J_Thomas

Karma: 146

J_Thomas 11 Jan 2008 23:37 UTC
0 points
on: Beautiful Math
Chris and Ben, we create axiom systems and we discover parts of “mathematics”. There are probably only a finite number of theorems that can be stated with only 10 characters, or 20 characters, or 30 characters, provided we don’t add new definitions. But the number of possible theorems quickly gets very very large. Will each independent group of mathematicians come up with the same theorems? Probably not. So we get different mathematics.

How different could alien mathematics be? I don’t know. We could look at a variety of alien mathematics and see. Except, we don’t have much of that. We presumably had different mathematical traditions in china, india, and europe, and we got some minor differences. But they were solving similar real-life problems and they could have been in communication. If you want trade in silk then you need a lot of it for it to make much difference. A very few mathematicians traveling could spread ideas easily.

It’s easy to see alternate physics, and alternate technology is kind of arbitrary. I think alien math might be pretty different depending on which theorems they proved first. But I don’t have good examples to demonstrate it.

The Pennyologist who notices the O’s is not that different from the Pennyologist who notices there’s one L on each side. A particular Pennyology might notice one of those, or the other one, or both. Out of the many relationships you could pick out from the penny, which ones will people pay attention to?

J_Thomas 11 Jan 2008 15:05 UTC
2 points
on: 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities
Usually, if a die lands on edge we say it was a spoiled throw and do it over. Similarly if a Dark Lord writes 37 on the face that lands on top, we complain that the Dark Lord is spoiling our game and we don’t count it.

We count 6 possibilities for a 6-sided die, 5 possibilities for a 5-sided die, 2 possibilities for a 2-sided die, and if you have a die with just one face—a spherical die—what’s the chance that face will come up?

I think it would be interesting to develop probability theory with no boundaries, with no 0 and 1. It works fine to do it the way it’s done now, and the alternative might turn up something interesting too.

J_Thomas 11 Jan 2008 14:00 UTC
1 point
on: Beautiful Math
“To say that human beings “invented numbers”—or invented the structure implicit in numbers—seems like claiming that Neil Armstrong hand-crafted the Moon. The universe existed before there were any sentient beings to observe it, which implies that physics preceded physicists.”

No, there’s a conflation of two things here.

Have you ever really looked at a penny? I’m looking at a 1990 penny now. I know that if you look at the front and you see the bas-relief of Lincoln, and the date 1990, and it’s a penny, then you can be sure that the back side will have a picture of the Lincoln memorial. It works! And you can find all sorts of connections. Like, there’s a single “O” on the front, in the name GOD in the phrase IN GOD WE TRUST. And there’s a single “O” on the back, in the phrase ONE CENT. One O on the front, one O on the back. A connection! You could make lots and lots of these interconnections between the front and the back of the penny, and draw conclusions about what it means. You could invent a discipline of Pennyology if only somebody would fund it.

Is it true that Pennyology is implicit in pennies? In a way. Certainly the pennies should exist before the Pennyology. But the pennies are only whatever they are. The existence of pennies doesn’t tell us much about what the practitioners of the discipline of Pennyology will actually notice. They might never pay attention to the pair of O’s. There could be a fold in Lincoln’s coat that after the proper analysis provides a solution to the whole world crisis, and they may never pick up on it. While it’s predictable that different independent attempts at Pennyology would have a whole lot in common since after all they all need to be compatible with the same pennies, still they might be very different in some respects. You can’t necessarily predict the Pennyology from looking at the penny. And you can’t predict what mathematics people will invent from observing reality.

You can predict some things. A mathematics that invents the same 2D plane we use and that proves a 3-color theorem has something wrong with it. But you can’t predict which things will be found first or, to some extent, which things will be found at all.

If there’s a reality that mathematics must conform to, still each individual version of human mathematics is invented by humans.

Similarly with physics. Our physics is invented. The reality the physics describes is real. We can imagine a platonic-ideal physics that fit the reality completely, but we don’t have an example of that to point at. So for example before Townsend invented the laser, a number of great physicists claimed it was impossible. Townsend got the idea because lasers could be described using Maxwell’s equations. But people thought that quantum mechanics provided no way to get that result. it turned out they were wrong.

Actual physics is invented. Certainly incorrect physics must be invented. There’s nothing in reality that shows you how to do physics wrong.

J_Thomas 6 Jan 2008 23:17 UTC
0 points
on: A Failed Just-So Story
Robs, religions tend to thrive among people who work hard and behave well and such. The two tend to go together. But just as priests do well in that environment so do politicians. How can we tell whether these people are helping to maintain the prosperity, or merely parasitising it? In general parasites do better with healthy hosts.

I do not claim that religion is useless. I claim that you are assuming your conclusion that it is not. Ideally we might find some sort of data. We might for example look at examples where people who previously had no religion get proselytised into a religion and see how much better they get at working hard and behaving well and all that. To actually find out we should test our ideas against reality rather than just assuming that our beliefs are objectively true.

J_Thomas 6 Jan 2008 8:38 UTC
0 points
on: A Failed Just-So Story
Razib, I see you argue that different religions can compete, and what they compete for is converts who perhaps are comparing the benefits the competing religions provide them. Whether individuals make rational choices or whether they irrationally gravitate to the religions that appear to bring prosperity, either way the religions compete.

But I’m talking about how religions could have gotten their start. If people who are predisposed to religion are better at living in larger-than-kinship groups, and if people who live in larger groups survive better, then the spread of predisposition-for-religion can be explained by individual selection without requiring group selection arguments.

J_Thomas 5 Jan 2008 13:44 UTC
4 points
on: A Failed Just-So Story
Lots of people think that the main thing religions do is to bind people together. The etymology of the word works that way, right? re-ligio.

If they think that’s what religion does, then it’s only natural they’d think that’s what it gets selected for. No mystery there.

Does it take group selection? People can stay in family groups with kin selection. No mystery. Suppose that people in groups all tend to survive better than loners. That’s plausible. Then anything that helps people work together in larger groups (without too many side effects) could be individual-selected. Each individual is selected for the ability to join groups and the ability to maintain them, because the more time he spends alone or in a broken group, the worse his survival. Each individual is selected to correctly choose which others to throw out—throw out good members sand the group is weakened. Fail to throw out members that will make the group collapse and each individual member is threatened.

It’s only group selection when it’s religious groups competing against nonreligious groups. It’s individual selection when it’s individuals in groups competing against loners.

J_Thomas 25 Dec 2007 18:33 UTC
1 point
on: The Amazing Virgin Pregnancy
I didn’t think it was tremendously funny. But I thought it was funny enough to recite the whole thing to my wife while she sat at her own keyboard, instead of just send her a link. She didn’t think it was tremendously funny. But she politely stopped typing to listen, and she laughed some.

It seems to me like at least a B effort. The humor was in everybody wanting to believe.

In reality, wasn’t there a claim that the midwife confirmed Mary was a virgin? If I lived in the village I’d probably accept that as sufficient evidence, though in my namesake’s tradition I’d rather stick my own fingers in to confirm it.

For myself it’s pretty much irrelevant. There was an ecumenical joke when I was a kid—a preacher compared the different protestant faiths as being like different roads that could be taken to get your cotton to a cotton gin. And when you get there, the engineer isn’t going to ask you “Which road did you take?” He’s going to ask you, “How good is your cotton?”.

By the same reasoning, when Jesus comes to me with a morality for me to follow, I don’t ask him “What miracles did you have about your birth?”. I ask him, “How good is your morality?”.

J_Thomas 9 Dec 2007 13:06 UTC
−1 points
on: When None Dare Urge Restraint
“If you want to see an example of a measured response, take a look at the UK’s after the London Underground bombings of 7th July 2005. Admittedly the bombings weren’t of the same league as the September 11th attacks, but virtually nobody in the UK was saying “let’s bomb the f*ers” And a month or two later (at the most) it was as if nothing had ever happened.”

Mike K, I tend to agree with you, but....

The fact is, the british empire is gone and the british are ex-colonialists. As a nation they’re old and tired and wimpy. It’s different for us—you can’t be the world’s only superpower and let anybody get away with anything. If we let one terrorist group have the WTC they’ll all want one.

So as the winners of the cold war we have to respond to any provocation—we have no choice. Any little group of terrorists can tell us who to invade and we have to do it, or we let the terrorists win. Either we kill off every terrorist group that isn’t under our direction, or we lose our special status and have to admit we aren’t in control of the world.

Think about it.

J_Thomas 9 Dec 2007 3:10 UTC
4 points
on: When None Dare Urge Restraint
“If you believe invading Afghanistan was a correct choice then I’m not sure how you could say Iraq was a complete mistake. The invasion of Afghanistan was aimed at eliminating a state that offered aid and support to an enemy who would use that aid and support to project power to the US and harm her citizens or the citizens of other western states. Denying that aid and support would hope to achieve the purpose of reducing or eliminating the ability of the enemy to project power.

“Any other state that might offer aid and support to the enemy would enable the enemy to rebuild their ability to project power. Iraq was one possible source of aid and support.”

Brandon, your reasoning is compelling. However, it has a subtle flaw that I think will be easier to see when I rephrase the argument as follow:

We will be safer after we conquer every potential enemy.

The claim is obviously true, and yet....

J_Thomas 9 Dec 2007 3:00 UTC
−1 points
on: When None Dare Urge Restraint
“I would have preferred, for example, that the U.S., Russia, China, UK, Israel and perhaps France announced that in one year they will declare war an any other nation that either has weapons of mass destruction or doesn’t allow highly intrusive inspections to make sure they don’t have weapons of mass destruction.”

James D. Miller, I think your idea has possibilities. However, it would be very hard for it to succeed with israel on the list of nations that has nukes but denies them to others. Israel would have to be one of the nations that would be destroyed if it keeps nuclear weapons or refuses highly intrusive inspections.

What about india? Shouldn’t they be on the list? We don’t want war with india, they haven’t threatened anybody except, well, pakistan.

And what about pakistan? If we let india keep nukes it would be hard to invade pakistan over their nukes. Should pakistan be one of the nations of the alliance that will destroy anybody else who has nukes?

Now it looks like a hard problem. No, your idea does not look workable. Allow russia to have nukes but not china? No. Allow china to have nukes but not india? Hardly. Allow india to have nukes but not pakistan? Tempting, but no. Allow pakistan to have nukes but not israel? It would be a good idea but it won’t fly. Allow israel to have nukes but not syria? A pleasant thought but not practical. Allow israel and arab nations both to have nukes? Not practical either.

There’s a logic here that hasn’t played out yet. It goes:
1. You don’t need nukes unless you have enemies.
2. If you get nukes, after awhile your enemies will too, and you can’t stop this.
3. If you and your enemies have nukes then you will be worse off than if neither you nor your enemies have nukes.
Therefore:
1. Don’t get nukes.
The world as a whole hasn’t recognised this logic yet because there haven’t been any graphic examples. Probably after the second nuclear war, when the world sees what happens to the “winner”, people will have a much clearer idea about it. But two nuclear wars will be hard on the world. Ideally these wars would involve small countries so they can be small nuclear wars.

So most of us will be better off if lebanon gets nukes. Then a nuclear war between lebanon and israel could be one of the smallest possible nuclear wars.

The next obvious choice is a war between libya and chad.

After 2 nuclear wars the world as a whole will be much more ready for disarmament then they are now, with nuclear war a threat that has not materialised for 62 years.

Ir’a much much easier to stop people from doing something they didn’t want to do in the first place, than stop them from something they think can keep you from dominating them.

J_Thomas 9 Dec 2007 2:17 UTC
−2 points
on: When None Dare Urge Restraint
“I’d say they were cowards. Suicide isn’t an act of bravery.”

R U Kidding, I agree in this particular case.

If they had lived, we would have caught them and slowly tortured them to death. They were taking the easy way out by dying. Similarly with palestinian suicide bombers. By dying they avoid the treatment they’d get as prisoners of the israelis—they get off easy.

“I still remember a kid who hit me from behind on the street once, because he was too much of a pussy to come up to my face about it.”

He was expressing his feelings. Did he tell you he was too scared to face you? You might have misunderstood his intentions. At any rate, modern war often involves a surprise attack. When your intention is that the other guy wind up dead and you wind up alive, why give him any advantages? Neither the USAF nor the israeli air force typically announce their airstrikes ahead of time.

If the kid you remember had intended to kill you, it would make perfect sense for him to attack you from behind and kill you as quickly as he could, rather than give you anything like an even chance to kill him instead. But he bravely left you alive to respond however you chose to. If he had killed you properly you wouldn’t have found out who did it before you died. You owe your life to his courage.

“But to those who can’t comprehend the possibility that the so-called overreaction might have saved lives, consider that Al Quaeda was escalating attacks until it got the desired response: war. And what, pray tell, do you think the next level of escalation would be, that would one-up the thousands killed on 9/11? Nuclear terrorism, maybe. Biological terrorism.”

AQ had a number of guys trained as infantrymen, and about 10% as many trained for espionage. We rolled up their spies and saboteurs real fast. We maybe got a bunch of innocent arab-americans at the same time, but we got most of the ones we were looking for.

When we invaded afghanistan we got a lot of the infantry guys too. They could possibly have been a threat to saudi arabia—trained dedicated infantry fighting saudis and mercenaries might have done a lot of damage—so that’s maybe a plus. There’s no particular reason to think AQ could have “escalated” after our police and counterintelligence guys hit them. The army thing was more for US public relations than anything else—the public wanted a war so the US government gave them one. We gave AQ what they wanted, against most strategic sense, because they persuaded the US public to want what AQ wanted, and Bush also saw the chance to gain US public approval.

I think. I can’t be entirely sure what Bush was thinking. I assume he was rationally looking at his own advantage, but he may not have been thinking at all.

“You’re letting your hatred of Bush prejudice your interpretation of events.”

Well, no. My disgust at Bush came from the events. Not so much the other way round.

J_Thomas 6 Dec 2007 15:45 UTC
1 point
on: Uncritical Supercriticality
“But there is never an Idea so true that it’s wrong to criticize any argument that supports it. Never. Never ever never for ever.”

Was it wrong for the guy who thought Buzz Aldrin helped fake the moon landing to present his arguments to Buzz?

One of the hungarian Manhattan-project physicists had a slogan that went “It is not enough to be rude, one must also be wrong.” When it comes time to decide whether to answer a verbal argument with violence, does it matter whether the argument is wrong, or is it enough to be rude?

J_Thomas 5 Dec 2007 21:39 UTC
0 points
on: Uncritical Supercriticality
GW, to what extent should we treat people as we want them to treat us, and to what extent should we treat them the way they say is right and the way they treat others?

Sometimes it’s polite to treat other people by their own standards, and it isn’t an admission that their way is right and ours is wrong.

J_Thomas 5 Dec 2007 21:07 UTC
−5 points
on: Uncritical Supercriticality
So don’t tell me about situations in which it is appropriate to respond to an argument with violence. Tell me about realistically obtainable states of belief in which it is appropriate to respond to an argument with violence.

I don’t exactly agree with this, but I can see it as a social signal. As Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes seem to express it, when somebody makes his argument that you utterly despise, you hit him to show that you refuse to engage in rational argument with him. He is your enemy and beyond the pale and his position is not one that you consider open to rational debate.

So for example a zionist might respond this way to someone who argues that israel/palestine should become one democratic nation under one-person/one-vote. It would mean the destruction of the state of israel, it would mean that israelis would become a minority in their own country. A zionist could respond with words, something like “I don’t need logical arguments for why israel should exist. Israel exists because people like me are ready and willing to kill anybody who tries to destroy her.”. But a good swift sock in the jaw says the same thing more forcefully, without actually killing anybody. Ideally you knock him out and he falls down and hits his head on the floor, and when he wakes up he will be a chastened antisemite, a subdued antisemite, a far more submissive antisemite. He will not annoy you with logical argument.

Similar treatment might be effective against communists, pro-abortionists, and liberals generally. Logical argument can only carry you so far; at some point you get to principles that you accept because of who you are. You can’t expect everyone to accept those same principles because they are not you. Some people accept the principle “You should not sock somebody in the jaw just because he disagrees with you” and some do not.

How we get along in social conversation with people who disagree with us says a lot about us. If you’re having a civil conversation with a rapist, or a serial killer, or a republican, how do you handle yourself? Should you always wait for him to strike the first blow, or is it ever appropriate to cold-cock him with no warning?

J_Thomas 5 Dec 2007 6:58 UTC
1 point
on: Uncritical Supercriticality
in the human art of rationality there’s a flat law against meeting arguments with violence, anywhere in the human world

“No. You’re confusing rationality with your own received ethical value system. Violence is both an appropriate and frequently necessary response to all sorts of arguments.”

I want to note that Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, famously encountered a man who denied that humans have ever gone to the moon but that the videos of Buzz on the moon were filmed in arizona. Buzz’s response when the man presented his arguments was to sock him in the jaw.

The science fiction writer John Barnes, who collaborated with Aldrin on a couple of science fiction novels, has since written several novels in which the appealing protagonist argues that the only appropriate response to some arguments is a good swift sock in the jaw. His protagonists do so, with good results.

Millions of impressionable young science fiction readers are influenced by these novels.

If you met John Barnes and he argued that he’s doing the right thing, would it be appropriate to sock him in the jaw?

Barnes is 53 years old but has been doing martial arts for something like 30 years. Would that influence your choice?

Should you let the moral value of initiating violence depend on whether or not you win?

If it’s right to physically attack somebody who disagrees with you provided you win but wrong when you lose, what about when it’s a ten year old girl who makes an argument you can’t answer except with violence?

J_Thomas 24 Nov 2007 15:15 UTC
9 points
on: The Hidden Complexity of Wishes
This generalises. Since you don’t know everything, anything you do might wind up being counterproductive.

Like, I once knew a group of young merchants who wanted their shopping district revitalised. They worked at it and got their share of federal money that was assigned to their city, and they got the lighting improved, and the landscaping, and a beautiful fountain, and so on. It took several years and most of the improvements came in the third year. Then their landlords all raised the rents and they had to move out.

That one was predictable in hindsight, but I didn’t predict it. There could always be things like that.

When anything you do could backfire, are you better off to stay in bed? No, the advantages of that are obvious but it’s also obvious you can’t make a living that way.

You have to make your choices and take your chances. If I had an outcome pump and my mother was trapped in a burning building and I had no other way to get her out, I hope I’d use it. The result might be worse than letting her burn to death but at least there would be a chance for a good outcome. If I can just get it to remove some of the bad outcomes the result may be an improvement.

J_Thomas 19 Nov 2007 15:11 UTC
2 points
on: Conjuring An Evolution To Serve You
Skilling was selecting badly. The 10% he discarded each year might have included some he should have kept, and vice versa.

Similarly, God at one point said he was going to get rid of evil people and keep good people and so people would get better. I don’t see much evidence that’s worked well.

Evolution happens, but if you want to harness it for your own goals you have to be very careful. Try to arrange it so you can throw away your mistakes.

J_Thomas 19 Nov 2007 13:02 UTC
16 points
on: Conjuring An Evolution To Serve You
There are lots of examples of unexpected selective outcomes.

A story—a long time agon a swedish researcher tried to increase wheat yields by picking the biggest wheat kernels to plant. In only 5 generations he had a strain of wheat that produced 6 giant wheat kernels per stalk.

When scale insects were damaging citrus fruits, farmers tried to poison them with cyanide. They’d put a giant tent over the whole tree and pump in the cyanide and kill the scale insects. Plants can be immune to cyanide but no animal that depends on respiration can be. And yet in only 5 years or so they got resistant scale insects. The resistant insects would—when anything startling happen—sit very still and hold their breath for half an hour or so.

If you want to do directed evolution, you do better to do it in controlled conditions. Take your results and test them carefully and make sure they’re what you want before you release them. Microbiologists who want mutants for research commonly take 20 or 100 mutants who survive the conditions they’re selected to survive, and test until they get a few that appear to be just what they want. Eliminate the rest.

So, for example, to find a mutant that has a high mutation rate—start with a strain of bacteria that has at least 4 selectable traits. Say, they don’t survive without threonine, don’t survive without isoleucine/valine, don’t survive penicillin, and don’t survive rifampicin. So you grow up a hundred billion or so of them and then you centrifuge them down and resuspend them in medium that doesn’t have threonine. Most of them die. Wait for the survivors to grow, and then centrifuge them down and resuspend them in medium that doesn’t have isoleucine/valine. Most of them die. Wait for the survivors to grow, and centrifuge them down and resuspend them in medium that has penicillin. Do it a fourth time with rifampicin. Plate them out on media that has lactose (when the originals couldn’t use lactose). Some of the colonies will be large and some small, pick a colony that has lots of little warts of bigger growth, because it gets lactose-using mutants even while the colony is growing. A strain that has a hundred times the mutation rate can be easily selected this way. It started out at frequency around 10^-8. After the first selection cycle it was frequency around 10^-6. By the fourth round it was common. Sometimes you can get a mutation rate around 1000 times the normal rate. Much above that and it doesn’t survive well.

Take one colony per try because you don’t want to test multiple colonies and then find out they’re the same mutation over again.

J_Thomas 17 Nov 2007 4:13 UTC
0 points
on: Terminal Values and Instrumental Values
Me: “in principle you ought to consider the entire state of the future universe when you set a terminal value.”

Douglas: ‘Yes, and in practice we don’t. But as I look further into the future to see the consequences of my terminal value(s), that’s when the trouble begins.’

Me: Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

Doctor: Then don’t do that.

J_Thomas 17 Nov 2007 0:34 UTC
1 point
on: Evolving to Extinction
‘Our modern transportation systems have effectively eliminated most of the barriers between human populations. All of our eggs are in one basket. If a highly lethal virus that will spread throughout an entire population and kill it arises, that basket will be dropped.’

This is a strong argument to change that situation. We have a communications system that lets us transmit data widely without needing personal contact. We could do some sorts of trade without a whole lot of risk, and minimise both the risk and the amount of trade for the rest.

It would be hard to do that effectively without a consensus among most of the world population, since people are so good at sneaking. So ideally over the next generation or so we’ll develop a convincing case for dividing the world up into small breeding groups with strictly limited contact among groups, assuming the case actually is convincing.

At the moment the idea seems almost fantastical, as if we’d never put up with something like that. So we have a long way to go.