I have the same problem with the same version of chrome, including the weird graphical bugs.
David_Allen
Karma: 304
But is it analogous to the halting problem?
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No, in the sense that it directly applies to all types of knowledge (which any epistemology applies to—which i think is all of them, but that doesn’t matter to universality).
Perhaps I don’t understand some nuance of what you mean here. If you can explain it or link to something that explains this in detail I will read it.
But to respond to what I think you mean… If you have a method that can be applied to all types of knowledge, that implies that it is Turing complete; it is therefore equivalent in capability to other Turing complete systems; that also means it is susceptible to the infinite regresses you dislike in “justificationist epistemologies”… i.e. the halting problem.
Also, just because it can be applied to all types of knowledge does not mean it is the best choice for all types of knowledge, or for all types of operations on that knowledge.
I think the basic way we differ is you have despaired of philosophy getting anywhere, and you’re trying to get rigor from math. But Popper saved philosophy. (And most people didn’t notice.) Example:
I would not describe my perspective that way; you may have forgotten that I am a third party in this argument. I think that there is a lot of historical junk in philosophy and that it is continuing to produce a lot junk—Popper didn’t fix this and neither will Bayesianism, it is more of a people problem—but philosophy has also produced and is producing a lot of interesting and good ideas.
I think one way we differ is that you see a distinct difference between math and philosophy and I see a wide gradient of abstractions for manipulating information. Another is that you think that there is something special about Popper’s approach that allows it to rise above all other approaches in all cases, and I think that there are many approaches and that it is best to choose the approach based on the context.
With this you could start to answer questions like “Why is X moral in the UK but not in Saudi Arabia?”
You have very limited ambitious. You’re trying to focus on small questions b/c you think bigger ones like: what is moral objectively? are too hard and, since you math won’t answer them, it’s hopeless.
This was a response to your request for an example; you read too much into it to assume it implies anything about my ambitions.
A question like “what is moral objectively?” is easy. Nothing is “moral objectively”. Meaning is created within contexts of assessment; if you want to know if something is “moral” you must consider that question with a context that will perform the classification. Not all contexts will produce the same result and not all contexts will even support a meaning for the concept of “moral”.
Sorry. I have no idea who is who. Don’t mind me.
No problem, I’m just pointing out that there are other perspectives out here.
The Popperian method is universal.
Sure, in the sense it is Turing complete; but that doesn’t make it the most efficient approach for all cases. For example I’m not going to use it to decide the answer to the statement “2 + 3”, it is much more efficient for me to use the arithmetic abstraction.
But we don’t know how to make it do that stuff. Epistemology should help us.
Agreed, it is one of the reasons that I am actively working on epistemology.
Aspects of coming up with moral ideas and judging which ones are good would probably be accomplished well with Bayesian methods.
Example or details?
The naive Bayes classifier can be an effective way to classify discrete input into independent classes. Certainly for some cases it could be used to classify something as “good” or “bad” based on example input.
Bayesian networks can capture the meaning within interdependent sets. For example the meaning of words forms a complex network; if the meaning of a single word shifts it will probably result in changes to the meanings of related words; and in a similar way ideas on morality form connected interdependent structures.
Within a culture a particular moral position may be dependent on other moral positions, or even other aspects of the culture. For example a combination of religious beliefs and inheritance traditions might result in a belief that a husband is justified in killing an unfaithful wife. A Bayesian network trained on information across cultures might be able to identify these kinds of relationships. With this you could start to answer questions like “Why is X moral in the UK but not in Saudi Arabia?”
Yes, given moral assertions you can then analyze them. Well, sort of. You guys rely on empirical evidence. Most moral arguments don’t.
First of all, you shouldn’t lump me in with the Yudkowskyist Bayesians. Compared to them and to you I am in a distinct third party on epistemology.
Bayes’ theorem is an abstraction. If you don’t have a reasonable way to transform your problem to a form valid within that abstraction then of course you shouldn’t use it. Also, if you have a problem that is solved more efficiently using another abstraction, then use that other abstraction.
This doesn’t mean that Bayes’ theorem is useless, it just means there are domains of reasonable usage. The same will be true for your Popperian decision making.
You can’t create moral ideas in the first place, or judge which are good (without, again, assuming a moral standard that you can’t evaluate).
These are just computable processes; if Bayesianism is in some sense Turing complete then it can be used to do all of this; it just might be very inefficient when compared to other approaches.
Aspects of coming up with moral ideas and judging which ones are good would probably be accomplished well with Bayesian methods. Other aspects should probably be accomplished using other methods.
To take one issue, besides predicting the physical results of your actions you also need a way to judge which results are good or bad. That is moral knowledge. I don’t think Bayesianism addresses this well.
Given well defined contexts and meanings for good and bad I don’t see why Bayesianism could not be effectively applied to to moral problems.
Adding a reference for this comment: Münchhausen Trilemma.
And this led me to wonder if it really is mostly about community, experiences, relationships, wanting to provide imagined “snapshots” of parties and fun for our kids as they go through these various rituals, etc.
Yes, of course that is what it is about. Due to past survival advantages these social conventions and connections are tied to our sense of security. By trying to convince her that her faith is wrong, from her perspective you threaten her safety and the safety of her children.
Fortunately you are not constrained by WWJD and can engage in some instrumental rationality.
Explicitly identify your goals and rank them. Do you want to achieve your own peace on the topic? Do you want to convince your wife that her faith is wrong? Do you want to stay in this marriage? Do you want your children to grow up as atheists? Ranking your goals is important; you may have to make short term compromises to achieve greater long term successes.
Identify behavior that will help or hurt these goals. If you want your wife to feel secure in the marriage you may have to avoid telling her why her religious beliefs are misguided. If you want to maximize your influence over your children’s beliefs you may have to negotiate with your wife; if they go to church with her then perhaps they also get matching rationality training from you.
Behave purposefully; have a goal in mind when you interact with your wife and with other people. When you have a goal in mind it is easier to avoid defensive reactions and much more likely that you will achieve the desired result.
The only issue I see with TSH vs. god is that god has been defined as something that is outside time/space, omni-max, etc.
Actually, you may not be aware that mayonnaise is critical to universe creation. Since God does not contain mayonnaise the God hypothesis is less plausible than the TSH.
So you claim that existing outside space and time is necessary for the creation of the universe and I claim that mayonnaise is necessary. Do either of these claims allow us to select between the theories? I don’t see how; but by adding these additional requirements we increase the complexity of the theories and reduce their relative likelihood within the set of unfalsifiable theories.
Christian apologists can make compelling arguments because in the realm of made-up-stuff there is plenty that appeals to our cognitive biases. I agree that existing outside of space and time feels like a better property of a universe creator than containing mayonnaise; but that feeling is based from our very human perspective and not from any actual knowledge about how the universe came to be the way we see it now.
...words of natural languages don’t specify the meaning uniquely and some amount of interpretation is always needed to figure out the meaning of a proposition.
The need for interpretation is not limited to natural languages; it is required for any language. A context of assessment will derive meaning from a proposition based on its prior assumptions. For example a raw bit string may be interpreted to different meanings when read by different programs.
Given that propositions can probably be formulated with arbitrary precision if needed (even if not infinitely so), the disputes about meaning can be always resolved.
To resolve such disputes there must be a computable path to the resolution, and there won’t always be such a path. At a fundamental level not all problems are decidable. In more practical terms, the contexts involved in the dispute must implement some system that allows for convergence for all possible inputs; this condition will not always be satisfied.
I did state the problem with the God hypothesis directly; I said:
The problem with the God hypothesis is that it is indistinguishable from innumerable other stories that can be made up to explain the same phenomena, and whose validity is supported equally well by the evidence.
I gave the TSH as an example of ridiculous sounding creation theory that is actually more likely than the God hypothesis, within the space of unfalsifiable theories that the God hypothesis occupies.
To restate this: The God hypothesis is indistinguishable from a story that somebody just made up. For every case that boils down to “God did it”, we can create innumerable equivalent stories that claim “X did it”, for some value of X; with no way to select which story (if any) is correct.
I’m not claiming that there is no truth, or that belief alters reality; I’m claiming that truth can only be determined within the context of assessment; that there is no absolute or objective truth.
I realize that this is at odds with some of Eliezer’s claims. But to provide an example related to Eliezer’s belief in mathematical realism. (Why isn’t this an obvious mind projection fallacy?)
Let’s say Fred performs a calculation that results in 2 + 3 = 6. This isn’t just a onetime mistake, he always calculates 2 + 3 as 6; if he sees the formula written down he will say, “Hey, that’s true.”
Why is this clearly false statement true to Fred? It’s because his mental implementation of the arithmetic abstraction is broken… from our perspective. Just because he believes that 2 + 3 = 6, it doesn’t mean that it’s true in any other context of assessment.
Just because we believe that 2 + 3 = 5, that doesn’t mean that the statement is an absolute truth. We can only evaluate the truth of the statement by assessing it within contexts that can give the statement meaning. My mailbox doesn’t do math at all, but my calculator does a fair job; although for my calculator I have to first transform the symbols into key presses.
Edited to add:
In the story you reference, the character Mark presumably dies when he jumps off a cliff believing that his beliefs would allow him to fly. Our minds are not a context of assessment for physical stuff, like our bodies or the ground; we can observe stuff by forming meaning from our senses, but we don’t provide the framework that gives that stuff its existence and that allows it to interact. We are subject to the context of assessment that generates our physical reality.
In any case, I am currently more satisfied with that defense vs. trying to come up with an analogy that, in my opinion, suffers from all of the same pitfalls as the deity hypothesis and even a few more :)
This is of course the point. The TSH is obviously stupid, but the God hypothesis is weak against even very stupid alternatives. Some of the other innumerable alternatives may in fact strike some as more plausible than the God hypothesis, but that doesn’t make them better.
I’m working on a way to explain this concept to the nice strangers who stop by my house from time to time.
Written for the LW audience:
The problem with the God hypothesis is that it is indistinguishable from innumerable other stories that can be made up to explain the same phenomena, and whose validity is supported equally well by the evidence.
For example: I once made a tuna sandwich, ordinary in every way except that it had the special ability to create the universe, both past and future. It was not God, which I verified by eating it. This is the tuna sandwich hypothesis for the existence of the universe (TSH).
The TSH is superior to the God Hypothesis in two important ways: first of all it was tasty; and second, the theory is much simpler. Instead of needing all kinds of crazy special attributes like omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, the tuna sandwich only requires the special ability to create the universe for all time; so it is a more likely explanation for the creation of the universe. In other words the likelihood that God created the universe is relatively lower than the TSH due to the joint probably of all the claims that the God hypothesis makes about God. All that existence you enjoy (or suffer from) is better evidence for the TSH.
This can be repeated for the other phenomena attributed to God, and instead of “tuna sandwich” you can pick anything—for example any real number—which makes the set of choices uncountable.
Given the other possibilities, the likelihood that the God hypothesis is true is infinitely small; which rational systems will round to zero.
I am looking for a way to make this easier for a layman to understand, and to make it less offensive to those with strongly held beliefs.
Same here.
Truth is universal
Actually the nature of truth is an unresolved and debated question.
There are reasons to discount the concept of absolute truth.
Take your example:
I happen to wear black socks at the time of this writing. Believe it or not, that’s the reality, so “Loup was wearing blacks socks when he wrote this” is true for everyone, including you. Even if you believe I’m lying, I am wearing black socks. You can’t be absolutely certain of this fact, but a fact it is.
Your statement is true as assessed from a certain context; if assessed from other contexts it might be false. For example, under a different light source your socks may appear to blue due to illuminant metameric failure, or may even glow due to phosphorescence.
Truth can only be determined from the context of assessment.
For those that disagree I’ll take your down-votes, but please also comment, pointing me to references if possible; I’m actively researching this aspect of epistemology.
I mean in the sense “why does existence exist?”.
Then I agree that this question is probably poorly formed. Certainly it isn’t obvious to me that it is a meaningful or useful question.
I’m not sure why we have been down-voted for these comments. I suspect that it is because questioning existence in this way appears to challenge the “objective existence” aspects of scientific realism. (Down-voters please comment if I’m wrong.)
We have no prior reason to expect that “nothing” would be a viable alternative to “something.”
I absolutely agree with this. To establish that “non-existence” is exclusively opposed to “existence” requires a careful analysis of the nature of existence.
Can anybody point to work along these lines? I am actively researching the topic.
Trying to explain “why existence” is pointless; existence is, inherently.
I’m not sure how you mean this. By “why existence”, do you mean something like the “purpose of existence”?
Explaining how existence works is the useful and meaningful goal.
I agree. I think that this topic ties directly to epistemology; explaining the nature of existence will help to explain the nature of knowledge.
Relative rate of thinking. The universe may appear to be very different to very fast or slow thinkers relative to humans.