I’m surprised that this point is controversial enough that Eliezer felt the need to make a post about it, and even more surprised that he’s catching heat in the comments for it. This “reductionism” is something I believe down to the bone, to the extent that I have trouble conceptualizing the world where it is false.
After talking to some non-reductionists, I’ve come to this idea about what it would mean for reductionism to be false:
I’m sure you’re familiar with Conway’s Game of Life? If not, go check it out for a bit. All the rules for the system are on the pixel level—this is the lowest, fundamental level. Everything that happens in conway’s game of life is reducible to the rules regarding individual pixels and their color (white or black), and we know this because we have access to the source code of Conway’s Game, and it is in fact true that those are the only rules.
For Conways’ Game to be non-reductionistic, what you’d have to find in the source code is a set of rules that override the pixel-level rules in the case of high-level objects in the game. Eg “When you see this sort of pixel configuration, override the normal rules and instead make the relevant pixels follow this high-level law where necessary.”
Something like that.
It’s an overriding of low-level laws when they would otherwise have contradicted high-level laws.
It helps me to understand non reductable alternative world better, but i think that computer program is also reductable, not to elementary particles, but to object properties and scripts, and then to bytes and bits
The anti reductionist claim is not that the universe is literally a programme, it is that it is analogous to a programme with with rules that latch onto higher level structures being analogous to nonreductive physical laws.
I am sorry, I did not express myself accurately enough, I just do not know a term that could briefly indicate “something similar to a computer program, but not necessarily created by an intelligent developer or even existing in an analogue of a computer; something that may be an alternative physical law”, so I wrote simply “computer program”, because I don’t know what else could be an alternative to elementary particles and the universal physical law.
I’m surprised that this point is controversial enough that Eliezer felt the need to make a post about it, and even more surprised that he’s catching heat in the comments for it. This “reductionism” is something I believe down to the bone, to the extent that I have trouble conceptualizing the world where it is false.
After talking to some non-reductionists, I’ve come to this idea about what it would mean for reductionism to be false:
I’m sure you’re familiar with Conway’s Game of Life? If not, go check it out for a bit. All the rules for the system are on the pixel level—this is the lowest, fundamental level. Everything that happens in conway’s game of life is reducible to the rules regarding individual pixels and their color (white or black), and we know this because we have access to the source code of Conway’s Game, and it is in fact true that those are the only rules.
For Conways’ Game to be non-reductionistic, what you’d have to find in the source code is a set of rules that override the pixel-level rules in the case of high-level objects in the game. Eg “When you see this sort of pixel configuration, override the normal rules and instead make the relevant pixels follow this high-level law where necessary.”
Something like that.
It’s an overriding of low-level laws when they would otherwise have contradicted high-level laws.
It helps me to understand non reductable alternative world better, but i think that computer program is also reductable, not to elementary particles, but to object properties and scripts, and then to bytes and bits
The anti reductionist claim is not that the universe is literally a programme, it is that it is analogous to a programme with with rules that latch onto higher level structures being analogous to nonreductive physical laws.
I am sorry, I did not express myself accurately enough, I just do not know a term that could briefly indicate “something similar to a computer program, but not necessarily created by an intelligent developer or even existing in an analogue of a computer; something that may be an alternative physical law”, so I wrote simply “computer program”, because I don’t know what else could be an alternative to elementary particles and the universal physical law.