The Mind

0.

What evidence or argument would convince you that consciousness is epistemically or ontologically subjective?

We can be sure that consciousness is ontologically subjective because it is epistemically subjective, or vice-versa. Or, can I indeed safely say that any theory of objective cause and effect can have consciousness elided from its elements without loss of predictive power?

Sections:

1. Objectivity and subjectivity
2. Existence of subjectivity
3. Objectivity of physics
4. Immediate conclusions
5. The consciousness device
6. Speculation

1.

Imagine a beautiful mountain.

The fact under consideration is that you find the mountain beautiful. This is not a property of the mountain, it is a property of your perception of the mountain - though we might wish that is it a function of the properties of the mountain. We commonly call this perception subjective. Is it truly subjective? Is that actually different from being objective?

Yes. Moreover, ontology impinges on epistemology and vice-versa. 

The perception has the property of total certainty. You cannot be mistaken about finding the mountain beautiful, as that would mean you saw something you find beautiful, and found it ugly, a straight-up contradiction. This is ontological subjectivity. The facts of the matter are determined by how they are perceived - the ontology is determined by epistemology. If you change your mind about the mountain being beautiful, it makes the mountain not-beautiful. If you forget the mountain, it becomes neither beautiful nor ugly, as no one is perceiving it.

This is fundamentally the opposite of ontological and epistemic objectivity. Objective epistemology is determined by ontology. When the observer of an objective fact makes a mistake, they're simply wrong.

When the observer stops observing an objective fact, the fact remains true, as can be verified by later observers noting its history of ongoing effects on the world. 

Objective facts are observable by multiple observers. It is impossible for two subjects to perceive a single subjective fact, as to be unmistakeable both subjects would have to have full control over the fact, which means one mind changing automatically changes the other - there is no distinction of mind, at least on this point. Telepathy is impossible, though I can't rule out hive-mind with this alone.

What would it mean to objectively observe an ontologically subjective fact? It would mean combining the property of being mistakable with that of being determined by observer, another direct contradiction.

What would it mean to subjectively observe an objective fact? This would be clairvoyance, the combination of unmistakableness and observable by others. How would the fact know to be unmistakable to you but not everyone else? By definition, objective facts are observer-independent - it would have to be unmistakable to everyone, another direct contradiction.

(These combined have the curious consequence that your subjective facts are, relative to me, objective facts.)


2.

Can subjectivity not exist? Perhaps I'm mistaken about that. Let's assume I am.

Can I be mistaken about my mistake? Can I think that I think subjectivity exists, but be wrong? If I'm not actually thinking subjectivity exists, then nothing is thinking it. Which would mean I'm not writing this article, which means nobody is, which means it isn't being written, which means you're not reading this.

Even if I assume away all supposed subjective entities, some must immediately re-appear. 


3.

The entire field of physics is objective.

A supposed physical object which others cannot observe is said to not exist.
First, no experiment on such an object would be replicable, and so it would be entirely non-predictive, and no devices could depend upon it. Going the other direction, no theory would fail an experimental test for not taking it into account.

A supposed objective entity which cannot be observed by someone, even in principle, cannot be observed by anyone. 


4.

Subjectivity exists.
Subjectivity does not physically exist.

Therefore, physicalism, secularism, and/or materialism are false.

Naturalism is more or less okay, as they've reduced the meaning of 'natural' to simply 'existent.' Any naturalist who is fine with expanding the set of concrete natural things can remain a naturalist.

Whether dualism is true depends on how you feel like defining 'substance.' I've found that using the idea of substance misleads me, at this level.


5.

For consciousness to meaningfully coexist with physics, they must somehow interact. If I have my logic right, this is also certain. The only alternative is epiphenomenalism, which means physics affects consciousness but not vice-versa, which means physics would be breaking Newton's third.

Therefore, there must be some entity which is both subjective and objective. Objectively, it will look like an open causal network. There will be some object which cannot determine its own state, but does so anyway. If we had a systematic description of consciousness, we could find a complementary loophole to this loophole in physics. Concretely we should be able to construct a consciousness device, and locate functional equivalents in human brains.

The device will have absolute, not relative, data signals. The device converts physical events into conscious events, and without 1 to 1 correspondance, it would violate causality. The signal that indicates a mountain must be identical, in some sense, across all such devices, or the consciousness would not know, or have any way to learn, what the signals were supposed to mean.

Having identified the devices, it will be possible to decode the signals by watching one function, and then feeding a signal into your own brain and seeing what it is. It will then be possible to objectively determine not only that a life-form is conscious, but what they are conscious of.


6.

One application of the theory: colours are the same for everyone. If you think you're seeing green, you can't be mistaken. Imagine two people seeing a green ball. They are both seeing green, they are both not mistaken. To say they're perceiving different things is to say they're exactly identical in every respect except the fundamental existence in question.
This should be separated from calling a thing green - it is easy to get disagreement on whether a ball should be called green or blue, but that's a connection between two facts, not a direct perception. Similarly, eyes vary somewhat, which means similar photons get decoded into slightly different experiences.

Most likely, only information can cross the objective/subjective barrier, as otherwise we have an energy conservation problem. 

If folk wisdom has indeed been mainly vindicated, it means consciousness is qualitative, in opposition to physics, which is quantitative.

The self is simply the set of all subjective entities. Other is straightforwardly all objective entities.

Subjectivity must run on different rules than physics, which means the set of cheap computations are different, which has direct adaptive benefits. There's no grandmother neurons - no single point which can distinguish between grandmother and grandfather, which means the brain as a whole can only distinguish these implicitly, which means it can't properly understand either. It isn't necessary, because the mind can distinguish them easily and then tell the brain. 

Salt vs. Consciousness

You've heard that variation within populations is larger than variation between populations. One consequence is that the right amount of salt for you in particular is say 80% likely to be far from the average. If your sodium regulation system cannot tell the voluntary muscle system how much salt to eat, then you cannot eat the right amount of salt, because nobody else knows how much it is. This also goes for how your internal signals manifest.

It seemed odd to me that some signals are labelled and some aren't until I went to write this sentence. For all the signals to be labelled, the genes would have to recognize everything in the environment, and would be helpless against chemical novelties. 




 Blarg. (Via.)

"I experienced no cravings even when my sodium intake was too low. I can’t just “listen to my body”."

As per standard evo/paleo principles, what would a hunter on the savanna have to guide them toward eating the right things? Moreover, absent puritanical, secular anti-consciousness, or authoritarian self-abnegation campaigns, they would have been listening to and thus learning about their internal signals since infancy.

It turns out that if you don't do something your entire life, and then suddenly try it once, you do it wrong. You might do this because you feel the need to disprove others, who are also doing it wrong but the other way around. (Hence scare quotes.) However, it is not then safe to conclude it is impossible.




I probably mis-estimate how difficult this question is, because I already know the answer. I don't get salt cravings until months into salt restriction, whereupon I start thinking fondly of Pringles, which I learned not on purpose and self-consciously, but by accident. For me, the salt signal is the taste of salt. If I'm low it is delicious, even straight. This reverses within about half a teaspoon, becoming bitter and terrible. You might think this is a palate interaction, but the amount I can have before it's gross doesn't reset the next day, or even that week.

I'm also like this with water. My thirst seems a little miscalibrated, I don't feel anything for low to moderate thirst until I pick up a glass and start drinking.

"Likewise, while the salt loading phase was difficult for the first two or three days, my taste rapidly adjusted to the added salt."

First he ate less salt than tasted good, then more. What would have happened if he had tried just right? It is hard for me to see this as accidental. How does it fail to occur to someone that the primary conscious impression of a thing is relevant to how you should behave toward it?

One of the things I learned through years of practicing it is that the signals are complex and sometimes the subtle notes are more important. The ache of a bruise is different from the ache of a used muscle is it not? Calling both 'pain' is hopelessly crude. Likewise, saying cookies taste 'good' to me is hopelessly crude. They have a characteristic burning sensation, and they sit poorly. There is 'good,' but it is shallow and reminds me of plastic for some reason. The burning sensation means I don't have to ask if restaurant meals have added sugar, because it shows up there too.

By contrast, for me, the right amount of salt is a symphony of good. I've also experienced adaptation to too much salt, but it acquires bad notes. Once I can stop I prefer no salt for some weeks. The thing to watch for here is psychosomatic influences, but psychosomatics have trouble surprising the mind in question.

"I would not necessarily call these “discoveries” but they are important observations that should be reported."

I can guarantee that he did not report the majority of his observations. If I were to go by his account, he either has almost no consciousness, or it did not react to these events. It did not apparently feel like much to eat different amounts of salt.

That said, this account corroborates my own experiences.




For comparison, I also get vegetable cravings, but only, again, after months of no vegetables at all. Ever looked at a raw broccoli and starting thinking impure thoughts?

I'm told unused neural connections are pruned in early adulthood. I wonder what happens to biofeedback circuits if they're being ignored.

"1. Salt restriction caused impaired thermoregulation."

Sea salt has iodine, and modern mined salt is iodized. Thermoregulation is partly the thyroid's job, and thyroid impairment is a symptom of iodine deficiency. I should stop forgetting to test this with some seaweed. I think I'll go fix this right now.

Juxtaposition VII: Narcissism, But Also Tribes and Epistemology

I get uncomfortable when a labelled tribe and I agree about everything, because then I can't tell the difference between reaching conclusions because they're true and reaching conclusions so as to acquire social rewards. Though come to think, shared premises are more important, and if I'm reaching conforming conclusions, I've probably flinched away from questioning the premises enough.

It looks like self-labelled anarchists do not recognize me as anarchist, and moreover for reasons I see as consistent with other anarchists. Excellent.




I took anarchist theory and then kept going. I often do this first, as a way of checking for contradictions. Here I was able to fix the contradictions, but it turned out that a true anarchy, in the Greek sense, could easily look like the status quo, because contracts aren't inflexible. I just have serious doubts that anyone would sign the necessary contracts - I certainly wouldn't.

And because I'm addicted to snarking, I'll add that if anyone seriously believed the 'consent of the governed' nonsense, shouldn't they conclude that getting those contracts signed would be easy? Shouldn't they think that my system would exactly reduce to their system?




Ideologies and reality differ in characteristic ways, but sadly I don't know how to describe them, I just recognize the intuitive readouts that correspond to the difference. Though if you want you can watch me grope towards a rational understanding. I could try to supply examples, but I think the mind-feel is definitive: reality does not feel human and familiar, or even human and creepy; it does neither what you want nor what you fear; it feels alien.

Civic Theory vs. a Startup Idea

How can you tell that politics isn't what it you've been told it is, without leaving the armchair?

"Mancur Olson, in his book The Logic Of Collective Action, highlighted the central problem of politics in a democracy. The benefits of political market-rigging can be concentrated to benefit particular special interest groups, while the costs (in higher taxes, slower economic growth, and many other second-order effects) are diffused through the entire population."

This, unfortunately, cannot possibly the whole story or even a large part of it.

Here's my startup idea: political insurance. It would charge some incredulously low amount, like $4 a year, and promise to stick it to special interest groups. The basic product would end up being political stability. It would profit on a percentage of the difference between the costs of special interests and the bribes the special interests are willing to pay. These are guaranteed to be very different, thermo #2 itself says that the interests cannot efficiently extract their benefits. It defeats the rational ignorance problem, as the costs of research can be centralized, the results cheaply distributed, and is robust against cheating due to spot checks by individual customers. It is entirely legal, it is simply the anti-special-interest special interest.

This idea is ludicrous. It makes betting on snowballs in hell look like a rewarding hobby. I know it, you know it, it can't possibly work.

Okay, but why not? We know it instinctively, not rationally.

Here's a non-reason: there's a user bootstrapping issue. To charge the really low numbers, it would need a really large number of subscribers. This, however, is just a marketing problem. Marketing problems get solved all the time. Worst case scenario, the idea needs a few goes in different guises before it lucks out and takes off.

Imagine that instead of this sentence, I bored you with several other apparent obstacles that just aren't all that.

So, would special interests not manage to get countered by a firm dedicated solely to efficiently converting their deadweight costs into profits? If so, how?

Or, are special interests just yet another scapegoat? If so, for whom?

Perhaps the whole political system would rise up in an orgy of corruption and make it illegal? How do you convince politicians to outlaw the business model of bribing them more?




I think I've exceeded a lifetime quota; patience with intellectuals who don't take the consequences of their own theories seriously. (E.g, so you won't admit you think it is ludicrous? So...when's your appointment with the venture capitalist? This is easily a multi-billion dollar market.)

If only this were the only part of civic theory with that flaw...

Perception and the Parrot

I found a thing about being about a parrot. I have finally figured out what it is. It's what non-narcissism looks like.

"She did not look like she was gathering up courage to pet it or imagining it in the role of a chase-able dog or cat. She was just looking at it."

The author of the piece appears as a character, but it is not about the author. The other people and the other objects and creatures not defined by their relationship to the author, or indeed by their relationship to anyone else. They're allowed to exist in themselves, as themselves.

"The little girl presented a clearer display of authentic engagement of the parrot than all the adults."

What's authentic is the reaction to the parrot. Everyone else reacts to what the parrot symbolizes. "Parrot flits too quickly [past] the face to be noticed, and is replaced by more normal cognitions." In the case of Ithaca, the symbolism is about what the parrot means about their relationship with other things and other people.

"Their carefully layered oversized sports clothes and reversed baseball hats demanded attention. I suppose spectacles, be they man-parrots or a group of swaggering young black men, do not supply attention, but demand it."

They don't wear clothes as clothes. They wear clothes only because of how others' relationship to them is mediated through the clothes. They're not wearing clothes, they're trying to wear an idea or a relationship or a role. The problem is that ultimately, they're wearing clothes. The problem is that ultimately, a relationship involves someone else. They're trying to demand a particular relationship, which means they'd have to demand a particular person. Are you like that person? I'm not.

"But you cannot really compete with a parrot. The parrot is entirely unaware that it is competing."

The competition is in the minds of the observers, it is not a real thing out there. You can't compete with the parrot because the parrot is not in a competition. To put it in competition, the minds have to create the competition through physical action.

"To my list of profundities, I will add the following: a free mind is one which the parrot can occupy easily, and stay in as long as it chooses."

Narcissism, like the obsession with symbols and meaning, shackles the mind. I'll add that obsession with 'should' excludes appreciation of 'is.'

"Now, the little black children engaged the parrot as completely as the little white girl. So if the little kids are born free and demonstrably remain free until at least age six, as demonstrated by the parrot"

I don't think any of my age peers in school survived the trip from adulthood. Though, instead of them being removed from the world, they removed the world from themselves. Rather, had it forcibly removed. Since I went to the same school, and have to spend a lot of my time resisting the habit.




I could go on, but in any case I really like The Parrot.

True Elites are Not Upper Class; Instead Top-Out-of-Sight

Nydwracu mentioned that a high school, with great accolades, is dysfunctional. My reply:

"Which school? I want to compare it to my theory that actual elite schools don't show up on these kinds of lists."

More generally, real elites are smart enough not to show up in the news, or answer surveys, or much of anything similar. If you're lucky, they show up in tax receipts.




Eleanor Roosevelt High School is famous, lauded, and not even close to deserving it. I used John Taylor Gatto as a reference for schools to compare.

Philips Andover, Episcopal, and St. Albans.

They have 'notable alumni' sections. Eleanor graduates athletes, entertainers, and Sergey Brin, who is clearly an outlier. So do the others, but Gatto's information is accurate - they also have congressmen, law professors, CEOs, activists, chief editors for the Atlantic, and several other influential professions.

St. Albans is famous.

"A 2004 article in the Wall Street Journal found that among U.S. schools, St. Albans had the 11th-highest success rate in placing graduates at 10 selective universities. [...] The school opened its new Upper School building - Marriott Hall - in 2009–2010. The firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill LLP, designed the new building, which has been the subject of articles in numerous publications,"

However, only Eleanor's article reports any awards at all.

"Roosevelt has received numerous prestigious academic awards throughout its thirty-four year history. The school is a rare two-time awarded National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence for 1991 and 1998; a 1991 and 1998 Maryland Blue Ribbon School; a 1999 New American High School; a recipient of the 2002–2003 national Siemens Awards for Advanced Placement; and was named a 2002 National School of Character by the Character Education Partnership. Eleanor Roosevelt is regarded as one of the most academically challenging high schools in the nation, and for years has consistently ranked as the highest performing school in Prince George's County, averaging the highest combined SAT score in the county of 1570 out of 2400. Roosevelt also has more students enrolled in Advanced Placement courses---with more students receiving a passing score of three or higher---than any other high school in the county. Roosevelt was recently named #382 on America's Top 1,500 Public High Schools list for 2009, by Newsweek Magazine and was also recognized as a Silver Medal School by U.S. News & World Report, in 2008."

This been-in-the-news standard predicts that St. Albans is the least elite of the three examples. Phillips, which hides its 'notable alumni' section behind a link, is the most elite. To check - indeed, it graduated an actual President, both Bushes. Its history section specifically mentions it is geared toward Yale and Harvard. Episcopal should be in the middle, and indeed it had a bit appear in Time Magazine - over seventy years ago. Andover is mentioned in a recent article, but only in passing, there is no detailed account.

I'm surprised they have wiki pages beyond a stub.




One of the consequences is that if you've heard of someone, they're probably not that influential. Conversely, you did your own research, but if you can find someone to discuss them with, they're not that influential. Being blamed by a journalist and being responsible for the screw-up are mutually exclusive, generally. Net result is that everyone, even the upper classes, are obsessed with nobodies.

For example, Sergey Brin seems decently influential. It's easy to go one better - who were Google's venture capitalists? Who picked Brin as a winner? And who invested with that capital firm? Do the names Michael Moritz or John Doerr mean anything to you? More importantly, do you know whose money Moritz and Doerr represent, and thus who has effective hire-and-fire over them?

Democratic Experiments

I thought it was unlikely that anyone would forgo having a president, but then Belgium did it. Again, thanks Belgians.

The next check on the disconnection of voting mechanism and ruling mechanisms is to suspend voting entirely in one of the G20. I predict no noticeable difference in governance, and only token resistance from the population - little in tax protests, for example.

If governance does anything more than skip a beat, or the former voters do something beyond nuisance, I will have something to explain.

Utopianism? Hypothesis: Broken Discourse

That voters are ignorant comes as no surprise to anyone who isn't themselves ignorant.




Hypothesis: most discourse is broken, not just layhuman discourse. I expect any working discourses to work by accident, not by design.




Test: let's have a discussion about utopianism and revolution. My general impression is that anti-utopianism is opposition to legitimately broken political philosophy by way of strawmen. It supposes that utopian philosophers suggest a flawless, suffering-less society is possible, and in the process tend to be not anti-Progressive, but anti-progress. (Agree that proggies are probably utopian...we'll see, as below.)

Can I get a summary of how I might recognize a utopian system, and why I can be sure that these features predict that the political philosophy is self-defeating?