as philosophy shows a clear trickle-down effect, where professional thoughts show up all unreferenced in the layman. Being totally without a philosophy is impossible, which means the total ignorance one can have on building suspension bridges doesn't obtain. I think that means I should say, "Ignorant of the philosophicalness of their philosophy," which captures both the ineptitude and the disdain.


There's a clear thread of anti-philosophy sentiment among the parts of the intelligentsia that consider themselves hard-headed.[1] A good bite-sized example is Feynman's quoted position. The people I meet express similar disdain when I ask them. I understand it even shows up in blog titles. Similarly, the other side is feeling some pressure.

Naturally, I feel I must rise to the defence, at least when the detractor is eloquent.

"Is there a more prestigious job title than "philosopher"?"

I'm going to go with 'yes' for $600, Jim. While I'm sure this was true recently, I've personally seen lots of screeds against the idea, and a whopping zero like the opposite. I'd write one myself, except that I think status should follow from your results, not your job or associations.

"Yet, in what other profession has more brainpower made less progress?"

This does tidily sum up the essay, which makes it an excellent introduction.

"But the only value Weinberg ever found in reading philosophers was when they refuted other philosophers who had clouded his mind."

I don't believe philosophy is immune to Sturgeon's second. Admittedly, I don't do much reading of philosophers either. Quickly glancing[2] over Kant's wikipedia yielded the thought "This guy's considered great and influential? All this is obvious!" Except I shortly realized that that's what influential means. His thought has influenced mine, all unawares.

Setting aside Sturgeon, and the fact that Weinberg probably owes a great deal of his ideas to philosophers, there's still a good reason for Weinberg's perception that doesn't actually impugn philosophy at all. Weinberg gets one thing right; appreciating advanced philosophy, like appreciating advanced mathematics, takes training in the subject, and as such they're comparable. The constructs are programs which run on wetware, which means you have to install in your person the prerequisite libraries before they're meaningful. So...when did Weinberg install the philosophy libraries? The math he'd already done, as it's necessary to learn physics. The result is that Weinberg's statement, and by extension Sailer's, declares ignorance of philosophy, not the uselessness of it.

"Even the most esoteric math has helped him describe the cosmos. But the only value Weinberg ever found in reading philosophers was when they refuted other philosophers who had clouded his mind."

"My math-based job is helped by more math! But, this subject in which I have no training is totally useless to me!" In addition, I can't use lathes to create chairs. As above, while you can sit on a chair without even knowing lathes exist, philosophy has no such helpful external aides.

"While engineers or farmers or bartenders have all learned a trick or two over the years, philosophers mostly either rehash the same old mistakes or dream up new ones that are even more ridiculous."

My ignorance hypothesis covers this neatly. Even if, having defeated ignorance, you still don't much care for classical philosophy, Anglosphere civilization still owes an enormous amount to one type of philosophy, Christian theology. For example, the vaunted egalitarianism is straight out of the Bible, which you can verify by noting its utter absence from non-Christian civilizations. It is one of the reasons African civilizations aren't resistant to democracy. That humans outside the tribe are people is not a belief that has major traction, worldwide.

"To this day, most philosophers suffer from Plato's disease: the assumption that reality fundamentally consists of abstract essences best described by words or geometry."

Even Plato is on record for attacking the idea of Forms. Ignorance leads to strawmen.

"(In truth, reality is largely a probabilistic affair best described by statistics.)"

So...Sailer thinks that even physics isn't quite sure what physics is? I won't deny our knowledge is often best described statistically.

"Today's postmodern philosophers[...]"

You can stop right there. I haven't seen a respected postmodern apologia. You know, ever. They're defeated, and it's only a matter of time before their lack of proponents means their influence wanes even among the laymen.

"You have to be as eminent a philosopher as Rorty to believe that the category of "the female" is a mere social convention."

Okay. Can you prove that it isn't? Otherwise, that's just your opinion, your prejudice. (And yes, I can.) As a matter of fact, philosophy often involves the cessation of belief in things that seem obvious, because 'it's obvious' is not an argument. All must be proven - one way, or the other. Though it does appear that this skill is tightly correlated with traits that add up to roughly 'eminent philosopher.'

As I re-read that, I think Rorty actually means, "the category "female" is a meaningless category." He wants to make a point that treating women differently is unjust, or something along those lines. Almost all categories are 'mere' social convention - arbitrary and subjective. Even bowls. But, an entity being a member of 'bowl' is greatly meaningful, and far more meaningful is being part of the category 'woman.'
Frankly, if you have to deny a woman's femininity to prove that treating her badly is unjust, there's something wrong with you.

"Fortunately, one school of philosophy has actually taught us some valuable lessons over the centuries: the anti-abstract British tradition of Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon and David Hume, with its emphasis on realism, common sense and the scientific method."

Yawn. One day, people will stop having an orgasm every time they mention 'the scientific method,' that fuzzy beast. Perhaps they'll even start referencing actual particulars with actual meaning. I'll greatly enjoy these as I sail around in my moon-yacht
First problem with this sentence; as far as there's such a thing as the scientific method, it's a result of epistemology. Second, Hume is already highly respected, while I've never seen Rorty referenced without making fun of him, to the point that I barely feel the need to join in. Final problem, "Philosophers who hold my philosophy are awesome, and the rest suck!" It's a form of Dunning-Kruger to fail to recognize craftmanship when the craft on display isn't one you personally have use for.

"Stove simply shreds his fellow philosophers. He turns his flamethrower on those "absolutely effortless pseudo-discoveries that philosophers make, and on which their fame rests." For instance, "Plato's discovery of 'universals' went as follows: 'It is possible for something to be a certain way and for something else to be the same way. So, there are universals!' (Tumultuous applause, which lasts 2,400 years.)""

Stove was pretty cool. I'm not going to directly address the issues in the last sentence.

Universals are commonly used by scientists. Linnaean taxonomy, for example, groups multiple organisms under a single universal name, and then ascribes properties to the category, not individuals. The universal electronness of electrons is universally accepted. The questions that must be answered by philosophical history are; did Plato just write down what was already commonly known, or in fact is it commonly known because Plato wrote it down? Even were Plato simply justifying common knowledge, isn't that in itself valuable? Even if Plato were just writing down common knowledge, isn't that valuable if no one else had done so before?

Admittedly it would be pretty ironic if the task of writing down common sense naturally falls to philosophers. Though this gives me an idea; writing down common sense is an ideal task for philosophy apprentices. First, it gives a record of things that historians and archaeologists often lament as going unrecorded. Second, it helps the master find all the arrogant idiocies the apprentice absorbed growing up, and so can correct them more adroitly. Why, the master may even find a few they'd missed in themselves.

"While his reasoning is impressive, it is also in the Grand Tradition of Western Philosophy: namely, almost 100% fact-free. (Elsewhere, Stove readily admits that philosophers "have no more knowledge of any matter that could serve as the premises of their reasonings than the next man has.")"

I'm not sure how widespread is the knowledge that philosophy isn't supposed to deal with facts. The actual work of philosophy is in finding meaning using logic. It is not necessary for the meaning to actually match anything in the real world for it to be true, and thus good philosophy. As a matter of preference, I try to stick to ontologies that have a shot at being human meaningful, but matching the logical roots to actual data is not philosophical work, even if a philosopher does it.

"But even worse than ignoring statistical data, philosophers seldom understand statistical logic. In this case, for example, while the IQs of men and women are equal on average, men's IQ's are more variable. Thus, as any woman could testify, there are more really stupid men. But, there are also far more male geniuses."

Bias: Sailer is awfully enamoured with statistics. ("Plumbing most important job to civilization, says plumber.") Yes, understanding statistics is important enough to understanding the world that you can tell that our society doesn't offer liberal educations because statistics isn't included.[3], [4] However, as per my previous paragraph, it is indeed an issue when philosophers don't understand statistical logic, unless they intend to dodge the field entirely. On the other hand, Sturgeon's second. Further, philosophers are not exactly alone in ignorance of statistical logic. Actual statisticians are often bad at it, let alone anyone else.

"Stove flagrantly exhibits philosophers' worst trait -- emphasizing verbal abstractions over statistical tendencies -- when he ill-advisedly attacks the grandest offshoot of his own school of British empiricism, Darwinism, which he calls a "mere festering mass of errors.""

"I disagree with you, therefore, you're committing errors." I'm still not sure exactly what Sailer means by his 'verbal, abstract essences.' I'd like to make a good-faith check that his criticism doesn't apply to me, but I can't.

"Philosophers of the world, get real! You have nothing to lose but your irrelevance."

The idea that philosophy is useless is itself a philosophy. It's a thread of analytical philosophy in particular:

"Analytic philosophers are in revolt against the grand manner of traditional philosophy which claimed much and (in their view) established nothing."

Seem familiar? Of course it's a bit worse than that. Socrates faced the exact same issue with the Sophists, the term philosophy created expressly to mock the Sophists and distance the new studies from them. It comes as no surprise to me that many philosophers have followed in the footsteps of the Sophists. The problem with the Sophists was never their tradition, customs, or incentive structure, but the fact that thinking professionally about logic, epistemology, and ontology comes with occupational hazards, such as arrogance and sophistry.

Indeed, what are screeds like Sailer's doing but replaying the Sophist drama once again, with 'philosophers' now taking the part of arrogant politickers and the 'scientists' the upstart asker of questions? It makes me wonder how much of the Sophist's reputation is deserved and how much was because Socrates won the smear campaign.

This brings me to my wild tangent.

"Mediterranean peoples such as Jews and Italians, who have been drinking wine for 10,000 years, have evolved impressive genetic and cultural defences against becoming alcoholics. In contrast, Northern Europeans, who first obtained alcohol only a few millennia ago, haven't fully adapted genetically to alcohol yet, and thus must often turn to cruder cultural responses like teetotalling, prohibition and the Betty Ford Clinic. Finally, those racial groups unfortunate enough not to taste alcohol and other sugar-based products until the last few centuries, such as the First Nations peoples of Canada and the Australian Aborigines, are currently being devastated by alcoholism, tooth decay and diabetes."

The Internet is the same. Specifically, comment sections. As technology has marched on, we seem to be progressively finding methods of communication further and further removed from the face-to-face. However, of those methods, only letters have developed conventions far different from those of face-to-face, producing the communication equivalent of tooth decay and diabetes. So, in a few centuries or millennia, I predict we'll have had time to adapt to this new technology. Until then, accept as inevitable the decay of your comment section into "FIRST!" semiliterate babbling, gay jokes, and spew from the fellow travellers of neonazis. At least, without drastic measures ("teetotalling") which most find do more harm than good.

[1] I don't care whether they're actually hard-headed; rather this self-evaluation looks to me to mark the group with good precision.

[2] I wanted a survey to try to direct my search. Eventually I concluded that osmosis is strong enough that if I've missed anything, reinventing the wheel is faster than trying to find it in places like Critique of Pure Reason.

[3] Also, things like how much life insurance you need. Here's the calculation: your income, times the years until your dependents aren't, plus your debts. What this means is that if you die the day your insurance goes through, your dependents will have the benefit of your support until they no longer need it, and won't be responsible for your debts. Also, buy term. It's ridiculously cheap, and isn't a ponzi scheme. Difficult, eh? Can you think of a class or two you'd have liked to replace with something useful, like life insurance?

[4] Unless you make the effort to specifically seek out statistics, and then you get the full technical details, instead of being taught to understand the stuff. No, I don't need to actually perform regression analysis or power transformations, nor do I need to memorize Bayes' formula, because I never need to actually perform these calculations. But I do need to understand what they mean and what they're about.

So I was thinking about school homework...

...and I realized it makes a mockery of child labour laws.

"Tonight, your homework is to vacuum your house." Awesome, no? And since the teachers already know how long it's going to take, either 'only a few minutes' or 'only a few hours' depending on the grade, they can even pay in advance! "You are also assigned to be paid $50." Who could argue with that?

I mean, sure, it's not gonna be as useless, degrading, or painful as 'real' homework, but it should be bad enough!

Can you think of other jobs to assign as homework? Do share.

Oil Consumption versus Reserve Reduction, 2005-2009

I was watching a video (HT: hey bro) on exponential growth and exponential consumption, and it was talking about how much oil there was in 1970, (1.740 * 10¹²) and how if we'd kept our growth rates, we'd be out by now. He mentions this is very simple arithmetic. Sadly, the world is not so clean. I decided to found how complicated the world of oil reserves actually is.

In 2005, oil reserves were 1,349,417,153,000 barrels.

In 2009, oil reserves were 1,348,528,420,000 barrels.

(P90 proven reserves, those that have a 90% chance of being economically recoverable.)

In 2009, the world consumed 85,220,000 barrels a day. I hope you'll forgive a little fudging, but this number has not changed greatly in the last four years. So that means that between 2005 and 2009, about 124 billion barrels of oil were combusted.

And oil reserves went down by 889 million.

Reserves reduced only by about 140th of the amount burnt. This number isn't stable, it's just to ballpark the power technological growth has on available resources (and to show why a little fudging is meaningless.)

Anarchy vs. Statistics

Somalia has long been cited as a prime example of the horrors of anarchy. I believe that anarchy must avoid the pitfall communism usually falls into, and never say that a place wasn't 'anarchic enough.' There's an argument that runs along the lines that less government is good, therefore you can't conclude that all of a sudden no government is bad, any more than less tumour is good, but completely eliminating it would be bad.

Therefore, I have always accepted Somalia as an example of the features of anarchy, even if I could not, until now, explain what exactly was going on there. This was simply because the place was being misrepresented.

I'll open with the humdinger.

"In the year following the state’s collapse, civil war, exacerbated by severe drought, devastated the Sub-Saharan territory killing 300,000 Somalis (Prendergast 1997).
[...]
Though largely unrecognized by economists, the widespread violence that ravaged Somalia in its first year without government vanished considerably by 1994. By the mid-1990s peace prevailed over most of the country (Menkhaus 1998, 2004). Since 1997 most indicators of Somali development show slow but steady progress and today are above their pre-stateless levels."

And I think that's exactly what you could expect if you implemented anarchy right here and now. Mass death, followed by improvement.

This is an issue that I think lies behind most objections to anarchism, but I never see brought up explicitly. Indeed, in nearly any particular, we can easily see that the government is incompetent and would be better off leaving well enough alone. It's even easy to get agreement on this if you don't make your interlocutor actually think of it as anarchism.

There's just that little bit of mass death between here and there, so if you do bring up anarchism, it covertly takes over the entire dialogue. So, try it out, as I'll be doing. Every time I see an objection of the form, 'but government is necessary for X,' I'll replace it with, 'but what about the mass death?' and see if it still makes sense in context.

"On the one hand, popular opinion sees government as universally superior to anarchy."

"On one hand, opinion sees government as universally superior to a period of mass death." Seems to be working out.


Page twelve has the table listing the actual statistics at hand. The table notes a decline in GDP, which shows how useless GDP is. Radios, TVs, telephones, and physicians all go up, but wealth goes down? Notably, Leeson has an excellent analysis of why the statistics fall like this, but I think the analysis could be generalized farther than Leeson would be comfortable with. I'm also highly amused that literacy and schooling have dropped while life expectancy, and indeed general health, has increased.

Things that are truly important, full list:
[...]
Education
[...]

Actually that's not true, it's just that government education is basically worse than useless. For instance, the medical advances the Somalis are using to improve their health would be impossible without at least one person getting educated, in spite of being schooled.

I am especially amused by this bit, emphasis mine

"Public goods come from a variety of sources in stateless Somalia, including the “taxes” charged by militia. Clan militias provide security to citizens in their territories, and militiamen for hire protect businesses, seaports, large markets, and trade convoys. In other cases shari’a, a form of religious law/courts discussed below, provide security by including guards in their court militia in return for payment from businessmen (UNDP 2001: 109-110). Clan leaders also work together to provide needed public goods in areas outside of Somalia’s big cities where very few exist."

While Leeson has discarded the automatic association between anarchy and mass death, by noting that the mass death can't go on forever, he has failed to discard the association between certain goods and the term 'public.' Public goods are defined as those which can't be properly paid for by being charged for. Although, I can understand why Leeson might be unconsciously reticent to admit that the basic service that his government provides - security - is not, actually, a public good.

Another thing working exactly as your average anarchist says it would:

"Private courts are funded by the donations of successful businessmen who benefit from the presence of this public good in urban centers. Under anarchy, dispute resolution is free and speedy by international standards (Nenova 2004; Nenova and Harford 2004)."

Something that needs to be uplayed a great deal:

"Expansive domestic clan-based social networks also provide social insurance."

The role of a robust social fabric is critical in any anarchic situation. It's one of the reasons anarchy here and now would lead to mass death.

I hate to be so topical, but hey Obama, considered Somalia?

"Private healthcare is also available. Although the state of medicine in Somalia
remains extremely low, medical consultations are very affordable ($0.50/visit)"

Fifty cents. ... Fifty cents?! Puts that dollar a day ("extreme poverty") wage into perspective, doesn't it? Given a minimum wage of eight bucks, that would be $30 for a doctor's visit around here. Medical care, when government isn't mucking with it, is priced on par with DVDs,[1] and moreover markets do not produce shortages, two reasons you know that the American healthcare system is not private, whatever they're fond of saying.

Another thing that puts the dollar a day wage into perspective...most of Somali is pastoral. Many earning that dollar aren't relying on that dollar for all their wealth the way a western citizen does. They not only have farms, they have friends with farms. Living hand to mouth isn't something we really do here - but, literally, at least some of those 'extremely poor' Somalis are making things with their hands, and then consuming them. Instead, they're just using the cash to pay for doctor's visits.


Despite all this, I have three concerns. First, the GDP issue is probably just the tip of an iceberg of dodgy statistics. The paper may not be as supportive as anarchism as it appears. Second, the paper only barely touched the fact that while Somalia lacks a central government, it is not really anarchy, but rather polyarchy, which would simply invoke the well-known principles governing monopolies, rather than the people's ability to self-govern. For example, the paper places the free market price on roads - apparently it is 5% of something, but that could simply be because the local militias compete with each other for traffic, and is not likely to continue indefinitely.

Finally, in the Europe of say 1500, military realities would have forced a place like anarchist Somalia off the map in a matter of days, only limited by the time it took for the armies to march across the landscape. What has changed? Depending on the answer, anarchy may be even more viable than Somalia leads us to believe...or Somalia may be unknowingly dancing across a knife edge.

[1] Does that mean an MRI would cost about as much as a DVD player? If so, a getting a truly private MRI would probably be about as much hassle as buying a DVD player. The Somalis do not have the capital investment to afford MRIs, but, in a decade or so, perhaps we'll find out? If the TNG doesn't get off the ground, that is.

Journalism Rethunk

My main issue is just that the 95% crud journalism is taken seriously, combined with the fact that the errors journalists make just happen to be of a kind I find particularly abhorrent.

I learned this by publishing my misapprehensions on the subject on this blog. For some reason, it makes me compare what I've written to everything I read, to see if it matches up properly, and earlier today I suddenly thought, "There has to be some good journalism."

(If you're interested in the process, when it hit me I was reading the line, "That reality helps fuel cynicism about journalists and journalism among some — and The Daily Show may not be helping, Williams says.")

So I think I'll stop blaming journalists particularly for two flaws in humanity generally. It's not their fault that (~95% of) their jobs are inherently a bait-and-switch game, or at least not their fault that the demand exists.

Though I must wonder how much the responsibility for taking those jobs lies with the journalist. The preliminary results of my studies into self-control suggest that they don't actually have much choice. It would be the perfect solution, of course - "I'm noticing that my job isn't what it's supposed to be, so I and my entire department are quitting. Have a nice day." - it's just utterly impossible.

"So," I say to myself, "Of course most journalism is yellow. Most studies are wrong, most art is crap, most ventures fail. It's just more of the same."

The test for this new perspective is - if we magically replaced the journalists with better quality people, would journalism improve? My answer is no. Even if some of them managed to bleach their papers and keep them that way, they would be driven from the market by those that embraced the market's demand. The quality of people must not be the issue.

The only thing left is for me to Accept that near everyone will remain Ignorant of these facts. (Oh wait, also to recurse the technique that found the facts.)

Bayesian 'Reasoning' vs. Judgment

Right, so what is the prior probability that a baby dying is worse than an adult woman dying?

How would you even start to collect such a statistic?

The purpose of Bayesian Reasoning is, ultimately, to make decisions. Beyond even its issues coming from being derived from an existing framework, the problem is that, even if priors can be calculated, all reasoning begins and ends at human judgment and human values. Bayesian calculations are just something that can make the middle part easier. I strongly suspect Reverend Bayes would have been the first one to tell the modern Bayesian this. (Would have replaced the concept 'human values' with 'divinity,' though.)

Atheists on Consciousness

"But defenders of religion like [Kathryn] Lofton and Karen Armstrong and the not-quite-pro-religion-but-getting-there types like Terry Eagleton invariably attack atheists for their lack of charm, style, empathy and another nebulous quality (I think of it as *mysterianism*) which keeps them from fully appreciating the true nature of religion."

Mysterianism, eh?

Only problem is that this 'nebulous quality,' does, in fact, exist. I think that confirms it; these atheists have the mental equivalent to colourblindness. Indeed, why would their from-scratch philosophy have to account for all facets of my experience?

'States' of Matter

The scare quotes are there because the way to objectively define states of matter is by a discontinuity on a particular graph, and this discontinuity shows that there are dozens if not hundreds of states of matter. (Update: when someone says 'fourth' or 'fifth' state of matter found, you should laugh at them.)

Regardless, sand dynamics are actually quite pretty.

The problem the physicists are having is that they don't truly understand what a states of matter are - if I asked one "What is a 'liquid?'" they wouldn't have an answer that really defines a liquid. If they did, they could simply look at the sand dynamic equations and say, "Ah, this part looks like a liquid, and this part looks more like a solid," or see edge cases where some solid properties and some liquid properties are present simultaneously. Moreover, defining this thing would likely clarify what, exactly, a 'state' of matter actually is.

Do you also think that the way the falling sand grains bead up looks awfully similar to the way stars bead up together?

AI Found a Blog, Was Disappointed, But In an Interesting Way

I ran across a history blog ("Muhlberger's Early History") and I thought I should have a crack at evaluating it, as it would be nice to have a history source that isn't Mencius Moldbug.

It's an official university blog. Strike one; the primary goal of the blog is institutional brownie points, not truth. On the Obama prize, Muhlberger links approvingly to Daily Kos. Strike two; although everyone makes mistakes.

Then I ran across this:

"If you want to slam academia... ...you don't need to go after advanced literary theory. In fact there are juicier and more important targets."

"Well, I promised myself I'd finish this before the sequel appeared in the shops, and the conclusion has been made, shall we say, somewhat easier by the fact that the burden of my conclusion - that there is something terribly, horribly wrong with the state of modern economics - has become somewhat of an open door to push against."

""When future generations ask the economics profession 'What were you doing while the great bubble built up ahead of the Second Great Depression?', and we have to reply 'Lots and lots of quirky little working papers about sumo wrestling and speed-dating', it is going to be really, really, fucking embarrassing""

Strike three was a critical. I was hoping for a...slightly...more substantial criticism. Even if this one is true, I would just respond, "What, that's it? That's your slamming of 'academia?'"

I'll accept the Democratic axiom for the moment. Further, I'll accept that scientists should determine public policy. Even given this, there's a serious mismatch between the conclusions of economics and policy. (And it seems slamming academia is getting trendy.) However, the above pretty clearly isn't it.

To clearly see why I say so, compare this paper to the above:

"Economists have been complaining about anti-market, anti-foreign, make-work, and pessimistic biases for centuries."

"At the government agency where I have worked and where agency lawyers and agency microeconomists interact with each other . . . the lawyers are often exasperated, not only by the frequency with which agency economists attack their proposals but also by the unanimity among the agency economists in their opposition. The lawyers tend to (incorrectly) attribute this opposition to failure to hire “a broad enough spectrum” of economists, and to beg the economists, if they can’t support the lawyers’ proposals, at least to give them “the best economic arguments” in favor of them. . . . The economists’ answer is typically something like, “There are no good economic arguments for your proposal.”"

I can come up with at least four possible reasons why economics papers are focusing on niche topics. The first is that they're tired of being ignored, and are focusing on topics which aren't farts in the wind. Second is that they already unanimously agree on all the serious topics, have already weighed in, are spending time on other things. Third, the layman has no idea how relevant these topics are (speed dating) as models for fundamental economic theories. Finally, Daniel Davies actually has no idea what economics papers are on, (he admits to not reading The Economist, presumably he can admit to ignorance of other things as well) and is therefore misrepresenting the field.

Naturally, none of these are addressed by Davies. The simplistic thought on display here is a typical feature of ignorance, often indulged in by smart people analyzing anything that isn't in their actual field of study. (Which is troubling, as his whole blog appears to be about economics.) I'm probably committing this exact error right now to some degree, although the difference is that I'm eager to rectify my ignorance.

As a bonus, now I know I'm right for skipping Freakonomics. ("The basic problem with the Freakonomics era was that the profession abandoned the study of production, consumption and exchange." If that's what Freakonomics is, say no more, I'll be over here...)


Tangents:

Notably the blog seems very light on actual history, although the pictures are quite nice. On the front page as of now, there are only two posts about actual early history, on the same topic, and both are teasers for other websites.

If you really want to study what's wrong in the state of Denmark, the first step is to divide economics into microeconomics and macroeconomics. The second is to realize that the Austrian school is legitimate, and you must deal with it, pro or con, if you want to be a real thinker on economics. Just from this you have a 2x2 matrix, 11, 10, 01, 00, and you need to figure out which one is true. The full matix of questions you need to answer is much bigger, of course, but this is a good start.

I could add tone/attitude to my little comparison; you may want to do so yourself.

Turns out Davids writes for Crooked Timber. Ouch, that must suck.

I should clarify that I don't have much issue with Daily Kos' ideas, however the attitude and general epistemological ability of the place are in the pits somewhere. I've seen the ideas put forward politely and coherently elsewhere, places where I can respectfully disagree (and yes I disagree) without being labelled a heretic and exiled. If you want to make Daily Kos' points, you should find those places and link to them instead, unless you want brownie points instead of debate. Daily Kos is awesome for brownie points.

Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Ah, a professional saying their profession is the most noble. But when a philosopher says it, it's reliable. Right? Right?

Insert laughter here...

However, philosophy is the best trade for the dilettante. If you want to walk into any workplace and immediately have something worthwhile to say, first learn philosophy. Then you'll know better than to try it.

Democratic Essence - Followup

As a followup. Also contain power from first principles.

I ask myself; what is the president of America doing that's useful? What could he be doing? I have one interesting answer, but setting that aside...

For the most part,* he's just a figurehead. I found a blog once which, among other useful things, discussed all the productive things G.W. Bush tried to do. They were all shot down, of course, president or no president. Most republican presidents are like this, while the democratic presidents know better than to try anything. (The dem faction has workarounds anyway.) So they're not actually doing anything.

*(Let's say 70-80%)

But, constructing an imaginary polity where da Prez actually had power, what could they be doing? It turns out this requires a rather large perturbation - it's not like the president can just draft a law and sign it in. But, even going through that, it looks like the best thing the president could do would be to leave well enough alone. The existing over-regulation has kind of taken on a life of its own and the economy has grown over it like a mold. Trying to fix it now is just likely to make a mess.

And, aside from the economy's inherent structural flaws, such as factional reserve, which can't be fixed by a president anyway, it works pretty well. It's not like it needs a whole lot of messing with.

So, answer: the president should basically be sitting on their thumbs. (Again, say 70-80%.)

That figurehead position is exactly what the president should be, and very likely where the head of any country with a functioning high-tech economy would be. Ultimately the function of a modern head of state is just a coordination point - because discipline beats numbers every time, to the point where it hardly matters what everyone is coordinating on.

Which makes the obsession with who gets to fill that spot ironic. King, priest, dictator, elected official, CEO...it doesn't matter, because your options are; sit on your thumbs, or make things worse. (Hello, North Korea!) And while military culling has been suppressed recently, every real war is a pissing contest - the one with the bigger economy wins. For instance, imagine South Korea's backers decided tomorrow to let South Korea mobilize and reunite the peninsula - what, exactly, is Kim Jong Il supposed to do about it? Throw pitchforks at their jets? Modulo some nukes, here, of course...but I suspect the necessary artful diplomacy would have already neutralized even those. And without his own backers, KJ would never have gotten nukes in the first place.

To try to check this answer, I'm going to look at power from first principles.

A person has power when they can influence the actions of another. Hierarchies start to form economically, with some kind of contract exchanging benefits for servitude of some scope.
Consider a stone age tribe, with some kind of primitive economy, such as barter or simply communism. Also assume that for some reason, there's an opening for tribal elder.

Someone who knows where the mammoths roam exchanges his knowledge for extra pointy things from the spear-knapper and more money from the cockleshell guy. They all go out and down a mammoth, and the three enjoy delicious mammoth steak; everyone benefits. Eventually, a couple more of the tribe crave meaty mammoth, and trade extra clothes and roots.
Eventually, though, the everyone knows where the mammoths roam, because they've been on so many hunts; mammoth-guy isn't really contributing anymore. So, let's say at the next generation, the son of spear-knapper realizes that he really doesn't need the son of mammoth-guy. He tries to get son of shell-guy to break with him so they can go mammoth hunting with the dead weight of mammoth-guy, and thus the labour can get a 'fairer' share of the fruits.

It doesn't work. Shell-guy is all like, "But if I go with you, I'll lose the extra clothes and roots." The same goes for the others; they would lose out on shells and clothes, and roots and shells. Individually, each has a positive motive to stay in the agreement, and mammoth-guy can use his existing agreement-wealth against any dissenter. In the end, spear-guy probably has to give up more spear points just to keep access to the in-group.

Yes, it does seem that if the children of everyone but mammoth-guy all stand up together and cast off mammoth-guy, the only real downside is that if mammoth-guy wasn't retarded, he will have stockpiled a bunch of points and shells, and so they will temporarily lose a store of capital. But even with four people, the necessary coordination is nontrivial, not to mention that overturning the existing agreement means that all have an opportunity and motive to squabble for advantage in the new agreement.

With thousands of people, it effectively becomes impossible. Historical revolutions originate from competing leaders, not anything resembling class consciousness.

So, power from first principles; it can form noncoercively, but once formed, its main advantages are those of a coordination point - it preempts conflict and imparts coordination - while breaking it reopens the conflict and requires even more coordination. It has both a positive and negative feedback promoting stability.

Moreover, a good leader can use their economic clout to channel their followers to more productive pursuits. If son of mammoth-guy is canny, he will specialize in being more of a merchant; while he still goes on hunts, his main pursuit is trading his stockpiled wealth for positive-sum labours by his followers. Given enough time, son of mammoth guy will be able to buy the whole tribe, and, most likely, even the tribe next door.

(This probably never happened - humans prefer to build up economies to make armies, and then simply conquer the next tribe over. All the kingdoms and nations we are familiar with were united by conquest; as a result, it's absurd to be against modern conquest.)

The president, no matter who they are, is pretty much in the same boat - they can't truly offer anything much of value as a person, and are instead interchangeable. However, the existence of -some- president is of great value. And while it is true that being president is pretty swank, providing incentive for people to take the job, in a modern economy there's lots of opportunity for nearly equally swank jobs elsewhere.

And what about my point that, even more so than the tribal merchant-prince-elder, they should be sitting on their thumbs?
Beyond some critical point of wealth, mammoth-dude realizes that instead of waiting for spear-dude to rebel, he could simply pay off one faction to coerce even more extra payments from another. Ultimately this is shooting himself in the foot - the more negative sum games he plays, the more likely the next tribe over will build a better economy and simply trash his tribe one day. However, just like it's difficult for individual subjects to see that their long-term interest is probably served better by not following mammoth-dude, it is almost impossible (judging from history) for mammoth-dude to see past his own short term gain.

This is basically the only kind of game a president can play - take one faction (for example, the courts) and use it against another. They can't even merchant-prince the way mammoth-dude can, because there are literally thousands of people who know thousands more about how to make a buck, and they're already doing it.

Aside from the odd exception, there is only one thing a president need concern themselves with; making sure they aren't toppled, thus destroying the figurehead bonus.

Blogger is Experimenting on Their Live Servers

Update: This post is now a part of Some of My Mistakes.


Again. As opposed to, say, test servers. This blog post is a workaround.

It's also a proof that Democracy is an inherent contradiction.

Anyway...

It's fun to watch someone flail around trying to define Democracy. (Communism too.) Due to this, I usually have to derive my own.

Seriously, if I use this particular definition, I don't even have to do any work.

Democracy = rights, some liberties, separation of powers and separation of church and state. Also has a constitution that guarantees independent courts.

Well, constitutions don't guarantee anything in any practical sense. Case closed.

But cuz I like overkill...

Elections can be held without electing anything of consequence.

If you want to guarantee human rights, the first item on the agenda is to abolish Democracy. It doesn't matter who you are, you don't get to say how I run my life unless you have a contract with my signature or seal saying that you do. Rule by majority is an inherent violation of the human right.

Ditto independent courts. Separation of powers immediately entangles them with the political arena, exposing them to strong pressure to either submit or be submitted to.


So I'm going to go back to demos kratos and say, okay, the people rule.

Sovereignty, ownership of the geographical area which corresponds to a jurisdiction, is owned by the stakeholders, the people affected, by this jurisdiction.

I'm going to accept that the majority have this right as an axiom. Clearly, if you have a bunch of people, with different opinions, but one outcome must be applied to all of them, the best way to maximize value is to match the opinions of the most people as closely as possible. Hence, demos kratos automatically means majority rule.

I'm going to accept that the majority are allowed to appoint a steward to run the thing for them.

So the majority are appointing someone to tell them what to do.

Right, TGGP, I'm hiring you to be my master.

Or...err...not, as that doesn't make any sense. Who's in charge, here? Do you get to tell me I cannot fire you?
What about unpleasant orders? The canonical example being to clean my room - perhaps to cut down on insect infestations. I decide I don't like that and fire you, defeating the whole purpose.

Circular authority collapses. The whole exercise is absurdity incarnate.

So I'm going to toss out the idea that they can appoint a steward. As any venture founded in contradiction, you can pretend to do it, but in reality it will be something very different and painfully corrupt. All Republics are automatically evil.

So, pure Democracy or bust.

The first problem is that now we're flying the space shuttle by ballot box. Imagine the Apollo XIII mission, except before the astronauts could do anything, they had to run an election across all three hundred million Americans...after all, they paid for it.

We're lucky the free market can run itself. Soviet Russia had much less support and had a nice controlled flight into terrain.

There's more, naturally; some of the Apollo XIII repairs and manoeuvres would accrue prestige to various factions, resulting in objective-outcome-independent decision making. The astronauts are quite fucked.

But, as I'm a philosopher, I find it much more damning to find a logical contradiction.

Telling yourself what to do is even more absurd than hiring someone to tell you what to do. The majority is just going to do what it was going to do anyway. They will legalize all their favourite pastimes, criminalize everything they find disgusting, and institutionalize every bias and misconception they have.

The only people affected are the minority...everyone else.

Again, I can instantly slay Democracy here by the standards of 'modern Democracy,' by invoking the rights of the minority. But that is too easy, so I'm going to throw out the idea of rights entirely. (It also narrows down the source of the contradiction.)

Instead: Democracy is the enslavement of the minority by the majority. The full scope of people ruled by Democracy have exactly no say in how they are ruled. Their opinions, freely voiced or not, are tossed aside. Their votes are meaningless. Their 'possessions' are held due to the sufferance of the majority.

Democracy is the ultimate in disenfranchisement. Oh and incidentally most people get to run around with their heads cut off. I'm sorry - like chickens with their heads cut off. I got the idea that they're chaotic and the fact that they have no qualification to rule mixed together in my head. (Not only that, no desire to learn to wield their power.)

This state of pure chaos is the closest you can get to approximating rule by the people. Insofar as your average Democracy isn't this, it isn't even trying to be Democracy, isn't even attempting to put legitimacy to votes, and is contravening majority rule.

Democracy is, in short, the opposite of what it is supposed to be. It is the rule by nobody at all. Democracy is the definition of pure chaos. As each successive definition has attempted to tame this rabid 800-pound gorilla, it simply gives me more and more ways to show that third stage rabies cannot be cured.

For example,

"Even though there is no specific, universally accepted definition of 'democracy', there are two principles that any definition of democracy includes. The first principle is that all citizens, not invested with the power to govern, have equal access to power and the second that all citizens enjoy legitimized freedoms and liberties."

By definition, any citizen who might benefit from power does not have access to it. Without gutting majority rule, and thus abandoning any pretence of Democracy, just under most citizens do not enjoy any legitimate freedoms or liberties. Simultaneously, the majority are all like, "Yay, I'm free from myself, I have liberty from my tyranny!"

The idea that the people affected by rule should have a say in how they're ruled is a very feel good idea. Unfortunately, it is impossible.

I'd like to finish off with a thought I've had basically forever but never seen anywhere else.

The actual point of Democratic ideology is that anyone can be president. People looked at the world and found that not only were their lives largely controlled by others for others' benefit, but that there was never any legal way that they could have been masters of their own destiny. While acknowledging that someone had to rule, (I reject this) they realized even basic fairness required that everyone at least have some shot at the top job.

And that's it. That's the point. That, if you were being misruled or exploited, at least to have the opportunity to do a better job by doing it yourself.

Again, this essential point just goes to show that Democracy is the first thing to get rid of if this is the outcome you want. This goal, as with the feminist movement, was immediately hijacked by cruel, mendacious power seekers. (You can see me contort trying not to say 'evil' because I know you don't accept the concept.) Attempts at Democracy turned out to be extremely useful to these people.

Return to UR

Black Holes versus Big Bang

The Schwartzchild radius for a mass equal to the entire universe is, I estimate without calculation, larger than one metre.

If the Big Bang theory is true, then the entire universe was once inside its own Schwartzchild radius.

Inside the Schwartzchild radius, colliding with the singularity within finite proper time is inevitable.

The universe is not a singularity.

Conclusion:

Big Bang theory is false.

OR

Black holes do not exist.

QED.

Obviously, objects very similar to black holes exist, as attested by accretion rings and gravitational lenses. The Big Bang may be allowed to be singular because the first event is in many ways special - as long as after any finite time, it is no longer singular, everything is fine.

Ergo, most likely, black holes do not exist. When our physics tells us there is a singularity in nature, we're wrong.

Space, Regarding Nothingness

There seems to be a lot of confusion about virtual particles with regard to ex nihilo.

Specifically, people seem to think that space is exactly equal to nothingness.

Just some quick points.

Space is expanding. So I guess it gains somethingness just long enough to expand and then becomes nothing again?

Warping space causes light rays to bend. They're travelling though nothing, which by definition can have no properties, but bending the nothing causes an interaction. Right.

Finally, empty space has an energy density. That's pretty impressive for a nothing.

So I guess the ex nihilo problem isn't virtual particles, it's that there's an entire ex nihilo energy density. (Which I believe is currently linked to dark energy.)


In reality, pure nothingness is very different from the vacuum. The vacuum is simply a backdrop for particles.

To test this statement, consider the first moments of the universe. By the Big Bang theory, it started as a singularity. Everything, including space itself, was packed into a single point. (Something that is normally impossible, but the Big Bang really did come from nothing.)

Shortly after, the universe is a finite size, and a very small size at that. What happens when the particles hit the edge?

If space is really nothingness, of course the phrase "space was packed into a single point" is meaningless, and they just kind of keep going. Whoosh. (This contradicts the idea that the universe is about 44 billion light years across, of course, since nothingness has no definite size.)

Dennett Refuted in One Sentence

Plus several paragraphs that essentially just repeat the sentence in detail. I should mention that none of this means listening to the talk is only ironically useful. (That is, listening to find out what doing it wrong looks like, a type of consumption I engage in regularly.) I should also mention the sentence I reference is the last one.


You can't be mistaken about consciousness. It is the one thing with this quality, because it is known directly. As an instrument, you can indeed be mistaken about what the readings represent, but the reading itself is completely unmistakable.

"I'm going to shake your confidence that you know your innermost minds."

So, er, you do think something? And that thing is mistaken, apparently, according to some criteria? So, there's what you think, and what is? So, is Dennett trying to say that what you think doesn't exist? Because if it does, then you can't be mistaken about your innermost mind. If you're mistaken about it, it's not innermost. To clarify, if I ask you to picture an apple, you can be mistaken about picturing an apple. (If you think the lady was sawn in half, you can't be mistaken about thinking the lady was sawn in half.) The apple is an association and a label, but what you are picturing can't be mistaken relative to itself. You are picturing something, and if you describe it to me, assuming you're fluent in English, (aside from 'apple) you can't be mistaken about that description.

The charitable interpretation is literally that Dennett is denying the existence of consciousness, something that meshes poorly with his opening remarks.


Let me assume it isn't true. So, you mistake one conscious state for another. However, what did you mistake it as? This illusion cannot be mistaken; otherwise it's an illusion that it's an illusion, and you are mistaking the real thing for an illusion. As such, whatever feature of the world you decide is a level of consciousness you identify as indirect and suspect, it simply pushes this directness back a level. (Except when it pushes back forward a level.)

"A lot of people think there can't be a naturalistic explanation of consciousness."

And a lot of people like to confuse my explanation with a supernatural one. That's part of what gives me confidence in it; Dennett would say it's supernatural, yet a Christian would most likely call me out for scientistic bent. I'm obviously not trying to pander to any prejudice. ('Cept my own, which I volunteer to admit.)

Ending at 5:54, "The magic that can be done is not real magic."

No, Dennett, by 'real' in this case people mean the thing that they would really call magic if they saw it, rather than what they perceive as the cheap imitation. And indeed, do not 'real' magicians play up their act to make it as similar to real magic for all it is worth? It entertains by imitating, as opposed to music, which is entertaining because it is entertaining, not becuase people want to see what it is imitating, but can't. Try not to wander into linguistics, it isn't your field.

"Consciousness is a bag of tricks."

Something you cannot prove. As a philosopher, you shouldn't be saying it. Since, as you seem to be aware, people are easily fooled into believing what they want to be true, and you clearly want consciousness to be naturalistic, you should perhaps turn your analytic ability on yourself.

Ending at: 17:11

'Fooling you' is completely the wrong term. The brain is not fooling you, it is making an educated guess, and if you learn to introspect skillfully it will tell you it is doing so. It helpfully labels everything with a delightful cornucopia of labels, actually.

"How many engines on that Boeing? Right in the middle of the picture."

Consciously speaking, the middle of the picture is the juncture between the shuttle and the airplane. The geometric centre is irrelevant.

Again, checking my labels, I didn't even request knowledge about the engines, so, shockingly, it wasn't passed to me. Basically, I thought it was unimportant, my subconscious thought it was unimportant, and consciousness is expensive so we didn't waste our energies on it.

Come to think he mislead me. "It's so obvious and important." Well, actually, it's not obvious, because I didn't see it. Second, it's not important to me. Thus I checked for other things. (This kind of thing has happened to me before. Left to myself I'm just more efficient.)

Also from introspection, I notice that as I experience my conscious representation of the picture, parts of it are labelled for me as searched and not searched. Now that I know I need to check for this label, it will even be useful to me in the future.

Again, Dennett makes a fundamental mistake when he thinks about consciousness, but all his reasoning afterwards is actually pretty interesting.

"Philosopher Dan Dennett makes a compelling argument that not only don't we understand our own consciousness, but that half the time our brains are actively fooling us."

Ahem.

"Philosopher Dan Dennett sticks his foot in his mouth about consciousness, showing his misconception in Blu-Ray clarity, but does it in such a way that everyone is impressed."

Not being an expert on what information, exactly, is passed to my consciousness doesn't make me not an expert on consciousness, since consciousness is a consequence of that information being passed, not the information itself.

Paradoxes

Like the last article, I was reading about paradoxes and now I'm writing about paradoxes. It's a straightforward and fairly predictable process.


I'm actually anomalously bad at these puzzles. My general academic success completely fails to predict my perfect failure rate. I even have to work hard to understand the solution once I know what it is. The reason for this is contained in this fact; I'm also anomalously good at remembering the solution once I've heard it. Since our academic systems rely almost entirely on rote, my memory leads directly to my high test scores, but confounds measurement of my 'true intelligence' - however you feel like defining that.


Surprise test paradox. I will assume you're familiar with it. I'm going to define surprise in binary; an event is either not totally predictable or it is totally predictable.

Logic professor says, "There will be a surprise test tomorrow at 3 pm."

The ultimate question becomes; is Prof inherently lying? Assume there is a test. Can it be a surprise test? Can the pupils know if there is a test or not?

Student thinks, "That is a contradiction. There cannot be a surprise test. Prof is lying."

Logic professor gives test at 3 pm the next day. Student thinks, "Well that was surprising." Ergo the student was wrong. But why?

Savvier Student thinks, "Either there will be no test or it won't be a surprise. There are no other possibilities. I cannot rule out either based on the information at hand. (For the sake of argument, guess 50% probability for each.) But now I've reached this conclusion, I cannot actually say with certainty that it won't occur, and thus it will be 50% surprising. Either there will be no test or it will not be 100% expected." When there is a test, Savvier Student is surprised.

Now this is a very interesting chain of logic that starts from true premises, contradicts itself, and then reaches a true conclusion. This is exactly the kind of thing our thinking machines cannot do, except by error. Also, it's exactly the kind of thing humans do all the time. I've seen many mathematical proofs that reach the right answer for the wrong reasons. (I did it myself just recently. Also, Copernicus' circular-orbit heliocentric system was strictly worse than Ptolemy's. Yet, they stuck with it at least long enough to find the elliptical orbit repair. Until then, the only reasons to believe Copernicus were irrational reasons. Which turned out to be correct.)

However, it's still wrong.

Final Student, nicknamed 'passing grade,'* "I do not yet know if there is a test or not. (They Accept their Ignorance.) So there are four possibilities; there is a test or there isn't, and for each of those I assume there is a test and I assume there isn't.

*(Hello, arrogance! How are you doing today? Remember, I'm playing the part of both the Prof and sir 'passing grade' here. Like when David Eddings' characters think of other of his characters as 'complex.')

"If there is a test, and I assume there is, it won't be a surprise and thus Prof's statement contradicts the facts.

"If there is a test and I assume there isn't, it will be a surprise. However, this is contradictory, because I would have to conclude that Prof was telling the truth, which leads me to conclude there is a test, which contradicts the facts as above.

"If there isn't a test and I assume there isn't, I'm right, but Prof's statement contradicts the facts.

"If there isn't a test and I assume there is, Prof's statement contradicts the facts, and I'm just wrong anyway."

"Of all the possibilities, not one can be true without Prof contradicting himself. This statement is meaningless. There is no possible arrangement of facts for which it is true."

Final Student realizes that they know exactly what they knew before Prof's statement. Prof may as well have told them that "Erobyhan," and that "Ionaycla." Final Student decides to assume nothing about tests tomorrow, exactly as they were before.

There is a test tomorrow. With no expectation to confirm or disappoint, Final Student is neither surprised nor unsurprised.

For this analysis, it turns out I don't even need to know if there is actually a test or not. There is no possible arrangement of facts for which the statement is true. It is, in fact, simply an abuse of English, and meaningless. A computer can't even entertain this thought; you cannot validly relate test, surprise, and time that way.

This apparent paradox depends not on the logic of the statement but on the expectations of the audience. As a result, it isn't much of a paradox; even written on a deserted wall the Barber Paradox is still a paradox, but if Prof utters this to an empty room, it is just gibberish. Also, it isn't necessary for the audience to form expectations from Prof's statement; they can choose to form them from anything they desire, rational or irrational, and indeed the paradox is only paradoxical if they make logical errors.

Alternatively you can define 'surprise' differently than usual, for example 'any event that isn't entirely predictable must be at least slightly surprising.' This 'surprise' then is the change of known probability, the jump when it goes from less to 100% when the event actually occurs. Then the paradox doesn't require an audience...but that seems, upon reflection, to be nonsense. Prof delivers the statement to an empty room, gives the test to an empty room, (handing out no actual sheets of paper) and yet a test paradox has still occurred? The definition, while handy in certain instances, fails the definition test; it flagrantly violates our intuitions of what 'surprise' is supposed to mean.

Similarly, if you flip a coin, and it comes up tails, are you surprised? How about heads? Nevertheless, lacking a better definition, I'll use this one as an approximation.


So yes Prof is lying. There is no truth of the matter about whether the test is surprise or not.


So here's my question; how does a human entertain, and indeed reason about, this concept?

For this kind of problem it can also be useful to examine what's actually going on. On Sunday, Prof says, "There will be a surprise test next week." In reality, surprise is neither binary, but rather a scalar, nor entirely logical. If the Prof not announced any test, it would be maximally surprising. If there's a test on Monday, it will be pretty surprising, on Tuesday it will be a bit less surprising, and so on until Friday when it isn't surprising at all.

Of course adding even more reality, Prof doesn't mean 'surprise.' Prof means simply that there is a test next week with roughly equal probability for each day. 'Surprise' is just shorter. And yes, end of Thursday, it won't be a surprise to see it on Friday.

What that actually means is that by the end of Friday, the actual test itself won't add to the student's knowledge of when the test is. But at the beginning of Thursday, the students can predict 'the test will be today 50% of the time' and so if indeed there is a test, their knowledge changes from 50% to 100%. This is usually accompanied by a sensation which is very similar to surprise.* (Of course a full surprise is 0% to 100%.) I think this will accord with your own experience; you don't much expect it on Monday, because the probability is still 20%. As the week continues, the probability rises. (The real world is a bit messier; there is some probability Prof was lying or forgetful, which is why it still feels slightly surprising even on Friday.) Further, you know that since Prof feels the same way, and is thus biased against Friday, most tests labelled 'surprise' will occur in the bucket Tuesday-Thursday, with only a small residue on Monday.

*(Hey X-phi! Go check this!)

Similarly, Prof will likely have experience in this, and know that most surprise tests occur in the Tuesday-Thursday bucket, and that students know this, and may try to use these expectations against them, causing a real surprise.

It may be worth noting that the students can't tell the difference between the Prof randomly choosing to test each day, like radioactive decay, and the Prof having thrown a die and decided on Sunday. To the student, the test having a 100% chance of occurring on Wednesday is identical to the Prof happening to randomly decide, on Wednesday morning, to have the test.


And, while we're looking at the actual process of things, this situation is logically identical to the Free Will versus Determinism situation. Assuming Prof thinks they unpredictably decided on Wednesday morning, Prof cannot tell the difference between it being an actual, unpredictable choice and it having been decided since the beginning of time. The supposedly opposed philosophies are, in consequence, identical.

By the way, it's good to know that, assuming Prof's choice was already decided since the Big Bang, it just means Prof is the Big Bang. They, that is, their personality, is a manifestation of the Big Bang's will, however you want to define 'will.' Prof's 'I' moves from their brain to that cataclysmic creation; it does not disappear.


Now onto something else entirely.

It's not terribly surprising that humans can state things which have no definite value of truth, such as Prof's. But it should be. It should be even more surprising that such statements are not immediately rejected as meaningless.

From everything we know about the universe, it is fully logical. It is in fact mathematical in rigidity. And, in math, if any contradiction is true, everything is true. Since not everything is true, we know that no part of the universe contradicts another. Yet, your brain is also made out of universe. Why can something that is made out of fully non-contradicting parts represent something that is contradictory, and indeed even reason about it?

I mean, how does that work? How do I arrange non-contradictory components in such a way as to make a contradiction? Okay okay, I'm only 'representing' a contradiction, and clearly the components do not contradict themselves...but encoding is arbitrary. What we've got here is a serious issue. Obviously, the component parts cannot contradict each other, and the processes they undergo must be similarly kosher, and yet the concepts they represent are completely out of the question. And yet further, the range of things that those components and processes could be representing is vast, some of which may not contradict.

Something seems to magically transform this soup of perfectly harmonious physics into a mess of ridiculous logic, and further one particular mess as opposed to others. What is it? (I think I might know. Maybe.)

Fallacy of Emergence

The title of this post is very much an example of availability bias. I've been reading about fallacies, and so now I have the urge to write about things which I can label with the word 'fallacy.'

Also a little bit about definition at the bottom.

The fallacy of emergence is this; the parts do not need the whole to be explained, but the whole needs the parts to be explained. Otherwise, dualism. Put another way, you can entirely describe any situation in terms of its elementary particles and their properties, which means adding a description of the emergent properties is unnecessary, thus extraneous, and thus must be an empty set. I've found that my definition of life* has a flaw; it finds that the species of Earth, in aggregate, is a living being. (For instance, it defends the goal of diversity.)

*(Living things can be assigned goals. I fixed this in my first article about Gaia, written after this one.)

However, Gaia requires the actions of the individual organisms to be explained. But, the actions of the individual organisms do not require Gaia to be explained. The concept of Gaia is a fallacy of emergence, and is completely optional, and thus arbitrary, and thus not real. And indeed, we cannot ever interact with Gaia directly, only with her elements. Problem being that life itself is also emergent.

And I can show that the only way for Gaia not be optional, and thus not real, would be for a Gaia situation to bestow properties. But the properties of Gaia supervene on the properties of the organisms;* Gaia would bestow properties upon Her organisms that cannot be predicted from their components.** This is a literal implementation of dualism, where Gaia forms a new fundamental substance with separate fundamental laws or properties. Logically this is actually quite possible; because of the infinite regression fallacy, fundamental layers are assumptions. If I were constructing a universe, I could easily assume new fundamentals made out of old fundamentals. However, we don't observe this in our universe.

*(If this is not the case, it is not a fallacy of emergence because it is not emergence; Gaia would just be some other, separate thing.)

**(This is more easily seen in a different concrete, electrons. If electrons could form emergent properties, they would in certain arrangements jag left when you expect them to jag right, and it would be impossible to reconcile this with their individual properties and their local space; you would have to take into account essentially incantation-like arrangements of electrons. Imagine a pentagon of electrons which has emergent properties. Usually the electrons would repel each other and fly apart, but the emergent properties would hold the pentagon together as it travelled through space as a particle in its own right.)

None of this is to say that the concept of emergence is useless. Quite the contrary. However, when using it, you should be careful to remember that emergent behaviours have no inherent existence and are merely a different way of looking at the underlying elements.

We can certainly define Gaia and indeed many similar concepts, and find that the components that make them up duly exist, approximately. We can even define properties that Gaia will have, and find interactions that carry out those properties, approximately. However, we need do neither, and indeed if you perturb those definitions slightly in just the right way, they'll still hold. This process is repeatable, and repeatable indefinitely, forming any definition of an emergent property from a perturbation of any other one. They have no objective standard and thus no objective existence. Or, put another way, you can easily find a contradictory definition to Gaia. (Which would require a conjugate definition to fully cover the situation.) For example, bowls. You can define bowls by shape. Also, you can define bowls by function, the function of holding liquid or granular solids. It cannot be both, because an upside down bowl does not have the function, whereas the concave bowl shape is not the only one that holds liquids. The definitions are contradictory. Because both are valid, neither is objectively true.

This is why my only criteria for a sound philosophical inference is that the premises can be found in reality. I don't require any particular definitions, and especially not the accepted definitions. Instead, I suggest you use any definition that is convenient, and simply make sure to note which definitions you're using. Also, as a philosopher, it is not your job to confirm that the definitions in fact match reality, any more than it is the mathematician's job to ensure that theirs match reality.

Certainly, generally speaking I don't see much point in pondering the workings of things that don't exist, but once you get in the ballpark, finding the logical relationships is often as generally useful as math is; while you may not find the definitions where you first thought, it probably can be found elsewhere, or perhaps a small modification effort can turn pure fancy into a cogent understanding.

Infinite Regression versus Causality

Because infinite regression is a fallacy, the fact that quantum mechanics isn't entirely deterministic should be completely unsurprising. You can construct any chain of causality like a proof; this cause happened and therefore there was this effect, and that effect caused a further effect...* But since infinite regression is a fallacy, the chain of causation must stop at the most basic levels. Why does an electron exist? Just because. It looks like physics will actually get more fundamental than this, but the logic is the same; why is the ToE or GUT true? Well, it just is.

*(This fact is equivalent to the fact that the universe is mathematically describable. Also applies to constructing objects out of particles; each particle is a premise and the properties of the higher-level thing are the conclusions. If you assume a bunch of H₂O at STP, you conclude water. Also, to recap, to apply infinite regression either requires "And electrons are made of yet smaller electrons!"-type circular logic, or else positing every possible particle, and thus every possible property. )

Because electrons just exist, there is particular reason why some of its properties may be uncaused; using the physicalist existence axiom, existence is defined by interactions, which are defined by properties. When electrons decohere, the choice of state just happens. Again, there may be a reason* behind this, but then there will be no reason for the reason.

*(Talking pure physics here. Since you're reading this, you'll probably know I think it goes directly into spiffy stuff at this point.)

Locality is just a property of causality. The general principle is that you can be causally linked only with things you're directly adjacent to. To affect something distant you have to generate an adjacent projectile and send it to bump into what you want to affect.* Because locality is in fact a property of causality, when causality breaks down at the fundamental levels due to the infinite regression fallacy, locality must break down with it. In short; entanglement or something like it is inevitable. It will occur in all universes that follow recognizable logical laws.

*(And ultimately locality just refers to the set of things you can directly interact with, whether they happen to actually be what we think of as 'local' or not.)

(All this raises an interesting question; in the continuous approximation of physics, what does 'adjacent' mean? Naturally quantized spaces such as LQG elegantly solves the problem.)

My favourite story about this is actually semi-mainstream. It says all this in basically a different way; the information available to fundamental particles is limited, and so you can't specify the states of entangled particles independently, and so they have to spontaneously generate information when you interact with them. The article proposes that quantum physics is the realization of the law of excluded middle; that all questions are either yes, no, or meaningless: not questions at all.

Incidentally, the theory helps illustrate why I think information per se isn't really physical; it isn't conserved. It is created when the particle is measured and then, when it goes back to a superposition, it disappears again. Physical systems can represent information, and there can be information about them, but they are not information.

On the other hand;

The Schrodinger equation says exactly that the photon goes down both paths and interferes with itself. In this interfered state it then interacts with the detector. However, if you put a detector on one of the paths, it interacts with that detector instead, changing the situation. It seems pretty straightforward to me. Particles are waves that transfer energy stoichiometrically with other waves, and of course change during this interaction.


This same idea applies to the very beginning of the universe. At some point the chain of causality must simply end. The first event was a cause, but not an effect, which means it wasn't an event at all. Equivalently, it's meaningless to talk about 'before' the Big Bang, because there was no time there to be 'before' relative to.

Indeed, time without space is meaningless, as is space without time. The first is change without structure, the second structure without change.

"The spatialization of time is not something abrupt; it is a continuous process. Viewed in reverse as the temporalization of (one dimension of) space, it implies that time can emerge out of space in a continuous process. (By continuous, I mean that the timelike quality of a dimension, as opposed to its spacelike quality, is not an all-or-nothing affair; there are shades in between. This vague statement can be made quite precise mathematically.)"

Oh, good. I had suspected something like this ever since I realized that for causality to function at all, there needs to be an independent variable. Everything is described by f(t). It also suggests yet again that physics can grow organically, starting from a single axiom and repeatedly going through something like quantum collapse to form new laws, each time the lone axiom runs into a situation with an ambiguous solution. Problem being that if two different collapses happen to make a particular situation permanently ambiguous, and yet not subject to the infinite regression fallacy, the collapse will produce a new law, yes...but it won't be physics.


More Info & Application:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=was-einstein-wrong-about-relativity