Today I heard that proving the efficacy of the technique called "forcing" in set theory is made much more elegant and clear by the assumption of Platonism.
So what? I hear you ask.
So... so everything.
Scientific truth is determined by a variety of criteria, but some quite important ones are practical utility and elegant descriptive power. I think everyone who understands any scientific field can agree that mathematics is of significant practical utility, and set theory is immensely useful within mathematics. In some scientific sense then, the philosophical assumptions underlying set theory are true.
I feel I need to justify the reliance on elegant descriptive power more than simply citing it (paraphrased) as one of the criteria by which scientific theories should be judged mentioned in The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, so here goes. Occam's razor warns us to not multiply entities beyond necessity, but this principle naturally extends itself to a broader view of complexity, namely that one should generally choose "simpler" explanations in place of more "complicated" ones, for some reasonable definitions of those terms. The reason I attribute this to elegance, particularly in the metamathematical use of the term, is exemplified by the original "revolution":
Copernicus did not actually "prove" that the motions of the planets are those of massive spheroids orbiting the sun, he did not demonstrate that the preceding system of calculation using epicycles was actually incorrect per se, what he proved was that the heliocentric model provides a much more mathematically elegant description of their motion. Technically everything which can be calculated using the Copernican system can also be calculated using epicycles, but it is much more intricate and difficult to do so, leading to the worldwide scientifically-minded community naturally adopting the view that Copernicus' model of the motion of the planets is in some important sense closer to the truth.
Apparently certain important proofs in set theory (at least the efficacy of forcing) are made more elegant by assuming a Platonic view of first-order set theory - by this I mean assuming that there is some part of reality which set theory describes to some degree of accuracy, and that the practice of set theory is in some way the apprehension of this part of the external reality. As I take a materialist view of reality this assumption is quite incompatible with the way I have so far dealt with mathematics on a philosophical level.
Anybody who is familiar with the dialogue of mathematicians will know that we all tend to speak as though the objects we are discussing are in some sense external to ourselves, that there are "real truths" to be discovered. I have thought of this as largely a reasonable way to speak about it for three reasons.
1) It is a very useful shorthand.
2) In a sense it is true no matter which view of the subject the speaker takes.
3) The culture of mathematicians has formed with this mode of speech built into it, so to participate in the mathematical culture one must first adopt some of its basic mannerisms.
All of these reasons are perfectly valid for a materialist and do not at all rely on the objects of study existing in some actual realm of Platonic ideal forms. In particular my own view is that mathematics is a description of the subjective experience of precise comprehension shared by all human(-like) minds (roughly speaking - it's an idea I find difficult to put into words).
However when Kurt Gödel proved his incompleteness theorems the philosophical question of what mathematics is actually describing (if anything) was dropped squarely into the core of the foundations of math, of which set theory is an important part. To describe why this philosophical question suddenly became significant in philosophy of math would likely be redundant to mathematicians (and philosophers of math and logicians) and merely confusing to everyone else, so I will forego a review of the history of this area here.
Now while it is arguable whether or not mathematics is a science at all (I would argue against that proposition) it is certainly a discipline with immense practical utility. I hope I don't need to say anything here to justify that statement, so I will continue without doing so. Set theory is important within the practice of mathematics, in part because I have yet to encounter a mathematical subdiscipline which does not occasionally make use of some of its more basic results. Suffice it to say that if set theory were to crumble it would seriously threaten to take most if not all of mathematics with it. Set theory, I have now heard, is noticeably more complicated and nuanced when working without the assumption of Platonic reality. Obviously (to me, anyway) this assumption, being a philosophical rather than a mathematical one, does not affect the actual mathematical content of the results of set theory, but it may still affect their phrasing and thereby their apparent applicability outside of math itself. To me this is reminiscent of the row between constructive and classical logics; that ultimately the mathematical community decided that since results could be equivalently phrased in either logical system constructive logic, being somewhat unwieldy, was to be considered redundant, effectively granting victory to the side of classical logic. This conclusion of the fight between constructive and classical logics is another instance of the more elegant theory being considered closer to the truth in virtue of its elegance.
So it seems that some metascientific methodologies tend to be applied within philosophical questions of metamathematics at least, and the results can then be widely accepted as "true" in some real but non-mathematical sense, and their use throughout the scientific disciplines lends the philosophical assumptions underlying mathematics seemingly as much claim to "truth" in the external world as the physical sciences themselves can claim. Directly applying this approach to the assumption of Platonism in set theory (as it results in a more elegant set theory, it can be assumed to be true in a scientific sense), we reach the conclusion that a platonic realm of ideal forms (consisting at least of sets) provisionally likely exists as a part of objective reality. This obviously contradicts philosophical naturalism, but more interestingly (and confusingly) it also can be seen that the existence of this nonmaterial realm of Platonic ideal forms has been arrived at using scientific principles of decision-making, which also contradicts the idea that science is methodologically naturalistic.
So has methodological naturalism reached a decidedly non-naturalistic conclusion, even provisionally?
I suppose we add this to Lawrence Krauss' paradoxical conclusion that empirical rationalism tells us that at a future time empirical rationalism will correctly reach a false conclusion.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Friday, February 26, 2010
Painful Silence
Phone calls and emails about my grandfather over the course of a week - something about pneumonia, but they say he'll pull through soon enough. He's been hinting about wanting do die for about a year now, so I'm not so sure. I give him a call and he seems happy enough to hear from me, but he also sounds slightly high, I guess it must be the morphine, but I say nothing.
A couple of days later I get a call saying that something's gone wrong, he probably won't pull through so they're taking him off the medicine and allowing him to die. He's had a DNR for a long time now, so this is a simple matter. We'll be leaving in two days to go see him before he dies.
Long car trip, short bursts of conversations I don't remember, and short stretches of silence as well. We arrive and say hello, he seems surprised and happy to see us, but can't maintain anything for long since he's only breathing every other 30 seconds. The dog won't go near the bed, just like before; I think the bars on the sides frighten her. The hospice nurses are friendly like last time, and we set in to wait.
The next day, he still spends half the time struggling for breath and the other half not breathing. The few times he manages to open his eyes or speak, he tries to stand up, tries to leave, but he's just not strong enough. We keep things quiet around his house, we try to make him comfortable and greet him when he wakes up. People keep telling him it's okay if he dies, but they refuse to use those words. I hope he stops suffering soon. Before we leave, he is struggling and saying something about "alone". We stay for a little longer, but he continues, so we leave. My sister thinks he's lonely, I think he wants to be left alone. The dog doesn't want to leave the house. The nurses start talking about how she can tell that he's dying, I think she can tell that we can tell he's dying. I have to drag her to the car so we can go back to the hotel.
The next day, he's barely able to open his eyes at all. He doesn't speak even for the brief periods he appears conscious, and the breathing he's doing for half of each minute is shallower than before. I expect he won't survive the day, but I say nothing. Everyone around is clearly getting more agitated about the situation. My mother is getting sadder, and one of the nurses tries to make her feel better by relating a near-death experience from one of her friends, but I say nothing. People continue to tell him that it's okay for him to die, still only using euphemisms, except for one nurse who thinks he's going to some vague spirit-realm to be with my grandmother. I can't tell if she's speaking literally or metaphorically, but I say nothing.
He's looking more gaunt all the time, like his skin is draped over his skull. I begin to wonder about what's happening to his body - I am plagued by the worry that he recovered from his illness and we are starving him to death in ignorance, but I say nothing. We are told that he may feel better if he hears life continuing around him as normal, so we try. Eating dinner in the next room, I wonder if the smell of food is making him feel worse for hunger, but I say nothing. He wakes up for long enough to take his oxygen tube off in front of everyone, I am amazed he still has the strength. In the evening we leave, the nurse telling us that he's unlikely to survive for more than a few hours. My grandmother died soon after everyone went to sleep, so I spend the rest of the evening expecting a phone call saying he had died.
The next day we arrive to a new experience - he is breathing consistently now, but it sounds like coffee loudly percolating in his lungs with every breath. The nurse assures us that it's not unpleasant for him, only for us. I sit in the rocking chair in the room with him, programming on my laptop. Rocking back and forth, expressionless, silent. I ignore more talk about him being with my grandmother soon. Nobody else wants to be in the room with him for very long, I think the noise of his breathing is the reason. After four hours, it's getting to me too. I begin getting angry at the world for making physician-assisted suicide such a taboo, but I say nothing.
In the afternoon, his breathing gradually slows until eventually it stops entirely. A minute later, he gasps another breath, everyone is surprised, but the nurse says it's just a muscle spasm, that he's gone now. People around are crying, I keep staring at his face. A couple minutes later he gasps for another breath, weaker than last time. Other people don't seem to notice this time. He doesn't breathe again, and his head stops moving to the rhythm of a pulse, which I assume means his heart has stopped. I continue to stare at his face for another ten minutes or so, and I say nothing.
The next few days, everyone is bustling around cleaning, throwing things out, rummaging through his posessions, planning his funeral, trying to figure out how to proceed from here - working through grief by immersion in work, I assume. I help when asked, but otherwise I sit out of the way, programming or solving logic puzzles, just as the days before. I continue to be angry at the world for not allowing physician-assisted suicide, but also I know that he would probably not have taken it even if it were legal. I reconcile this by also being angry at the culture for its social disapproval of the practice, but I say nothing. The uninterrupted noise eventually gets to me, and once I use a volume of voice normally reserved for getting the attention of a large lecture hall. I am briefly chastised for this, and I wonder why I must give leeway to everyone else's methods for dealing with grief though they need not accommodate mine, but I say nothing.
In the calling hours before his funeral, people apologize a lot, people hug a lot, people shake hands a lot. I stand when they do, shake hands when the offer, and sometimes introduce myself. One nurse talks about how my grandparents have new bodies now and are probably sitting on the couch listening to music and tapping their feet and hands. I scream at her in my mind about a hundred different things, but I say nothing.
The funeral starts with a sermon. My grandfather is mentioned twice, the rest is about "Christ Jesus" and "Resurrection" and "Almightly Lord God". Every time she says "will you pray with me?" I mentally reply "NO!" but I say nothing. When the minister closes the bible on the podium, she opens up the notes she took when talking to us a couple of days earlier, and reads them out with a little bit of a filter and almost no editorializing. I wonder why she is even here, but I say nothing. My sister reads the lyrics of a song she finds appropriate to my grandparents, and it is all I can do not to cry - this short, abnormal part of the service is more moving than all the rest put together. The minister finishes with another prayer. Through the entire thing I keep repeating that I am not there for myself, I am there for the rest of my family - they think I would feel badly for not being there. They are wrong, but I say nothing.
We go to the cemetery to inter his ashes. We pick up the dog on the way, hoping she will behave herself there, it turns out she doesn't. After another meaningless prayer, we leave the cemetary. We eat out that night, at a favourite restaurant of my grandfather's.
The next morning, my sister and I board the bus to leave. She remarks that it's a rare thing for someone to die in the house they built. For the first two hours, a man sits behind me speaking very loudly about his friend across the aisle being released from prison recently, and about meeting someone in a casino. I do my best to ignore him. The second two hours, after a bus transfer, a woman sits behind me screaming constantly with her friend across the aisle about their lives, completely oblivious to others on the bus, and never stopping for a breath even when her friend is speaking. She is even more difficult to ignore. Thankfully, the third two hours are relatively silent. Two more hours of local travel later, and I am finally back to my room in Hamilton after 8 days away.
Two days after my return, I can finally begin to grieve for my grandfather. I am glad he's not suffering anymore, but I will miss him.
A couple of days later I get a call saying that something's gone wrong, he probably won't pull through so they're taking him off the medicine and allowing him to die. He's had a DNR for a long time now, so this is a simple matter. We'll be leaving in two days to go see him before he dies.
Long car trip, short bursts of conversations I don't remember, and short stretches of silence as well. We arrive and say hello, he seems surprised and happy to see us, but can't maintain anything for long since he's only breathing every other 30 seconds. The dog won't go near the bed, just like before; I think the bars on the sides frighten her. The hospice nurses are friendly like last time, and we set in to wait.
The next day, he still spends half the time struggling for breath and the other half not breathing. The few times he manages to open his eyes or speak, he tries to stand up, tries to leave, but he's just not strong enough. We keep things quiet around his house, we try to make him comfortable and greet him when he wakes up. People keep telling him it's okay if he dies, but they refuse to use those words. I hope he stops suffering soon. Before we leave, he is struggling and saying something about "alone". We stay for a little longer, but he continues, so we leave. My sister thinks he's lonely, I think he wants to be left alone. The dog doesn't want to leave the house. The nurses start talking about how she can tell that he's dying, I think she can tell that we can tell he's dying. I have to drag her to the car so we can go back to the hotel.
The next day, he's barely able to open his eyes at all. He doesn't speak even for the brief periods he appears conscious, and the breathing he's doing for half of each minute is shallower than before. I expect he won't survive the day, but I say nothing. Everyone around is clearly getting more agitated about the situation. My mother is getting sadder, and one of the nurses tries to make her feel better by relating a near-death experience from one of her friends, but I say nothing. People continue to tell him that it's okay for him to die, still only using euphemisms, except for one nurse who thinks he's going to some vague spirit-realm to be with my grandmother. I can't tell if she's speaking literally or metaphorically, but I say nothing.
He's looking more gaunt all the time, like his skin is draped over his skull. I begin to wonder about what's happening to his body - I am plagued by the worry that he recovered from his illness and we are starving him to death in ignorance, but I say nothing. We are told that he may feel better if he hears life continuing around him as normal, so we try. Eating dinner in the next room, I wonder if the smell of food is making him feel worse for hunger, but I say nothing. He wakes up for long enough to take his oxygen tube off in front of everyone, I am amazed he still has the strength. In the evening we leave, the nurse telling us that he's unlikely to survive for more than a few hours. My grandmother died soon after everyone went to sleep, so I spend the rest of the evening expecting a phone call saying he had died.
The next day we arrive to a new experience - he is breathing consistently now, but it sounds like coffee loudly percolating in his lungs with every breath. The nurse assures us that it's not unpleasant for him, only for us. I sit in the rocking chair in the room with him, programming on my laptop. Rocking back and forth, expressionless, silent. I ignore more talk about him being with my grandmother soon. Nobody else wants to be in the room with him for very long, I think the noise of his breathing is the reason. After four hours, it's getting to me too. I begin getting angry at the world for making physician-assisted suicide such a taboo, but I say nothing.
In the afternoon, his breathing gradually slows until eventually it stops entirely. A minute later, he gasps another breath, everyone is surprised, but the nurse says it's just a muscle spasm, that he's gone now. People around are crying, I keep staring at his face. A couple minutes later he gasps for another breath, weaker than last time. Other people don't seem to notice this time. He doesn't breathe again, and his head stops moving to the rhythm of a pulse, which I assume means his heart has stopped. I continue to stare at his face for another ten minutes or so, and I say nothing.
The next few days, everyone is bustling around cleaning, throwing things out, rummaging through his posessions, planning his funeral, trying to figure out how to proceed from here - working through grief by immersion in work, I assume. I help when asked, but otherwise I sit out of the way, programming or solving logic puzzles, just as the days before. I continue to be angry at the world for not allowing physician-assisted suicide, but also I know that he would probably not have taken it even if it were legal. I reconcile this by also being angry at the culture for its social disapproval of the practice, but I say nothing. The uninterrupted noise eventually gets to me, and once I use a volume of voice normally reserved for getting the attention of a large lecture hall. I am briefly chastised for this, and I wonder why I must give leeway to everyone else's methods for dealing with grief though they need not accommodate mine, but I say nothing.
In the calling hours before his funeral, people apologize a lot, people hug a lot, people shake hands a lot. I stand when they do, shake hands when the offer, and sometimes introduce myself. One nurse talks about how my grandparents have new bodies now and are probably sitting on the couch listening to music and tapping their feet and hands. I scream at her in my mind about a hundred different things, but I say nothing.
The funeral starts with a sermon. My grandfather is mentioned twice, the rest is about "Christ Jesus" and "Resurrection" and "Almightly Lord God". Every time she says "will you pray with me?" I mentally reply "NO!" but I say nothing. When the minister closes the bible on the podium, she opens up the notes she took when talking to us a couple of days earlier, and reads them out with a little bit of a filter and almost no editorializing. I wonder why she is even here, but I say nothing. My sister reads the lyrics of a song she finds appropriate to my grandparents, and it is all I can do not to cry - this short, abnormal part of the service is more moving than all the rest put together. The minister finishes with another prayer. Through the entire thing I keep repeating that I am not there for myself, I am there for the rest of my family - they think I would feel badly for not being there. They are wrong, but I say nothing.
We go to the cemetery to inter his ashes. We pick up the dog on the way, hoping she will behave herself there, it turns out she doesn't. After another meaningless prayer, we leave the cemetary. We eat out that night, at a favourite restaurant of my grandfather's.
The next morning, my sister and I board the bus to leave. She remarks that it's a rare thing for someone to die in the house they built. For the first two hours, a man sits behind me speaking very loudly about his friend across the aisle being released from prison recently, and about meeting someone in a casino. I do my best to ignore him. The second two hours, after a bus transfer, a woman sits behind me screaming constantly with her friend across the aisle about their lives, completely oblivious to others on the bus, and never stopping for a breath even when her friend is speaking. She is even more difficult to ignore. Thankfully, the third two hours are relatively silent. Two more hours of local travel later, and I am finally back to my room in Hamilton after 8 days away.
Two days after my return, I can finally begin to grieve for my grandfather. I am glad he's not suffering anymore, but I will miss him.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
What to do with multiple OpenIDs?
The ability to have a single online identity is a worthwhile goal, in my opinion, and OpenID seems to be a major step in that direction. It allows login to any OpenID-enabled website through the use of your single identity, and tools like Verisign's Seatbelt make that even simpler. I'm quite pleased to see that more and more websites are adopting OpenID as a means of signing up or signing in.
The question I have now is: What do I do with multiple OpenID accounts?
Since more websites are using OpenID, more of them are also making their existing users able to use their existing logins as OpenIDs. This means that I already have at least 3 OpenIDs and no way to consolidate them.
This might seem like it has an easy solution - simply stop using two of them. The problem is that the one I've been using most already isn't the Google one, since Google's change to OpenID is more recent - and starting a new account on Google with my favoured OpenID would require too many transfers of data and notifications of third parties to be worth it.
So basically, I am looking for a way to use one of my OpenIDs to absorb the existing permissions and accounts of the others.
The question I have now is: What do I do with multiple OpenID accounts?
Since more websites are using OpenID, more of them are also making their existing users able to use their existing logins as OpenIDs. This means that I already have at least 3 OpenIDs and no way to consolidate them.
This might seem like it has an easy solution - simply stop using two of them. The problem is that the one I've been using most already isn't the Google one, since Google's change to OpenID is more recent - and starting a new account on Google with my favoured OpenID would require too many transfers of data and notifications of third parties to be worth it.
So basically, I am looking for a way to use one of my OpenIDs to absorb the existing permissions and accounts of the others.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Discordian Poe
For those of you unfamiliar with Poe's Law, I recommend you take a look at this link, because I am about to turn it completely inside out.
Every religious, spiritual, and/or mystical belief has equal validity, including the belief that this equality is a joke.
Hooray for fundamentalist Discordianism!
Every religious, spiritual, and/or mystical belief has equal validity, including the belief that this equality is a joke.
Hooray for fundamentalist Discordianism!
Monday, August 31, 2009
Pure Intentions, Or Why I Dislike Networking
When I say "networking" as in the title of this post, I am talking primarily about the way people in the professional world make and use acquaintances as part of their jobs.
Almost every job on the planet benefits from networking - making personal connections with people who can help you out in your work. Almost every job needs at least some degree of networking to function, and it can be very difficult to get a job in the first place without knowing at least some of the right people - a resumé and a good interview are usually trumped by a personal recommendation. All of this makes very good psychological sense as well, since we are a social species who evolved in relatively small, insular communities (in comparison with the modern world, that is).
But I don't like it.
I idealistically think that the person who gets the job should be the person who can best do the job, not the person who is being recommended by someone closest to the employer. As far as I can tell most people agree with this sentiment, at least superficially.
I am not a very socially capable person. I accept that social situations are not my natural environment, and I have put significant effort into gaining what little skill I have at present. I am never going to be a politician, or a talent agent, or a sales representative.
There are many jobs for which it makes good sense to require a high degree of social skill, and there are many jobs whose content largely is networking itself. In these cases it would be ludicrous to attempt to remove networking requirements to obtaining the job.
Even in academia, my chosen direction, a certain degree of networking is sensible to have should one desire recognition or a position with administrative duties.
But networking itself, when not in a job which explicitly involves it, seems disingenuous and distasteful to me.
When making a new friend, most people won't immediately consider how the friendship could benefit their career - that's considered a form of using the person.
There is clearly a difference between making a friend so that they will be useful, and making a friend who later happens to be useful. Right?
The ways in which a person could be useful in furtherance of one's own goals are usually fairly simple and easy to see. As such, we don't even have to consciously recognize potential uses in order for them to be considered in our decision-making process. These considerations are likely to result in biases through which people make friends with people who are likely to be useful in future, without the moral penalties associated with doing this consciously.
Here's where the problem comes in: reasonable expectations of knowledge, even in retrospect, should apply to present considerations.
In more detail, when considering whether or not asking a favour of a friend "counts as using them" in an inappropriate sense, we should take into account what we would reasonably have known throughout the prior relationship, even if we don't have a particular memory of recognizing that knowledge.
For example, if I ask a friend of mine to help me with my computer, I should take into account the fact that I knew he was a software engineer when we first met, even though I didn't specifically think at the time of him helping solve my computer problems.
Seen carefully, this results in my preference for paying a stranger to do a job over having a friend do it for free.
Oddly, none of this presents any barriers to my doing things to help the careers of my friends, but this is simply another situation where I find it morally unpleasant to accept reciprocation, for the simple reason that it is morally distasteful to expect it.
Almost every job on the planet benefits from networking - making personal connections with people who can help you out in your work. Almost every job needs at least some degree of networking to function, and it can be very difficult to get a job in the first place without knowing at least some of the right people - a resumé and a good interview are usually trumped by a personal recommendation. All of this makes very good psychological sense as well, since we are a social species who evolved in relatively small, insular communities (in comparison with the modern world, that is).
But I don't like it.
I idealistically think that the person who gets the job should be the person who can best do the job, not the person who is being recommended by someone closest to the employer. As far as I can tell most people agree with this sentiment, at least superficially.
I am not a very socially capable person. I accept that social situations are not my natural environment, and I have put significant effort into gaining what little skill I have at present. I am never going to be a politician, or a talent agent, or a sales representative.
There are many jobs for which it makes good sense to require a high degree of social skill, and there are many jobs whose content largely is networking itself. In these cases it would be ludicrous to attempt to remove networking requirements to obtaining the job.
Even in academia, my chosen direction, a certain degree of networking is sensible to have should one desire recognition or a position with administrative duties.
But networking itself, when not in a job which explicitly involves it, seems disingenuous and distasteful to me.
When making a new friend, most people won't immediately consider how the friendship could benefit their career - that's considered a form of using the person.
There is clearly a difference between making a friend so that they will be useful, and making a friend who later happens to be useful. Right?
The ways in which a person could be useful in furtherance of one's own goals are usually fairly simple and easy to see. As such, we don't even have to consciously recognize potential uses in order for them to be considered in our decision-making process. These considerations are likely to result in biases through which people make friends with people who are likely to be useful in future, without the moral penalties associated with doing this consciously.
Here's where the problem comes in: reasonable expectations of knowledge, even in retrospect, should apply to present considerations.
In more detail, when considering whether or not asking a favour of a friend "counts as using them" in an inappropriate sense, we should take into account what we would reasonably have known throughout the prior relationship, even if we don't have a particular memory of recognizing that knowledge.
For example, if I ask a friend of mine to help me with my computer, I should take into account the fact that I knew he was a software engineer when we first met, even though I didn't specifically think at the time of him helping solve my computer problems.
Seen carefully, this results in my preference for paying a stranger to do a job over having a friend do it for free.
Oddly, none of this presents any barriers to my doing things to help the careers of my friends, but this is simply another situation where I find it morally unpleasant to accept reciprocation, for the simple reason that it is morally distasteful to expect it.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Rights of the Individual vs. Rights of the Individual
It is a staple of science fiction to tell a tale in which artificial intelligences must struggle to attain equal rights with humans. It is also commonplace to recognize that, if a human being uploads their consciousness to a machine, the rights are carried with that consciousness.
People find it much easier to accept that an artificial intelligence deserves rights when that intelligence inhabits a body. This is, of course, a natural by-product of the way our brain interprets other humans as moral agents - our moral sense evolved to recognize other humans as deserving of rights.
When speculating about a consciousness being uploaded from its originating human body to a machine, we usually assume that either the body is then rendered effectively comatose (a shell or doll, so to speak) thus removing moral obligations to the body, or we assume that the consciousness is copied to the machine while also remaining in the body, creating two beings each deserving of moral consideration.
I would like to consider the former situation - suppose that a human consciousness is uploaded to a machine and the body then retains its neural ability to regulate breathing, heartbeat, and other unconscious brain functions, but does not keep memories or even acquired skills. Is the body then truly no longer deserving of moral consideration?
Shouldn't we then treat this body as a somewhat comatose individual? In this case, this "uninhabited" body may very well relearn motor skills and language as an infant would (alright, neuroplasticity in adults is much lower than in infants, so it could relearn these things as a developmentally challenged infant would), then it might proceed to develop another new personality. Should we dismiss this possibility outright and simply treat this body as a shell?
I think these ideas certainly merit consideration, but are highly unlikely to be resolved until such time as we actually develop some form of consciousness-uploading technology.
Additionally, the primary source for my thinking about these ideas is the series Dollhouse which, near the end of season 1, poses the question of whether or not the mind has an obligation to the body.
Clearly, of course, all this presupposes that mind and body are, in fact, separable in some meaningful sense, which I believe to be a reasonable idea but clearly not yet supported by evidence.
People find it much easier to accept that an artificial intelligence deserves rights when that intelligence inhabits a body. This is, of course, a natural by-product of the way our brain interprets other humans as moral agents - our moral sense evolved to recognize other humans as deserving of rights.
When speculating about a consciousness being uploaded from its originating human body to a machine, we usually assume that either the body is then rendered effectively comatose (a shell or doll, so to speak) thus removing moral obligations to the body, or we assume that the consciousness is copied to the machine while also remaining in the body, creating two beings each deserving of moral consideration.
I would like to consider the former situation - suppose that a human consciousness is uploaded to a machine and the body then retains its neural ability to regulate breathing, heartbeat, and other unconscious brain functions, but does not keep memories or even acquired skills. Is the body then truly no longer deserving of moral consideration?
Shouldn't we then treat this body as a somewhat comatose individual? In this case, this "uninhabited" body may very well relearn motor skills and language as an infant would (alright, neuroplasticity in adults is much lower than in infants, so it could relearn these things as a developmentally challenged infant would), then it might proceed to develop another new personality. Should we dismiss this possibility outright and simply treat this body as a shell?
I think these ideas certainly merit consideration, but are highly unlikely to be resolved until such time as we actually develop some form of consciousness-uploading technology.
Additionally, the primary source for my thinking about these ideas is the series Dollhouse which, near the end of season 1, poses the question of whether or not the mind has an obligation to the body.
Clearly, of course, all this presupposes that mind and body are, in fact, separable in some meaningful sense, which I believe to be a reasonable idea but clearly not yet supported by evidence.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
An Interesting Example of Foresight
I sat in the audience at a recent religious discussion panel and had the good fortune to share conversations with two of the panelists after it had finished. Both panelists (the Muslim and Christian panelists), when questioned about why they believed (or why I should believe) presented practically identical variations of the first cause argument.
While I think that the standard response to the first cause argument (where did God come from, then?) is all well and good, I prefer to rely on my own brand of confusing weirdness - a sort of mathematical argument that even though the universe has a finite age, there does not need to have been a first instant of time, and hence no first cause is needed. Additionally, I like to object to the prohibition on infinite causal chains and to the crucial separation of cause from effect in the early universe, but this time I focused on time as a spatial dimension and so (possibly) finite but unbounded.
The difficulty with this argument, as I said explicitly several times during these conversations, is that it dispatches nicely with the question of a first cause, but it proposes no answer to the question of "why is there something rather than nothing?" - the best formulation I have yet heard for the idea apparently being pondered.
I was surprised, however, that both panelists seemed extremely resistant to the question being phrased in this fashion. It makes sense for them to resist it, since "God" is a clearly unsatisfying answer to this phrasing, presumably being a "something" himself, but I find it distasteful to think that the panelists had seen this consequence of the phrasing and consciously resisted it. Instead, I am left with the puzzle whereby, if they were being honest and candid about their thoughts, why would they have refused such a clear restatement of the question at hand?
While I think that the standard response to the first cause argument (where did God come from, then?) is all well and good, I prefer to rely on my own brand of confusing weirdness - a sort of mathematical argument that even though the universe has a finite age, there does not need to have been a first instant of time, and hence no first cause is needed. Additionally, I like to object to the prohibition on infinite causal chains and to the crucial separation of cause from effect in the early universe, but this time I focused on time as a spatial dimension and so (possibly) finite but unbounded.
The difficulty with this argument, as I said explicitly several times during these conversations, is that it dispatches nicely with the question of a first cause, but it proposes no answer to the question of "why is there something rather than nothing?" - the best formulation I have yet heard for the idea apparently being pondered.
I was surprised, however, that both panelists seemed extremely resistant to the question being phrased in this fashion. It makes sense for them to resist it, since "God" is a clearly unsatisfying answer to this phrasing, presumably being a "something" himself, but I find it distasteful to think that the panelists had seen this consequence of the phrasing and consciously resisted it. Instead, I am left with the puzzle whereby, if they were being honest and candid about their thoughts, why would they have refused such a clear restatement of the question at hand?
Friday, January 9, 2009
Role-Playing Games, Schizophrenia, and Skepticism
What is it that role-playing games, schizophrenia, and skepticism have in common?
Besides being demonized by Christians, they all involve the reality-testing circuitry in the brain.
Role-playing games, and I refer here primarily to the pen-and-paper variety, require a group of people to all take on the mindsets of fictional characters inhabiting the same imaginary landscape while keeping the fictional separate from the real. This is not difficult for very many people when it comes to dealing with their own character and eir environment, but it suffers occasional (if notorious) difficulties when it comes to separating the personality of another player from the personality of the corresponding character. In other words, sometimes in-game conflicts get accidentally translated into real life.
Experience playing RPGs develops the skill of compartmentalization while at the same time bringing it into the consciousness of the player. Almost everyone has at least some capability to compartmentalize, but one of the primary causes of inconsistent thought and behaviour in a person is when a person doesn't realize that two compartments of their thought are contradictory. Becoming more aware of compartmentalization enables people to better avoid these sorts of situations.
Schizophrenia can be characterized in part as a critical failure of the brain's reality-testing circuitry - its major symptoms include delusions and hallucinations - in particular this is true of the paranoid variety.
Everyone has thoughts (usually fleeting) considering the possibility that others are acting maliciously towards them, and everyone occasionally imagines what it might be like if certain pieces of their life were acting to directly oppose them, but someone with paranoid schizophrenia simply doesn't treat these thoughts as imagination. A schizophrenic can't simply dismiss these thoughts, sometimes just imagining the possibility of betrayal is enough for em to believe that it is true.
There is some speculation among neuropsychologists that even normal people actually believe whatever they imagine, but they are able to subsequently disbelieve with even a moment's consideration. If this is the case, it seems all the more relevant for skepticism and the scientific method to be included in any educational curriculum.
Skepticism is the consistent application of strict evidentiary criteria to any proposition. In addition to being a fundamental part of the scientific method, skepticism is practiced by almost everyone in a large variety of situations (if you think you are never skeptical, I've got some property in Alpha Centauri I'd like to sell you).
The primary realization of skeptical thinking is that the human brain's reality-testing circuitry is not very accurate in most situations. Once you have had this realization, it is simply a matter of questioning how your innate reality-testing can be supplemented enough to meet the demands of modern life.
Really, the only negative consequence of applying too much skeptical thinking to a question is that it can waste time and energy. For example, is the table in front of you real or imagined? Your innate reality-testing software says that if you can see it and touch it, it's real. Of course our senses can be fooled pretty easily, so we can go to great skeptical lengths to determine whether or not that table is real. We can go through months of scientific testing, double-blind trials (of some kind) and painful statistical analysis to answer the question, but all this analysis is even more likely to give us the correct answer than the simple and obvious test, wasting a whole lot of time and energy in the process. The difficulty in thinking skeptically in practice is developing guidelines for determining which situations are worth leaving to your brain along and which are worth investigating in detail.
There is an additional point of contact between skepticism and role-playing games, specifically fantasy-based RPGs. In a role-playing game you can imagine what a world which involved magic might actually be like. The more experience you have imagining what life in a magical world might be like, the easier it is to recognize the faults of magical thinking in the real world.
Besides being demonized by Christians, they all involve the reality-testing circuitry in the brain.
Role-playing games, and I refer here primarily to the pen-and-paper variety, require a group of people to all take on the mindsets of fictional characters inhabiting the same imaginary landscape while keeping the fictional separate from the real. This is not difficult for very many people when it comes to dealing with their own character and eir environment, but it suffers occasional (if notorious) difficulties when it comes to separating the personality of another player from the personality of the corresponding character. In other words, sometimes in-game conflicts get accidentally translated into real life.
Experience playing RPGs develops the skill of compartmentalization while at the same time bringing it into the consciousness of the player. Almost everyone has at least some capability to compartmentalize, but one of the primary causes of inconsistent thought and behaviour in a person is when a person doesn't realize that two compartments of their thought are contradictory. Becoming more aware of compartmentalization enables people to better avoid these sorts of situations.
Schizophrenia can be characterized in part as a critical failure of the brain's reality-testing circuitry - its major symptoms include delusions and hallucinations - in particular this is true of the paranoid variety.
Everyone has thoughts (usually fleeting) considering the possibility that others are acting maliciously towards them, and everyone occasionally imagines what it might be like if certain pieces of their life were acting to directly oppose them, but someone with paranoid schizophrenia simply doesn't treat these thoughts as imagination. A schizophrenic can't simply dismiss these thoughts, sometimes just imagining the possibility of betrayal is enough for em to believe that it is true.
There is some speculation among neuropsychologists that even normal people actually believe whatever they imagine, but they are able to subsequently disbelieve with even a moment's consideration. If this is the case, it seems all the more relevant for skepticism and the scientific method to be included in any educational curriculum.
Skepticism is the consistent application of strict evidentiary criteria to any proposition. In addition to being a fundamental part of the scientific method, skepticism is practiced by almost everyone in a large variety of situations (if you think you are never skeptical, I've got some property in Alpha Centauri I'd like to sell you).
The primary realization of skeptical thinking is that the human brain's reality-testing circuitry is not very accurate in most situations. Once you have had this realization, it is simply a matter of questioning how your innate reality-testing can be supplemented enough to meet the demands of modern life.
Really, the only negative consequence of applying too much skeptical thinking to a question is that it can waste time and energy. For example, is the table in front of you real or imagined? Your innate reality-testing software says that if you can see it and touch it, it's real. Of course our senses can be fooled pretty easily, so we can go to great skeptical lengths to determine whether or not that table is real. We can go through months of scientific testing, double-blind trials (of some kind) and painful statistical analysis to answer the question, but all this analysis is even more likely to give us the correct answer than the simple and obvious test, wasting a whole lot of time and energy in the process. The difficulty in thinking skeptically in practice is developing guidelines for determining which situations are worth leaving to your brain along and which are worth investigating in detail.
There is an additional point of contact between skepticism and role-playing games, specifically fantasy-based RPGs. In a role-playing game you can imagine what a world which involved magic might actually be like. The more experience you have imagining what life in a magical world might be like, the easier it is to recognize the faults of magical thinking in the real world.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
New Phrases
I've just come up with a new phrase synonymous with sympathetic magic: Malleable Induced Macroscopic Synchrony. Any of you neo-pagans out there feel free to use it if you want a technical-sounding term for your gibberish.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Pithy Question
Would you rather have medicine which works whether you think it's working or not, or medicine you think is working, whether or not it actually is?
Hint: The two options presented are not the same thing, as some people would like to believe.
Hint: The two options presented are not the same thing, as some people would like to believe.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
So Wrong It's Funny
This post is here to serve two purposes. First, I'd like to start recording some of the more comical mistakes I encounter while marking assignments, tests and whatnot. Second, I found something which allows for LaTeX equations to be embedded in a blogger post and I'm testing it out.
Obviously, whenever I post something from an assignment I mark I will not include any names or other identifying information.
The question:
One person's answer:
Another person's answer:
Now, for a little context. The course for which I am marking is intended for first-year university students who want to major in math. The course is designed to teach basic proof techniques, some very elementary number theory, and the basic idea of sets. The professor currently teaching the course is also placing emphasis on communication skills and the ability to express ideas in words as well as equations (something I find astonishingly lacking among most science and engineering undergraduates) and proper, unambiguous use of notation. Clearly she has her work cut out for her, but the reason I bring this up is that these mistakes are only funny (and disheartening) if made by people who should know better; if these same mistakes were made by high school students I would be less likely to find them funny or surprising.
I would also like to add to those of you who feel like you might make similar mistakes: If you are not actually planning to focus on a mathematical area, you have very little reason to know how to properly use logarithms in these kinds of situations. You should not feel bad for not seeing the mistakes above unless you actually should understand the math in question.
On a lighter note, the LaTeX appears to be working quite well.
Obviously, whenever I post something from an assignment I mark I will not include any names or other identifying information.
The question:
One person's answer:
Another person's answer:
Now, for a little context. The course for which I am marking is intended for first-year university students who want to major in math. The course is designed to teach basic proof techniques, some very elementary number theory, and the basic idea of sets. The professor currently teaching the course is also placing emphasis on communication skills and the ability to express ideas in words as well as equations (something I find astonishingly lacking among most science and engineering undergraduates) and proper, unambiguous use of notation. Clearly she has her work cut out for her, but the reason I bring this up is that these mistakes are only funny (and disheartening) if made by people who should know better; if these same mistakes were made by high school students I would be less likely to find them funny or surprising.
I would also like to add to those of you who feel like you might make similar mistakes: If you are not actually planning to focus on a mathematical area, you have very little reason to know how to properly use logarithms in these kinds of situations. You should not feel bad for not seeing the mistakes above unless you actually should understand the math in question.
On a lighter note, the LaTeX appears to be working quite well.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Video Memory
I just had an idea for one of the worst video games ever. First, some philosophical setup.
As a species, we remember things by passing them down the generations first orally, then in pictures, then in writing. Each of us reads the writing of previous generations about events in our past and creates anew our own interpretation of the experiences.
In modern times, we have already developed video into another medium in this same vein, allowing a memory to be retained more accurately as more details are directly imparted. We are in the process of developing computer controls in such a way as to create what I believe will be the next stage in inter-generational memory: the interactive virtual experience.
Essentially, it won't be very long before people will be capable of recording their sensory input to digital form in real-time and others will then be able to experience what they did through playing that back directly into their nervous system. One step beyond that, however, is to allow the person experiencing the memory to take an active role in the experience and have the computer relaying the experience judge likely outcomes for actions the person takes. This idea amounts, basically, to full-realism in a completely free-form video game constructed directly from someone's real experience. I'm guessing 50 to 100 years at most before this technology is feasibly in place.
Scaling that idea back to modern technology, it roughly translates into constructing a video game with a real physics engine, detailed psychological AIs for characters other than the player, and with characters and setting drawn from real experience and constructed as true-to-life as possible.
Now, if you're still reading this, you're probably thinking "Why would I want to play a video game where I actually have to sit through an hour of driving just to get somewhere an hour away? Why would I want to play something so close to real life when I could just live?"
My answer is that some things should be remembered, and it might be worth recreating them as thoroughly as possible in order to do so.
So here's the idea: Auschwitz.
Take a high-powered realistic physics engine, construct a full-scale 3D rendering of the death camp as it existed during the war, populate it with guards and prisoners with AIs based on psychological profiles of people who historically were there.
There is no goal, no quest, no "good ending". The only purpose of this game is to deliver an experience of what it may have been like to be there.
No restrictions on the player - if you want to escape, try and probably get killed in the process. If you want to take on the guards, try and get killed anyway. If you do as you are told, experience the horror of watching almost everyone around you get gassed, shot or worked to death.
As I said, one of the worst video games ever. In fact, I doubt it should even be called a game - I envision it more as an interactive cultural memory.
Why make a game like this? Because some things should be remembered.
Okay, now you can go ahead and tell me how appalled you are at the idea.
As a species, we remember things by passing them down the generations first orally, then in pictures, then in writing. Each of us reads the writing of previous generations about events in our past and creates anew our own interpretation of the experiences.
In modern times, we have already developed video into another medium in this same vein, allowing a memory to be retained more accurately as more details are directly imparted. We are in the process of developing computer controls in such a way as to create what I believe will be the next stage in inter-generational memory: the interactive virtual experience.
Essentially, it won't be very long before people will be capable of recording their sensory input to digital form in real-time and others will then be able to experience what they did through playing that back directly into their nervous system. One step beyond that, however, is to allow the person experiencing the memory to take an active role in the experience and have the computer relaying the experience judge likely outcomes for actions the person takes. This idea amounts, basically, to full-realism in a completely free-form video game constructed directly from someone's real experience. I'm guessing 50 to 100 years at most before this technology is feasibly in place.
Scaling that idea back to modern technology, it roughly translates into constructing a video game with a real physics engine, detailed psychological AIs for characters other than the player, and with characters and setting drawn from real experience and constructed as true-to-life as possible.
Now, if you're still reading this, you're probably thinking "Why would I want to play a video game where I actually have to sit through an hour of driving just to get somewhere an hour away? Why would I want to play something so close to real life when I could just live?"
My answer is that some things should be remembered, and it might be worth recreating them as thoroughly as possible in order to do so.
So here's the idea: Auschwitz.
Take a high-powered realistic physics engine, construct a full-scale 3D rendering of the death camp as it existed during the war, populate it with guards and prisoners with AIs based on psychological profiles of people who historically were there.
There is no goal, no quest, no "good ending". The only purpose of this game is to deliver an experience of what it may have been like to be there.
No restrictions on the player - if you want to escape, try and probably get killed in the process. If you want to take on the guards, try and get killed anyway. If you do as you are told, experience the horror of watching almost everyone around you get gassed, shot or worked to death.
As I said, one of the worst video games ever. In fact, I doubt it should even be called a game - I envision it more as an interactive cultural memory.
Why make a game like this? Because some things should be remembered.
Okay, now you can go ahead and tell me how appalled you are at the idea.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Reflections on the Brutal Murder of Small Rodents
For quite some time now, there have been a good number of mice living in this house. As with almost everything, I am extremely tolerant of the mild annoyances mice present. I am slightly surprised whenever I see one scurry across the floor and I generally attempt to guide it away from myself and the wires attached to my various electronic devices. I was mildly annoyed upon discovering that they had eaten most of my packets of chicken soup, but I can hardly blame the mice for obeying their instincts and soup is not exactly expensive or difficult to replace.
The only thing these mice have done to particularly annoy me is to chew loudly on something in my room while I try to get to sleep. In these circumstances I usually attempt to scare them out of the room, but for amazingly this rarely seems to work. I have grown accustomed to whispering to them when I hear them, often referring affectionately to an individual mouse as "you stupid little shitling" and musing on how, if the mouse were to encounter my foot, I might sustain a mild injury easily remedied by a bandage and a rabies vaccine, they would have every bone in their tiny body broken and be splattered into a bloody pulp. Of course, this is not something I would ever deliberately do.
Chances are, I would not have actually taken the initiative to get any traps until they chewed up something I consider valuable, and perhaps not even then. Of course, I am not the only one who lives in this house, and one of my housemates indulges in screaming fits whenever she sees one of these mice. She decided, after a failed attempt at poisoning, to get some mouse traps from the landlord and she set them up today. Of five traps the landlord gave us, she set up three and then returned to her parents' house for reading week. Within hours, two of the traps had killed mice, and I haven't been able to find the third. I then set up the remaining two, one of which has also already killed a mouse. Chances are, I will have to ask the landlord for more traps tomorrow.
These are the standard mouse-traps you see everywhere and, ironically, they seem to me to be more humane than the "humane" traps my parents used when I was younger.
The first kid of "humane" mousetrap was a sort of cage designed to trap the mouse inside when it tried to eat the cheese so that it could then be released outside alive and healthy. From what I remember, these traps didn't really work at all. Either the trigger wasn't sensitive enough or the mice never entered the trap to begin with.
The second kind of "humane" mousetrap I only saw my parents use once because of its effect. It was a small tray of strongly adhesive material designed to stick to the mouse's feet when it went after the peanut in the middle of the tray. This adhesive would not kill the mouse, and it was designed to lose its adhesive properties when soaked in luke-warm water. The idea was that you would take the trapped mouse outside, pour some luke-warm water over it and the mouse would scurry away. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. It being winter, my parents took the trapped mouse outside and poured the warm water into the tray. The mouse struggled, but couldn't get free. They continued to bring more warm water attempting to keep the water's temperature from dropping and to allow the tray to de-adhere, but the mouse continued to remain fixed to the tray. Eventually the mouse froze to death, still struggling to get free.
These standard mousetraps are designed to break the mouse's neck when they go after the cheese. Earlier today I saw one activate - it was very fast. The mouse twitched for a few seconds (which was painful to watch), but it died fairly quickly. All in all, I'd say a quick broken neck is more humane than hours of torture followed by freezing to death.
So yes, friends, I am now a mammal-murderer. However, seeing as I don't actually have a moral difficulty with killing small rodents, why have I been going on for so long about this experience? Essentially, I am going over this because I thought I would not participate in this particular endeavour, but I wound up taking part despite my finding it aesthetically displeasing. I suppose I don't know myself quite as well as I thought.
The only thing these mice have done to particularly annoy me is to chew loudly on something in my room while I try to get to sleep. In these circumstances I usually attempt to scare them out of the room, but for amazingly this rarely seems to work. I have grown accustomed to whispering to them when I hear them, often referring affectionately to an individual mouse as "you stupid little shitling" and musing on how, if the mouse were to encounter my foot, I might sustain a mild injury easily remedied by a bandage and a rabies vaccine, they would have every bone in their tiny body broken and be splattered into a bloody pulp. Of course, this is not something I would ever deliberately do.
Chances are, I would not have actually taken the initiative to get any traps until they chewed up something I consider valuable, and perhaps not even then. Of course, I am not the only one who lives in this house, and one of my housemates indulges in screaming fits whenever she sees one of these mice. She decided, after a failed attempt at poisoning, to get some mouse traps from the landlord and she set them up today. Of five traps the landlord gave us, she set up three and then returned to her parents' house for reading week. Within hours, two of the traps had killed mice, and I haven't been able to find the third. I then set up the remaining two, one of which has also already killed a mouse. Chances are, I will have to ask the landlord for more traps tomorrow.
These are the standard mouse-traps you see everywhere and, ironically, they seem to me to be more humane than the "humane" traps my parents used when I was younger.
The first kid of "humane" mousetrap was a sort of cage designed to trap the mouse inside when it tried to eat the cheese so that it could then be released outside alive and healthy. From what I remember, these traps didn't really work at all. Either the trigger wasn't sensitive enough or the mice never entered the trap to begin with.
The second kind of "humane" mousetrap I only saw my parents use once because of its effect. It was a small tray of strongly adhesive material designed to stick to the mouse's feet when it went after the peanut in the middle of the tray. This adhesive would not kill the mouse, and it was designed to lose its adhesive properties when soaked in luke-warm water. The idea was that you would take the trapped mouse outside, pour some luke-warm water over it and the mouse would scurry away. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. It being winter, my parents took the trapped mouse outside and poured the warm water into the tray. The mouse struggled, but couldn't get free. They continued to bring more warm water attempting to keep the water's temperature from dropping and to allow the tray to de-adhere, but the mouse continued to remain fixed to the tray. Eventually the mouse froze to death, still struggling to get free.
These standard mousetraps are designed to break the mouse's neck when they go after the cheese. Earlier today I saw one activate - it was very fast. The mouse twitched for a few seconds (which was painful to watch), but it died fairly quickly. All in all, I'd say a quick broken neck is more humane than hours of torture followed by freezing to death.
So yes, friends, I am now a mammal-murderer. However, seeing as I don't actually have a moral difficulty with killing small rodents, why have I been going on for so long about this experience? Essentially, I am going over this because I thought I would not participate in this particular endeavour, but I wound up taking part despite my finding it aesthetically displeasing. I suppose I don't know myself quite as well as I thought.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Skepticism and the Obvious
Once we thought it obvious that the universe was infinite. After all, how else could it be? If the universe is finite, then that means we'll eventually hit a wall traveling in some direction, but whatever is past that wall must still be part of the universe, right?
Relativity turned that idea on its head. Now we are fairly certain that the universe is, in fact, finite in diameter but without any boundaries.
Once we thought that time could not have a beginning or an end, after all what would that even mean? From relativity again we learn that in all likelihood time is finite in a similar manner to space.
Once we thought it was trivial that a thing is either here or not, but quantum mechanics tossed that idea in the trash. When not being observed, a thing can be in a superposition of "here" and "not here" - not merely that we don't know, but that neither intuitive possibility captures the fact of the matter.
What is the lesson from all this?
The more obvious a proposition is, the more thorough you must be in proving its validity - never accept "how else could it be?" as an argument.
If presented with a list of possibilities, always question the exhaustiveness of that list.
Relativity turned that idea on its head. Now we are fairly certain that the universe is, in fact, finite in diameter but without any boundaries.
Once we thought that time could not have a beginning or an end, after all what would that even mean? From relativity again we learn that in all likelihood time is finite in a similar manner to space.
Once we thought it was trivial that a thing is either here or not, but quantum mechanics tossed that idea in the trash. When not being observed, a thing can be in a superposition of "here" and "not here" - not merely that we don't know, but that neither intuitive possibility captures the fact of the matter.
What is the lesson from all this?
The more obvious a proposition is, the more thorough you must be in proving its validity - never accept "how else could it be?" as an argument.
If presented with a list of possibilities, always question the exhaustiveness of that list.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
A Truly Horrible Super-Power
A week or so ago, I was thinking as I tried to sleep. For some reason, superhero role-playing games came into my head and I started to think of an interesting character to play if I ever get the chance again.
The fairly cliché character who is afraid of their own power came to mind, and as usual I decided to put my own twist on it by taking it to real extremes.
I wanted to play a character who was not new to their power, no longer surprised by it, but who has been so traumatized by their power's effects that they really hate to use it. Of course, for this to make sense, the power would have to be truly horrific to watch or experience.
More difficult than simply an excruciating power, it had to be one which might actually be useful to a party of characters and which could be considered balanced in-game, so this basically eliminated large-scale blanket powers like making everyone in a 5-mile radius suddenly become severely schizophrenic.
The power I came up with was as follows:
The power is used through application of will on a specific person who is relatively nearby and concentration and line-of-sight must be maintained until it is completed.
Upon activation, the target begins having their blood systematically replaced by stomach acid, starting at their venous capillaries near their extremities and moving inward through their veins to their torso and finally their heart.
I imagine that this would be quite disgusting and painful to watch. First they would scream in pain as every nerve ending in their body simultaneously began dissolving. The next thing to happen would be their skin becoming loose and sliding down their flesh (I think skin takes a little longer to dissolve than some internal tissues), as skin separates from muscles internally. Next their limbs would fall limp and their bones would begin to disarticulate as tendons are separated from bone and flesh begins to dissolve. About here we would probably begin seeing pieces of the skin dissolve and they would be unable to maintain a standing position.
Next, I think, their screaming would stop as the stomach acid reaches the inside of their heart and they die, but their body continues to dissolve over the next few minutes until they are basically left as a pile of bones and pieces of partially dissolved flesh in a pool of blood and stomach acid.
Like I said, this would probably be pretty traumatizing to watch and any moral human being who knew they were the cause of this would try to avoid it almost pathologically from then on.
Of course, I haven't done any medical research to see how long any of this would take or even if I've got the basic order of things right, but since I'm not going to be playing in a superhero game anytime soon, I don't really see the need.
The fairly cliché character who is afraid of their own power came to mind, and as usual I decided to put my own twist on it by taking it to real extremes.
I wanted to play a character who was not new to their power, no longer surprised by it, but who has been so traumatized by their power's effects that they really hate to use it. Of course, for this to make sense, the power would have to be truly horrific to watch or experience.
More difficult than simply an excruciating power, it had to be one which might actually be useful to a party of characters and which could be considered balanced in-game, so this basically eliminated large-scale blanket powers like making everyone in a 5-mile radius suddenly become severely schizophrenic.
The power I came up with was as follows:
The power is used through application of will on a specific person who is relatively nearby and concentration and line-of-sight must be maintained until it is completed.
Upon activation, the target begins having their blood systematically replaced by stomach acid, starting at their venous capillaries near their extremities and moving inward through their veins to their torso and finally their heart.
I imagine that this would be quite disgusting and painful to watch. First they would scream in pain as every nerve ending in their body simultaneously began dissolving. The next thing to happen would be their skin becoming loose and sliding down their flesh (I think skin takes a little longer to dissolve than some internal tissues), as skin separates from muscles internally. Next their limbs would fall limp and their bones would begin to disarticulate as tendons are separated from bone and flesh begins to dissolve. About here we would probably begin seeing pieces of the skin dissolve and they would be unable to maintain a standing position.
Next, I think, their screaming would stop as the stomach acid reaches the inside of their heart and they die, but their body continues to dissolve over the next few minutes until they are basically left as a pile of bones and pieces of partially dissolved flesh in a pool of blood and stomach acid.
Like I said, this would probably be pretty traumatizing to watch and any moral human being who knew they were the cause of this would try to avoid it almost pathologically from then on.
Of course, I haven't done any medical research to see how long any of this would take or even if I've got the basic order of things right, but since I'm not going to be playing in a superhero game anytime soon, I don't really see the need.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Comments on Copyright and File-Sharing
Article found here.
Here are my counterpoints.
In case you can't tell, I am in favour of the complete abolishment of copyright law. Please keep that bias in mind when considering my arguments, but also don't let it prevent you from that consideration.
Here are my counterpoints.
- Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
Proving that there is money in distribution of music without directly charging for it. Besides, who could look at an ad-covered site and think that they're not making at least some money? - AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
This is not an argument against file-sharing or in favour of copyright holders, this is simply stating what the current law is. Everyone knows that downloading most music without paying for it is illegal. - Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
Okay, so why shouldn't music be downloaded? Criminal gangs and terrorist groups would be making money on counterfeit CDs regardless of the law and taking away peoples' ability to freely download the music illegally online will only encourage them to buy the counterfeit CDs (as they are still cheaper than the originals). Once again, this is actually an argument for making file-sharing legal. - Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
Good. So why can't I find MC Frontalot on any bittorrent site? - Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
... Which lets those "underground" artists take the small amount of time necessary to learn how to record and distribute their own music, put it up freely or cheaply online and make more money on donations than they ever would from royalties off of label-sponsored music.
Record companies are obsolete. The services they provide which are not obsolete (recording studios, distribution, networking and training) can all be acquired more cheaply and more easily by individual providers none of whom will ask you to sign over your ownership of your music.
Even without illegal file-sharing, large record companies serve no purpose anymore. - ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
ISP advertising cannot be an argument against file-sharing, but this does serve as a reason to look more closely at your ISP's business practices. Just remember that nobody, even an ISP, can stop an intelligent person from sending and receiving whatever they want without blocking all of their activity and access. - The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth–it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
Should jobs be created artificially? If the jobs are not necessary why should they exist at all?
I would also like to point out that if you jump back in time a few hundred years and replace the word "copyright" with the word "slavery", the argument retains all the potency it has at present.
No, I am not attempting to equate copyright with slavery, there is obviously no comparison. What I am attempting to do by making the previous point is to say that the argument as given has no weight at all. - Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
First, let me say that I agree that piracy is not caused by poverty. I believe that part of piracy is caused by overcharging on the part of the distributor. Copyright on an artistic work is a legally enforced monopoly on that particular work, thus squelching all competition and removing the capitalist incentive for the copyright holder to provide prices which are in any way reasonable.
Of course, a total lack of copyright means that people need not pay for artistic works at all, thus removing all benefit from such creativity (the capitalist argues). I am not going to take the route of arguing that creative works benefit society as a whole even if nobody profits from it (although I do believe there is merit in such an argument). Instead, I will say simply that distribution and replication of artistic works remain profitable industries without copyright and regain the competition they lack under copyright law. Additionally, people generally like to reward people who reward them so if art were no longer looked on as a business venture, many artists would be able to make a living on donations from people who enjoyed their work. Given a reasonable reliable attribution database, donation-supported artwork could become the norm and could even become somewhat profitable in its own time.
Additionally, I would like to point out that the study mentioned deals with people who "bought pirate products", not those who obtained them for free, thus once again removing its relevance to the file-sharing side of this debate. - Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
I would like to make one correction here:
Most people know it is illegal to file-share copyright infringing material...
Immoral and illegal are not always identical. I am quite aware that unlicensed distribution of copyrighted material is illegal, but I do not consider it to be in any way immoral. - P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.
True, popular music is illegally shared most frequently. The distinction here is that if you are buying all the music you listen to, you run out of money before you get all the popular music you want and therefore have nothing left to spend on new music. With illegal file-sharing you can easily find all the popular music as well as thousands of relatively unpopular artists each being shared by a small number of people. This gives you more selection of non-popular music than you are likely to get elsewhere and leaves money available to buy something you can't find illegally shared.
In case you can't tell, I am in favour of the complete abolishment of copyright law. Please keep that bias in mind when considering my arguments, but also don't let it prevent you from that consideration.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Dear God...
Someone posted the following comment on my youtube response to the blasphemy challenge:
"Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.
You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.
Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."
So I decided to write the following little 'rebuttal' and post it here as well for permanency's sake.
Help me, O God, to become a capable individual and grant me the ability to do things on my own.
Save me, O God, from those who would tempt me with promises of eternal bliss and give me the strength to do the right thing though it injures me.
Forgive me, O God, for sins you imagined I committed and for the wrongs of others.
O God, save me from thy self.
"Vindicate me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and wicked men.
You are God my stronghold. Why have you rejected me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?
Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.
Then will I go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the harp, O God, my God.
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."
So I decided to write the following little 'rebuttal' and post it here as well for permanency's sake.
Help me, O God, to become a capable individual and grant me the ability to do things on my own.
Save me, O God, from those who would tempt me with promises of eternal bliss and give me the strength to do the right thing though it injures me.
Forgive me, O God, for sins you imagined I committed and for the wrongs of others.
O God, save me from thy self.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Psychic Video Games
This Slashdot article caught my attention today saying that a commercially viable brain/computer interface will be available in 2008 with software designed to use it. The part that really caught my attention is that this interface device is non-invasive!
Of course, we're not really at immersive virtual reality yet, but this is effectively half of it. I still doubt that simulating experiences in the computer user will be able to be done without an invasive interface, but I'm quite surprised that we can go straight to non-invasive thought input devices without many stages of invasive ones first.
If the price is anything close to reasonable, I may have to get myself one of these next year.
Of course, we're not really at immersive virtual reality yet, but this is effectively half of it. I still doubt that simulating experiences in the computer user will be able to be done without an invasive interface, but I'm quite surprised that we can go straight to non-invasive thought input devices without many stages of invasive ones first.
If the price is anything close to reasonable, I may have to get myself one of these next year.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Finally!
My video response to the blasphemy challenge with actually legible text went up here almost two weeks ago. While nobody has commented on the new version, the only real question that seems to need answering, judging by the comments on the blurry-text version, is what do I mean when I say "I deny the existence of reality"?
Before I state my actual position, I would like to demonstrate the necessity of involving semantics in the matter by presenting something which appears problematic but is not key to my belief.
Let us take the common sense notion of reality, somewhat formalized, that reality is defined to be everything that exists. Obviously, we should then ask what is meant by existence, but we will ignore this question for now.
It seems natural to me, a mathematician, to formalize this definition further by defining the term "reality" to refer to the set consisting of all things which have the property of existence. Now, let us ask the question: does reality exist?
Strictly speaking, our definitions tell us that this is, in essence, asking whether "reality" is an element of the set "reality".
Supposing that "reality" is an element of itself, we may construct a version of Russell's paradox, rendering this supposition untenable.
An obvious change to our interpretation of the question appears to resolve this issue, but raises another: "is reality a subset of itself?"
In this case the answer is clearly yes, but in order to interpret the question "does reality exist?" in this fashion we must assume that the property of "existence" applies not only to all elements of reality but also to all subsets. By our definition of reality, this means that all subsets of reality must also be elements of reality and so reality must contain its own power set, bringing us back to the previous problem.
The above argument does not in itself prove the nonexistence of reality, rather it points out that we must develop a good understanding of our concepts and questions before it can be meaningful to ask questions about our concepts.
Unfortunately, I do not believe such a thing is possible in our current conceptual framework.
I would like to jump back to an earlier point and say that the intuitive notions of reality and existence suffer from a major flaw in that they are circularly defined.
"What is reality?" "Reality is everything that exists."
"What does it mean for something to exist?" "Something exists if it is real."
Obviously, these concepts will not suffice in conforming to whatever may actually be.
Concepts of "reality" range between the very vague and the very precise. The very vague notions are useful for everyday living and thought and probably include some measure of correspondence with the universe but they are too fuzzy for ontological questions, in my opinion. I have never heard of or concieved of a concept of reality with even moderate precision that I believe is internally consistent, let alone corresponds to the universe (except the nihilistic concept, which seems like a cop-out). I cannot even develop vague notions of characteristics that such a moderately precise concept of reality might have. As such, I believe that my current understanding (and, unless I hear otherwise, that of others) is insufficient to form a coherent question which could take the place of the meaningless "does reality exist?" and therefore I must conclude that neither "reality exists" nor "reality does not exist" are true (whatever true may mean), given our current concepts behind those words.
It was pointed out to me earlier today, that perhaps "I deny the existence of reality, but I don't quite mean it that way" was not the best way to concisely get across my beliefs. This may be the case, but it's something I can't change now.
Before I state my actual position, I would like to demonstrate the necessity of involving semantics in the matter by presenting something which appears problematic but is not key to my belief.
Let us take the common sense notion of reality, somewhat formalized, that reality is defined to be everything that exists. Obviously, we should then ask what is meant by existence, but we will ignore this question for now.
It seems natural to me, a mathematician, to formalize this definition further by defining the term "reality" to refer to the set consisting of all things which have the property of existence. Now, let us ask the question: does reality exist?
Strictly speaking, our definitions tell us that this is, in essence, asking whether "reality" is an element of the set "reality".
Supposing that "reality" is an element of itself, we may construct a version of Russell's paradox, rendering this supposition untenable.
An obvious change to our interpretation of the question appears to resolve this issue, but raises another: "is reality a subset of itself?"
In this case the answer is clearly yes, but in order to interpret the question "does reality exist?" in this fashion we must assume that the property of "existence" applies not only to all elements of reality but also to all subsets. By our definition of reality, this means that all subsets of reality must also be elements of reality and so reality must contain its own power set, bringing us back to the previous problem.
The above argument does not in itself prove the nonexistence of reality, rather it points out that we must develop a good understanding of our concepts and questions before it can be meaningful to ask questions about our concepts.
Unfortunately, I do not believe such a thing is possible in our current conceptual framework.
I would like to jump back to an earlier point and say that the intuitive notions of reality and existence suffer from a major flaw in that they are circularly defined.
"What is reality?" "Reality is everything that exists."
"What does it mean for something to exist?" "Something exists if it is real."
Obviously, these concepts will not suffice in conforming to whatever may actually be.
Concepts of "reality" range between the very vague and the very precise. The very vague notions are useful for everyday living and thought and probably include some measure of correspondence with the universe but they are too fuzzy for ontological questions, in my opinion. I have never heard of or concieved of a concept of reality with even moderate precision that I believe is internally consistent, let alone corresponds to the universe (except the nihilistic concept, which seems like a cop-out). I cannot even develop vague notions of characteristics that such a moderately precise concept of reality might have. As such, I believe that my current understanding (and, unless I hear otherwise, that of others) is insufficient to form a coherent question which could take the place of the meaningless "does reality exist?" and therefore I must conclude that neither "reality exists" nor "reality does not exist" are true (whatever true may mean), given our current concepts behind those words.
It was pointed out to me earlier today, that perhaps "I deny the existence of reality, but I don't quite mean it that way" was not the best way to concisely get across my beliefs. This may be the case, but it's something I can't change now.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Technical Difficulties
My response to the blasphemy challenge has gone up on youtube here. Unfortunately, the text in the video shrunk so small during recompression that it's essentially illegible. I'm currently working on recording a textless version of the video which I can fit subtitles onto after recompression, hopefully clearing up the text.
I've also been having difficulty with posting text comments on youtube; it seems that either youtube randomly drops my comments, there's an intermittent significant delay in comments appearing on the site, or I can't post comments to my own video. In any case, this problem has kept me from posting the link to this blog in a comment on my video. I have been able to link my youtube user profile here as well as putting this URL into the video's description, so hopefully this post will actually be read by someone while it's still fresh.
I've also been having difficulty with posting text comments on youtube; it seems that either youtube randomly drops my comments, there's an intermittent significant delay in comments appearing on the site, or I can't post comments to my own video. In any case, this problem has kept me from posting the link to this blog in a comment on my video. I have been able to link my youtube user profile here as well as putting this URL into the video's description, so hopefully this post will actually be read by someone while it's still fresh.
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