(FB 1547138370 Timestamp) THE ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS OVER METAPHYSICS —“Anytime you utter the word “emergent phenomenon”, you automatically need another science. In order to count as such, a science needs to satisfy what constraints?”— Help me understand this because there is no limit that I can imagine to the scale of a neural (bayesian) network, and no limit to the cognitive ability of a hierarchical and recursive network – other than inputs and outputs. The limits we have today are mechanical – we have built the wrong kind of computers. Even such, at great heat-cost, we are able to replicate those networks. So for ‘speech’ to emerge just like for the touch ui to emerge we require hardware (biological ware). So somehow (random selection, intentional manipulation) the real-world interface determines what can be ‘identified, predicted, and judged’ by that recursive, hierarchical, network. —“real”– As far as I know real = existential = persistent = observable = observable directly, by instrumentation, or by deduction from deduction using instrumentation, where that instrumentation can be either physical(external) or logical (internal). As far as I know ‘real’ in the colloquial, refers to ACTIONABLE. As far as I know the only open question is an empty verbalism: experiences are constructed from a combination of perception with memories of perceptions, limited by the grammar of conception, which is brain structure, which appears to be little more than the neurological homunculus – which the more I understand, the less ‘human’ I feel. So do experience (concepts, etc) exist, or do they have the potential be experienced, and do they persist if and only if some number of us share the potential to experience them? Once we operationalize these questions they turn out to be quite simple. Do unicorns exist? Well, No. Do does the word unicorn exist? Well, a lot of us have memory (knowledge) of that word. So it we have knowledge of it. That knowledge persists in some distributed and fragmentary form. But it only exists as POTENTIAL. Whereas that which we claim exists already does so. Does that idea of a unicorn exist? Well, a lot of us have memory (knowledge) that can be accessed by that word, and using that index (word) we can recall some combination of fragmentary images of a unicorn (mine are the scenes in Blade Runner and after that, Legend of all things). So in Does the referent exist? Well, No. Does the index of the referent exist? Well, Yes. Does knowledge of the referent exist? Well, Yes. Yet again, we see, that a series stated in operational language solves the problem of the sophism of reductive questions. Unicorns don’t exist. An index (word) appears to have little or no direct sensation of itself. An index evokes a network of fragments, that recursively reflect additional fragments, and so on until we have exhausted our memories. the cortex (brain) is a continuous prediction system using fragments , and we can apply that prediction system to the real, the linguistic, and the imagined. What we call mind, probably an consequence of either cooperation, communication or language, or the sequence in total, consists largely in the direction of that forecasting (attention) and recursion (concentration). Is knowing this the same as experience? well no. Knowing this is however, defensive: eliminating the errors, bises, and deceits, that we and others engage in, with ourselves and others. WHAT ABOUT “NEED” – HUMAN DEMAND FOR COMFORTING FALSEHOODS Demand for Falsehoods today are driven by signal pressure and alienation pressure. In the past they were driven by signal pressure, competitive pressure, alienation pressure, and suffering pressure. We cannot fix signal pressure since it is necessary for selection, but we can fix mindfulness. We can’t fix alienation pressure but we can improve mindfulness and the civic society to reduce it. We can limit competitive pressure through the civic society and political ethnocentrism. And we can dramatically (and have) eliminated suffering pressure through mindfulness and medicine. Yes, the truth is that comforting lies (sophistry pseudoscience, the occult and denial), cults and groups, and sedation by alcohol, an drugs are CHEAP and DISORGANIZED means of providing mindfulness in the face of signal, alienation, competitive, and suffering pressures. However, we can likewise take and ORGANIZED and EXPENSIVE means of serving those market demands by non false and healthy and productive means. But like all contemporary problems (a) the collection of rent-seekers that will be displaced by the efforts to produce that order will fight desperately against these reforms (improvements) just as they will the legal and financial, because rent seeking that leaves people subject to pressures but gives them false hope is the most profitable industry of all. (b) not enough of us (yet) have taken up arms to alter that circumstance. NO MORE LIES
Theme: Causality
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547132816 Timestamp) YES, METAPHYSICS HAS BEEN OVERVALUED FOR 2500 YEARS (very ,very, important concept) —“The athenian tradition did not account for costs. (1) the peerage was small and wealthy with common interests – and costs were as rude then as today” (2) discussion of costs immediately changes from ideals to reals thereby self selecting into class interests.” — CD Adam Voight asks a profound question: —“Does this mean that doing metaphysics has been overvalued for 2500 years?”— Adam Voight Yes, (which is why I piss on the subject all the time) it’s just a means of trying to find a reason not to account for costs. Which I think i’ve tried to state repeatedly, is that the universe operates on least cost principles because it has no choice. Humans do also because they have no choice. We are more complicated than the universe because we have memory, can use that memory to predict, and therefore select delayed actions or early actions an capture that difference in calories as reward. Measurement(math), Science (measurement), engineering (measurement), accounting/finance (measurement), economics(measurement), and Law (measurement) all account for costs. Philosophy and theology and the Occult do not account for costs. IMO Popper and Kuhn did not account for costs. Hayek half-succeeded and half failed, in that law is the only ‘science’ and that all else is merely some fewer number of dimensions we consider under the law. Science and philosophy and religion evolved out of law, with economics and physics the only two to account for costs, and keynesian economics an attempt like philosophy and religion to NOT account for costs. So here is the simple psychology of it: Those of us and our disciplines who account for costs. Those of us and our disciplines who avoid accounting for costs. The issue: you can rally people politically very easily by not accounting for costs. That is the secret to religion and philosophy versus science and law. Hence my work at ‘fixing’ the law such that it is a cult in and of itself, that is extremely intolerant of not accounting for costs.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547142603 Timestamp) —“What is it that we mean by “metaphysics”? Is it the reverse-engineering of human cognition? Is it really so useless to try to reverse-engineer the mind? I could accept something of the sort of: “doing metaphysics even of the sort of naturalistic inquiry that you profess requires the sort of social institutions or commons that would be too vulnerable to parasitism”.”— Adam Voight Short Answer: Metaphysics is looking for means of cheating. What I think we call metaphysics is the discipline of trying to create a fictional narrative that justifies our means of survival, competition, prospering, and signaling given our abilities, means, and conditions. So an ‘ontology” (paradigm) that ‘lets me get what I want’. Where my approach is ‘here is the paradigm’ now negotiate within it for what you want, don’t make an excuse that what you want is ‘good’ so that you can engage in all sorts of discounting (cheating). The rest of the ontologies (paradigms) are just networks on top of that base ontology (paradigm) of human action (perception, cognition, memory, calculation, speech, negotiation, action). Well, I mean I worked on AI, and now we have cognitive science, and we have language that expresses the content of the mind, so it’s pretty easy. I mean, I think I have a pretty good understanding of how the mind works, and I’ve come to understand it’s actually not complicated, it’s just an emergent phenomenon of enough hierarchical memory, and the devotion of so much of that memory to the continuous production of serialized speech so that we can negotiate cooperation with others, because cooperation produces such ridiculously outsized returns on calories that language and cooperation are more valuable than any other caloric expenditure. In my book I teach that the human body, intuition, and mind provide a the system of measurement we work with because it is all that we can work with because it is the only comparisons we are able to make – and that all language consists of measurements culminating in transactions. The question is only the precision of those measurements on the one hand, the correspondence of those measurements, and the ignorance, error, bias, and deceit in those measurements. I then use that system of measurement (operational language) to provide commensurability, and reframe all human experience, knowledge, and disciplines in that commensurable language. Then I document every known method of deflating language to produce increased precision and decreased opportunity for conflation. Then I document every known method of inflating language to engaging the masking of ignorance, and the generation of error, bias, and deceit. Then I account for costs. In other words the Metaphysics of Action turns out to be the only non-false model. The metaphysics of speech limited to action turns out to be the only non-false model. And the tests of costs whether at the physical or human level turns out to be the only non-false model. This turns out to be what we do in court already when prosecuting a crime. Which is why the west developed reason, empiricism, science: it all evolved out of our natural common law of sovereignty. The moment you base your cognitive hierarchy on sovereignty (the individual) then there is no conflation available by which to ignore costs. This sentence is very profound. if you base it on anything else you invite (make excuses for) the unaccountable, adn the undecidable, leaving room for authoritarian or communal calculation. This hierarchy of concepts is quite important really. It explains why so many thinkers went off the rails and why there is a proliferation of incommensurable ‘fictions’ in philosophy and theology and opinion. “How can I cheat others?” “How can I use cheating to rally large numbers of others?” “How can I use cheating and rallying large numbers to obtain power?” I see history as a few people trying to create truth and productivity, a lot of people lying and cheating, and a lot more trying to get by with the lies, cheating, and stealing that they can get away with in the current context. Because I study science and the law and economics and not philosophy ,theology, literature, or what passes for history but is largely propaganda.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547138370 Timestamp) THE ANSWER TO OBJECTIONS OVER METAPHYSICS —“Anytime you utter the word “emergent phenomenon”, you automatically need another science. In order to count as such, a science needs to satisfy what constraints?”— Help me understand this because there is no limit that I can imagine to the scale of a neural (bayesian) network, and no limit to the cognitive ability of a hierarchical and recursive network – other than inputs and outputs. The limits we have today are mechanical – we have built the wrong kind of computers. Even such, at great heat-cost, we are able to replicate those networks. So for ‘speech’ to emerge just like for the touch ui to emerge we require hardware (biological ware). So somehow (random selection, intentional manipulation) the real-world interface determines what can be ‘identified, predicted, and judged’ by that recursive, hierarchical, network. —“real”– As far as I know real = existential = persistent = observable = observable directly, by instrumentation, or by deduction from deduction using instrumentation, where that instrumentation can be either physical(external) or logical (internal). As far as I know ‘real’ in the colloquial, refers to ACTIONABLE. As far as I know the only open question is an empty verbalism: experiences are constructed from a combination of perception with memories of perceptions, limited by the grammar of conception, which is brain structure, which appears to be little more than the neurological homunculus – which the more I understand, the less ‘human’ I feel. So do experience (concepts, etc) exist, or do they have the potential be experienced, and do they persist if and only if some number of us share the potential to experience them? Once we operationalize these questions they turn out to be quite simple. Do unicorns exist? Well, No. Do does the word unicorn exist? Well, a lot of us have memory (knowledge) of that word. So it we have knowledge of it. That knowledge persists in some distributed and fragmentary form. But it only exists as POTENTIAL. Whereas that which we claim exists already does so. Does that idea of a unicorn exist? Well, a lot of us have memory (knowledge) that can be accessed by that word, and using that index (word) we can recall some combination of fragmentary images of a unicorn (mine are the scenes in Blade Runner and after that, Legend of all things). So in Does the referent exist? Well, No. Does the index of the referent exist? Well, Yes. Does knowledge of the referent exist? Well, Yes. Yet again, we see, that a series stated in operational language solves the problem of the sophism of reductive questions. Unicorns don’t exist. An index (word) appears to have little or no direct sensation of itself. An index evokes a network of fragments, that recursively reflect additional fragments, and so on until we have exhausted our memories. the cortex (brain) is a continuous prediction system using fragments , and we can apply that prediction system to the real, the linguistic, and the imagined. What we call mind, probably an consequence of either cooperation, communication or language, or the sequence in total, consists largely in the direction of that forecasting (attention) and recursion (concentration). Is knowing this the same as experience? well no. Knowing this is however, defensive: eliminating the errors, bises, and deceits, that we and others engage in, with ourselves and others. WHAT ABOUT “NEED” – HUMAN DEMAND FOR COMFORTING FALSEHOODS Demand for Falsehoods today are driven by signal pressure and alienation pressure. In the past they were driven by signal pressure, competitive pressure, alienation pressure, and suffering pressure. We cannot fix signal pressure since it is necessary for selection, but we can fix mindfulness. We can’t fix alienation pressure but we can improve mindfulness and the civic society to reduce it. We can limit competitive pressure through the civic society and political ethnocentrism. And we can dramatically (and have) eliminated suffering pressure through mindfulness and medicine. Yes, the truth is that comforting lies (sophistry pseudoscience, the occult and denial), cults and groups, and sedation by alcohol, an drugs are CHEAP and DISORGANIZED means of providing mindfulness in the face of signal, alienation, competitive, and suffering pressures. However, we can likewise take and ORGANIZED and EXPENSIVE means of serving those market demands by non false and healthy and productive means. But like all contemporary problems (a) the collection of rent-seekers that will be displaced by the efforts to produce that order will fight desperately against these reforms (improvements) just as they will the legal and financial, because rent seeking that leaves people subject to pressures but gives them false hope is the most profitable industry of all. (b) not enough of us (yet) have taken up arms to alter that circumstance. NO MORE LIES
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547302842 Timestamp) by Bill Joslin Compatiblism – degrees of bounded freedom. It’s about accounting for the causal chain and if the actor contributes to the causal chain (opposed to a causal chain being proof of no will). We can contribute to our causal chain because we can imagine alternate states of affairs. In that imagining we affect the causal chain. So the effect of that imagining will be varied. You can imagine via nonsense or reason – post-structuralism or post-positivism, mysticism or naturalism. You can chose, but you can’t avoid the consequences of that choice, no matter how much you imagine the state of affairs to be different than it actually is.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547339450 Timestamp) WHAT IS METAPHYSICS? —“Why study metaphysics? Metaphysics consist of the study of the (constitution) of reality. It is the (method or process) by which we come to a (paradigm) of (the laws of the universe, laws of cooperation, laws of perception-experience, and laws of reason), and from that (paradigm) make choices about what we want to think, feel, and do to make the most of our own experience of life and the world.”— The study of Metaphysics then serves our will to power (successful action). Or does it? I deflate the big question into a hierarchy : 1 – ‘What can we perceive, experience, cognate, and act upon?’ 2 – ‘How is our experience produced?’ 3 – ‘What are the limits of our perception, experience, cognition and action?” 4 – ‘What may be beyond our perceptions and experience and cognition? 5 – ‘What are the first premises (assumptions, presumptions, rules, laws) by which we test our perceptions, experience, and ideas?’ 6 – And how does our experience differ from those laws? 7 – And how can we act to take advantage of this knowledge? The problem is, that since we must act to survive and prosper, can only act within the limits of our perception, experience, cognition, and action, and can only extend perceptions by action in the universe, and all increases in our understanding of what is beyond our perception, experience, cognition, have followed consistent rules of parsimony all of which relegate our experience to a natural consequence of competitive complexity given a long enough and stable enough period of evolutionary computation. Action (operations) is the only system of measurement that is not a lie – because it is what the entirety of the set of questions depends upon: the grammar and semantics of action, cognition, experience, and perception. So the question is not what is metaphysics. The question is, Why is it men seek using metaphysics to lie? So the issue is whether we are confirming the former to the latter (lying) or the latter to the former (adapting), or whether we inventing the former to serve the latter for the purpose of fraud, rent seeking, free riding, and other forms of parasitism – because so far that seems the primary distinction between philosophers/theologians and scientists. You see, a fraud, a sophist, philosopher, or theologian uses justification to ask ‘what can I get away with?’, while a scientist and a jurist ask ‘what can we insure you’re not getting away with?’ Hence why law (man) and science (nature) account for costs, and philosophy(man) and theology(nature) do not. Because costs allow us to measure frauds, thefts, et al. How many philosophers and theologians would survive prosecution for fraud?
- Curt
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547302842 Timestamp) by Bill Joslin Compatiblism – degrees of bounded freedom. It’s about accounting for the causal chain and if the actor contributes to the causal chain (opposed to a causal chain being proof of no will). We can contribute to our causal chain because we can imagine alternate states of affairs. In that imagining we affect the causal chain. So the effect of that imagining will be varied. You can imagine via nonsense or reason – post-structuralism or post-positivism, mysticism or naturalism. You can chose, but you can’t avoid the consequences of that choice, no matter how much you imagine the state of affairs to be different than it actually is.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547339450 Timestamp) WHAT IS METAPHYSICS? —“Why study metaphysics? Metaphysics consist of the study of the (constitution) of reality. It is the (method or process) by which we come to a (paradigm) of (the laws of the universe, laws of cooperation, laws of perception-experience, and laws of reason), and from that (paradigm) make choices about what we want to think, feel, and do to make the most of our own experience of life and the world.”— The study of Metaphysics then serves our will to power (successful action). Or does it? I deflate the big question into a hierarchy : 1 – ‘What can we perceive, experience, cognate, and act upon?’ 2 – ‘How is our experience produced?’ 3 – ‘What are the limits of our perception, experience, cognition and action?” 4 – ‘What may be beyond our perceptions and experience and cognition? 5 – ‘What are the first premises (assumptions, presumptions, rules, laws) by which we test our perceptions, experience, and ideas?’ 6 – And how does our experience differ from those laws? 7 – And how can we act to take advantage of this knowledge? The problem is, that since we must act to survive and prosper, can only act within the limits of our perception, experience, cognition, and action, and can only extend perceptions by action in the universe, and all increases in our understanding of what is beyond our perception, experience, cognition, have followed consistent rules of parsimony all of which relegate our experience to a natural consequence of competitive complexity given a long enough and stable enough period of evolutionary computation. Action (operations) is the only system of measurement that is not a lie – because it is what the entirety of the set of questions depends upon: the grammar and semantics of action, cognition, experience, and perception. So the question is not what is metaphysics. The question is, Why is it men seek using metaphysics to lie? So the issue is whether we are confirming the former to the latter (lying) or the latter to the former (adapting), or whether we inventing the former to serve the latter for the purpose of fraud, rent seeking, free riding, and other forms of parasitism – because so far that seems the primary distinction between philosophers/theologians and scientists. You see, a fraud, a sophist, philosopher, or theologian uses justification to ask ‘what can I get away with?’, while a scientist and a jurist ask ‘what can we insure you’re not getting away with?’ Hence why law (man) and science (nature) account for costs, and philosophy(man) and theology(nature) do not. Because costs allow us to measure frauds, thefts, et al. How many philosophers and theologians would survive prosecution for fraud?
- Curt
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547571421 Timestamp) AGENCY AND INTENTIONALITY by Bill Joslin (important concept)(core) (comments by CurtD) Test of Agency does not require intention (i.e. it’s not a synonym for free-will). Agency, in the context of biological and chemistry does not imply or require intentionality. i.e. “The active agent in soap is lye” This might clarify why the sociological definition of Agency, that being an actor’s ability to act outside of influences of Structure, is flawed (it presumes intentionality exists as a necessary component of agency i.e. acts of free will unfettered by structure) My stance regarding agency is simply this: …the ability to cause an effect…. (CurtD: Traditional definition of power, is “the ability to alter the probability of outcomes.”) In this context, structural influences can be the very means by which agency emerges and increases (rather then being distinguished apart from it) From here: the issue we are discussing when discussing limitations to agency within a sociology context relates to other actors (individual or institutional) which act in opposition to other agents. Thus my definition of AUTONOMY as being free from imposition upon one’s agency BY OTHER ACTORS. (Rather then natural or structural limitations to agency). Intentionality remains a subset of agency in this regards. Not a necessary component. (CurtD: Via Positiva Agency and Via Negativa Autonomy produce market competition for action. Intention (subjective value) is not relevant to the facts of ones agency and one’s autonomy) For example: in law intention is not the primary means by which guilt is established. There are circumstances where intention is not relevant i.e. manslaughter, criminal neglect etc. (CurtD: In law we test for due diligence and liability and intent to commit a crime only tangentially. In other words we separate the TRUTH (due diligence and liability), from what is MORAL (intent).) So for instance, the impact on society from a low IQ cohort is not a matter of lacking agency, but rather that their aggregate agency constitutes a net negative – their combined effect being a result of their agency, regardless of intentionality or deliberateness of their actions- no agency, no effect – no intentionality yet the effect remains. (CurtD: people do not need to intend harm to cause harm. When they cause harm by lack of due diligence, or intent, then THEY are to blame. But if they lack the AGENCY then WE are to blame for not constraining the harm that they can do.) It’s is precisely because of their agency that we seek constraints. Why? Because their agency imposes upon other actors resulting in a net drain on the agency of the group as a whole…. Thus autonomy being the measure of decidability. Why is this important? Because for laws, social norms etc, we are constructing structural limitations upon agents, to constrain their effects from being damaging (regardless of whether they intend it or not). In other words we are addressing their agency, their ability to cause an effect – regardless of their intentional choice. So how do these structural constraints NOT constitute an imposition upon their agency? 1) via negativa 2) not compelled. You are free to break the law (act outside the constraint) but not free from the consequences. The potential to act remains un-imposed upon. This is very different than imposing upon agency to prevent the acts from taking place. I.e. compelled behaviour. Compelled behavior being a defining quality of dystopian nightmares. Now extrapolated this to our current situations of sin taxes, compelled speech laws, deplatforming etc. These are all forms of prescriptive application of structural constraints i.e. impositions upon agency… (CurtD: this is the difference between moral blame and criminal blame, and humans being what we are, conflate ‘wrongness’ of different sorts, and blame of different persons when we sense ‘wrongness’. Then as we are perpetual victims of our tendency for conflation we use terms with specific meaning (moral, lawful, truthful, logical, reasonable etc to load and frame rather than to deflate and test.) -Bill Joslin
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1547571421 Timestamp) AGENCY AND INTENTIONALITY by Bill Joslin (important concept)(core) (comments by CurtD) Test of Agency does not require intention (i.e. it’s not a synonym for free-will). Agency, in the context of biological and chemistry does not imply or require intentionality. i.e. “The active agent in soap is lye” This might clarify why the sociological definition of Agency, that being an actor’s ability to act outside of influences of Structure, is flawed (it presumes intentionality exists as a necessary component of agency i.e. acts of free will unfettered by structure) My stance regarding agency is simply this: …the ability to cause an effect…. (CurtD: Traditional definition of power, is “the ability to alter the probability of outcomes.”) In this context, structural influences can be the very means by which agency emerges and increases (rather then being distinguished apart from it) From here: the issue we are discussing when discussing limitations to agency within a sociology context relates to other actors (individual or institutional) which act in opposition to other agents. Thus my definition of AUTONOMY as being free from imposition upon one’s agency BY OTHER ACTORS. (Rather then natural or structural limitations to agency). Intentionality remains a subset of agency in this regards. Not a necessary component. (CurtD: Via Positiva Agency and Via Negativa Autonomy produce market competition for action. Intention (subjective value) is not relevant to the facts of ones agency and one’s autonomy) For example: in law intention is not the primary means by which guilt is established. There are circumstances where intention is not relevant i.e. manslaughter, criminal neglect etc. (CurtD: In law we test for due diligence and liability and intent to commit a crime only tangentially. In other words we separate the TRUTH (due diligence and liability), from what is MORAL (intent).) So for instance, the impact on society from a low IQ cohort is not a matter of lacking agency, but rather that their aggregate agency constitutes a net negative – their combined effect being a result of their agency, regardless of intentionality or deliberateness of their actions- no agency, no effect – no intentionality yet the effect remains. (CurtD: people do not need to intend harm to cause harm. When they cause harm by lack of due diligence, or intent, then THEY are to blame. But if they lack the AGENCY then WE are to blame for not constraining the harm that they can do.) It’s is precisely because of their agency that we seek constraints. Why? Because their agency imposes upon other actors resulting in a net drain on the agency of the group as a whole…. Thus autonomy being the measure of decidability. Why is this important? Because for laws, social norms etc, we are constructing structural limitations upon agents, to constrain their effects from being damaging (regardless of whether they intend it or not). In other words we are addressing their agency, their ability to cause an effect – regardless of their intentional choice. So how do these structural constraints NOT constitute an imposition upon their agency? 1) via negativa 2) not compelled. You are free to break the law (act outside the constraint) but not free from the consequences. The potential to act remains un-imposed upon. This is very different than imposing upon agency to prevent the acts from taking place. I.e. compelled behaviour. Compelled behavior being a defining quality of dystopian nightmares. Now extrapolated this to our current situations of sin taxes, compelled speech laws, deplatforming etc. These are all forms of prescriptive application of structural constraints i.e. impositions upon agency… (CurtD: this is the difference between moral blame and criminal blame, and humans being what we are, conflate ‘wrongness’ of different sorts, and blame of different persons when we sense ‘wrongness’. Then as we are perpetual victims of our tendency for conflation we use terms with specific meaning (moral, lawful, truthful, logical, reasonable etc to load and frame rather than to deflate and test.) -Bill Joslin