What is the value of ILP posts?

Our mutual responsibility is to say things such that they are easily understood.
And to understand things so that they can be easily said.

Liz, excellent post, I really couldn’t agree more. So many people – and very often philosophers – seem to either not recognize the value of plain speech, or possibly even to rely on obscure speech to give themselves an aura of authority.

Kant is a good example of this. A good contemporary example is Judith Butler, a Berkeley academic that I think embodies the antithesis of rationality and plain speech. To see why, check out her wikipedia page (below), specifically the “Commentary on Style” section.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler

I’m glad that ILP provides you with glimmers of insight, and if it does so, it’s worth every electron. I completely agree with your comments on Dennett.

@Twiffy

The reason you are disappointed is because an internet forum attracts people from all ages and different backgrounds. And formal training or formal education does not ensure one is not infected with bad ideas. The whole of intellectual history is littered with stupid-geniuses who thought they knew everything, consider how George Cantor was mocked by his peers.

From Wikipedia:

Writing decades after Cantor’s death, Wittgenstein lamented that mathematics is “ridden through and through with the pernicious idioms of set theory,” which he dismissed as “utter nonsense” that is “laughable” and “wrong”.[8] Cantor’s recurring bouts of depression from 1884 to the end of his life were once blamed on the hostile attitude of many of his contemporaries,[9] but these episodes can now be seen as probable manifestations of a bipolar disorder.[10]

Would you have been one to mock George cantor because you couldn’t get his ideas? You’re under the false assumption that you’re infinitely capable of grasping other peoples perspectives, ideas and their “truth” and “worth” but science shows this is not the case.

If you’re interested in truth you should learn more about the limits of human reasoning.

bit.ly/dYaWUc

A good book for you
amazon.com/Where-Mathematics … 465037712/

I want you to entertain the idea that we are all morons, and that there are ideas and truths that our minds cannot fathom given the physical limitations of our minds. The same way we can’t teach a monkey about quantum theory, the idea that you or our institutions have a monopoly on the forms of truth is absurd.

A better idea is to understand that each person’s mind is running a simulation (model) of the world, and each persons simulation of the world is severely incomplete. The process of translating thoughts between these seperate unviverses known as our minds is not a trivial undertaking. Spoken language is not enough to convey ideas.

We all know that everyone is not equal in intelligence, but we also know that intelligence is not linear well defined phenomenon. There are many people who may have a low IQ but have superior observational/analytical skills when it comes to different areas of knowledge. Truth is a process that is not linear, because in order to attain understanding one needs time and resources and the right physical processes going on in ones mind. We underestimate the influence of natural biological processes putting a limit on what kinds of things we can easily understand and what kind of connections and insights we can make. We are very limited beings and we need to understand that physical laws govern the process of what we can understand.

:text-yeahthat:

SuperCulture, I’m not clear on what point you’re trying to make. Let me address a few specifics, and then I’ll progress to a “bigger picture” discussion.

No, it certainly does not. But it makes it much, much, much, much, much less likely. For example, anyone with real mathematical training can differentiate a proof from an argument a mile away. Very few people on this forum could. And that is a remarkably important distinction if you want to settle an issue. So I agree with you – those with training are not gods. But on average, those trained in science are far better at rational proceedings than those who are not trained. Here’s one you’ve likely seen that most people get wrong. Even scientists get this one wrong a fair amount, but of course several orders of magnitude less than non-scientists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Hmm, I guess advertising that one is a mathematician sows the seeds for assumptions that you’re not anything else. You should be careful about that – I know a lot about a variety of fields. Mathematics mostly, and next, physics, philosophy, and neurobiology, all virtually to the same degree. (At the bottom of that list is visual art and history, so if you want to make assertions in areas about which I know little, those are good ones to shoot for.)

I’m well acquainted with the fact that the decision-making process, as a human facility, is dependent on other faculties in order to “function properly”. (In fact, some perceived component of reason is far more fallible than the video suggests: there is a part of the brain dedicated to coming up with rational-sounding explanations for activities. This part of the brain often doesn’t seem to care for whether or not those reasons are true; only that they are plausible. This was made painfully obvious in patients who would have a severed corpus callosum, the part of the brain joining the left and right hemisphere. Because of this damage, the two hemispheres couldn’t communicate. The patient may be shown a card in his left eye reading “If you slap yourself right now, I will pay you $100”. The corresponding right arm would slap the patient in the face; but when asked why, the patient would come up with some vaguely plausible but wrong excuse, like “there was a fly on my face”. This is because the explanatory part of his brain didn’t have access to the information on the card, or the processing that occurred between cause and effect.)

But despite this, the video you linked, while technically correct in most details, was incorrect and overblown in its analysis. Perhaps the biggest problem with the video snippet is the conflation of “reason” and “decision-making”. For example, the speaker claims that Democrats think that if they present the facts to people, the people will come to the correct conclusion on their own, but that people don’t truly work that way. This is obviously correct. This is not because most people have faulty reason, but rather because most people have a whole preponderance of decision-making faculties at their neurological disposal. These faculties are quite literally continually at war with each other to varying degrees, and there are devoted parts of the brain (such as the abovementioned segment) devoted to taking the decision the individual has arrived at, and trying to make that decision seem like the product of a unified consciousness. (In reality people are anything but a single unified consciousness, a fact that is rather disturbing when you think about it.) When you present the facts to someone and they don’t agree, it usually isn’t because there’s anything wrong with their ability to reason. It’s because all the other decision-making factors (mostly emotion) overwhelm the voice of reason.

Obviously examples of this are numerous. A man deciding whether or not to cheat on his wife. Short-term gratification says yes, long-term gratification (and rationality) says no. Which wins depends very strongly on the details of the situation, and even more strongly on the individual himself.

However, these multiple decision-making factors shouldn’t be confused with rationality, itself a very nearly isolated decision-making module. When you short out emotions, decision-making becomes very, very difficult. This is a point the speaker made, using the term “reason”. But he was using the wrong term. Rationality itself actually becomes easier.

There’s a fantastic example of this discovered in the last 5 years. Many people dismiss the moral theory of utilitarianism on either some vague emotional reason, or some precise logical reason. However, there are studies showing that people with damage to the emotional section of their brains tend to default to utilitarian judgments. In effect, there is evidence suggesting that there is a decision-making module that prefers utilitarianism, and that this tends to be true for all people. But the emotion module (among others) conflict with it. If you remove the part of the brain that prefers people you know over people you don’t know, for example, making a cold cost-benefit analysis is much easier. Utilitarianism is not a product of pure reason, of course, but you get the idea.

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/12958

Think about rationality not as something wholly subjective, but rather as a machine. When it’s working correctly, the person can predict the effect his actions will have with a good degree of accuracy. (If I slap this person, he will get angry.) He can solve math problems that are in his usual scope. He can identify arguments that follow from premises, and those that do not. When the machine is broken, one or more of these traits gets lost. And the machine is dependent on the proper function of many components, but that’s not an unreasonable requirement.

Uh, not really. The idea in this book is cute, but they limit themselves to such a tiny part of mathematics that the suggestion that their thesis covers all of math is laughable. One could plausibly claim that math begins in the way they claim – and even that would be sketchy – but to claim that higher math works in that fashion too is absurd. How about manifolds, or harmonic functions, or L-series, or the Jones polynomial? One would have an immensely difficult time justifying their thesis with these concepts. Here’s a more detailed criticism that I mostly agree with:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.136.3658&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The moniker “morons” is unnecessary, but your point is obvious, of course. There certainly could be such ideas. In fact, I think we can all agree that there are facets of such ideas that we can illustrate directly. I know very well what the number 3 means. I can picture 3 things as a single mental flash. But I can’t picture 10 things without thinking of, say, 2 groups of 5. I can’t do that for 100 things without effort, and I’m sure I can’t do that for 10,000 things at all.

But this is where the remarkable abstracting ability of the human mind comes into play. I can’t picture 10,000 things. But I can figure out patterns of numbers based on numbers I can picture. From that I can derive the field of number theory. And from that I can tell you all sorts of wonderful things about the number 10,000 — things you wouldn’t know even if you could picture 10,000 apples in an orchard. In fact, I assert that these facets are all there are. The notion of an idea about which we can fathom nothing is inherently self-contradictory. If X is an idea about which we know nothing, we automatically know something about X. Not a total victory by any means, but a partial one, and that’s nice.

But here’s where I get to the big picture. What are you getting at with your post? What assertion are you trying to defend? It sounds like you’re saying this:

  1. I don’t like ILP because people are insufficiently rational / insufficiently trained
  2. Training isn’t necessarily useful
  3. Rationality isn’t dependable
  4. …? Maybe that my criticism of ILP is invalid?

I agree with (1) wholeheartedly, (2) in principle but not even remotely in practice, same with (3), and I don’t see where you’re going with (4). In principle, all things can be doubted. In practice, we should gauge the extent of our doubt based on observation. The neurobiological facts that seem to undermine reason are very interesting, and very applicable in many areas of human endeavor. But to claim that they wholly undermine the value or validity of reason is absurd. The field of math is (in theory (nice amusing bit of self-reference there)) pure reason. And it really is perfect. If you have any math training at all, you realize that math is absolutely flawless. The people who practice it are not, of course. But math is a shining example of the sustainability, reliability, and productivity of reason. The fact that you’re writing posts on a computer connected to the internet should be breathtaking if you really understand what went into it. Training in rationality and in science produces such marvelous results, not only from science as an institution, but in the individuals themselves, that it really is a shame such training isn’t more widespread.

You need to consider taking about 4 of those "much"s out of there just to get a realistic picture and your feet on the ground.

You are seriously sounding exactly like a Catholic or Mormon priest professing the holy truth of the Church.

You have so deeply accepted so many ideas as perfectly true, that you have totally buried the flaws with over confidence. The same people who you think to be so perfectly right are no different than all those before them that were perfectly wrong.

“What I believe is absolutely true. What I don’t know about, might or might not be.”

Such an emarrassing thing to say for someone who couldn’t even distinguish a definition from an equation. A “proof” REQUIRES definitions (real ones, not merely equations). And you claim such expertise in physics yet couldn’t even tell me what time is?!? Your definition was “Time == time”. Even Einstein, when they were first trying to figure such a thing out had a better definition than that and that was over 100 years ago.

Get some perspective. How can you be so over impressed with yourself and yet not even be able to attempt a solution to the Stopped Clock Paradox? Merely the things that I know would double what you have already displayed that you don’t know… amazing. [-(

I’m trying to make the point that your understanding of the world is LIMITED by the constraints placed on meausrability, i.e. you think that mathematics is truth. Mathematics is a language for recording observations, mathematics is true in the contexts in which it is true. Truth’s have contextual bounds which are not obvious.

Mathematics is powerful way of measuring and grasping the world, no doubt about it but mathematics is ALSO just a modelling language we use to help us think about the world. Take the idea of “one apple” we know that the apple is made of billions of atoms and subatomic particles yet we refer to the whole as ‘one apple’ in this way mathematics is not reality. It is a way for us to model complexity.

The problem with formal education is the cult of mathematics. Everyone wants to try to turn everything into equations and while that helps us understanding the universe. Remember that it is DESCRIPTIVE, we are using mathematics to describe an underlying truth that is already there.

The same way we use language to describe something like color. Color is ‘complex’ but we aggregate the imperfect data of our senses into a model that is usable. Think of it another way, there are millions of mathematical ways to construct a fork but you only need a finite subset of forks to understand the essence of what a fork is.

I understand your desire for clarity to understand ‘the bare model’, but just know that it is a model based on the limits of what you’ve been taught is “the right way to understand truth or make true statements about the world”.

Math is just one path to attaining truth. If you do not belive this consider - everyday everyone driving on the highway is more then capable making use of imperfect truth to survive and navigate around cars and trucks, even though they don’t have a ‘mathematically rigorous’ understanding of their environment.

The desire for perfect data is good when you’re trying to understand processes in the world, but if you were actually to describe those complex processes with natural language (i.e. name each atom and each position) you’d quickly reach computational limits and a complexity for describing reality which is not necessary to function in reality.

It’s not the rigor or mathematics that matters it is WHAT IS MOST RELEVANT. Mathematics is only useful in so far as it is based on sound observations. Without sound evidence mathematics becomes an exercise in imaginative speculation of artificial constructed worlds that only exist in one’s mind.

What you’re not getting is that there are VALID MODELS OF TRUTH THAT ARE NOT MATHEMATICAL IN ORIGIN, nor do they require any kind of numeracy or formal training to understand.

You need to start exploring evidence of how other people experience reality, I give you daniel tammet.

youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss

He’s doing mathematics in a way that is not how you were taught at all. You really aren’t scientifically literate enough to grasp that there are many ways of modelling truth that are mathematically valid that do not take a symbolic mathematical form at all. Since mathematics is just another language by which we use to model the world.

Wow, I’m starting to like this guy. :mrgreen:
=D>

I love this quote from wiki, re Judith Butler:

To answer some other things raised on these forums–the ideas of ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ being anything other that subjective thinking cannot be valid. When I came here, I repeated a story of an on-line friend who’s family had lived what would be called by many totally ‘amoral’ lives. That included the story of an older brother currently serving a life sentence for murder. Each of them–father and two brothers–felt it was their ‘moral right’ to live as they did–flaunting the law and other peoples ‘rights.’ I was, and still am, amazed my on-line friend survived and overcame his environment.

What we see and experience can be nothing other than subjective–but that shouldn’t hinder thought. It should, however, hinder subjective thought stated as universal ‘fact.’ This is only my opinion, of course.

BTW, SC, the man’s name is Dennett, not Tennett.

Everyone here should at least recognize ad hominem when they see it. :unamused:

Liz… sweetheart, you need to get your eyes checked :slight_smile:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet

Objective truth like science makes me imagine that a contraption could be built such that it can receive new information from new sense organs, can put it into a new modified computer like mind - brain - memory, can react with this information (with new emotions and feelings states ? new pain pleasure states ? or new entities analogous / similar or as recursively related ?), in analogy to how we react to our environment and life, and effectively “live” in a new universe with new laws of physics that no longer have anything to do with us, can’t be communicated to us, can’t relate to us, since we can’t be inside the contraption and outside looking in at the same time.

So you say, but objective science let you design the contraption, although the new experience of existence is being performed by the contraption inside the contraption, so in a sense, you are its “god”, or you are the “laws of physics” that designed it and made it exist in reference to some kinds of externals, absolutes and interdictions, inhibitions and constraints. True, but we always aggregate and put together distinct things into one thing, just to make believe they are one, so we kind of invent that they are related, or that they are one entity, when in all truth they are totally independent, not related, there is no metaphysical bond between the items we are putting together, therefore separate them. I am thinking along the lines of a sequence of manipulations and causes and effects that we performed with our mind in our universe and with our Matter P that created contraption A, that is now experiencing a new universe.

But P and A are totally independent, who cares which came first, who cares about cause and effect, it is irrelevant: the relevant point is that A is now in a new universe with a new set of laws of physics experiencing new things we can never imagine, they may be having a ball way past anything we can possibly conceive.

But now since P is distinct from A, then P could be anything at all, that is you could just pour wild chemicals in a brain and send wild electronic signals in the new brain, and design or just put it together in any old way, even the most crazy and absurd way, and the new thing A will live in a new universe with new laws of physics. Got it now ? that is what should be done, and even if you never know or even if the thingy A is experiencing nothing or everything who cares, it is the possibility that fires the imagination. That is the Instant Singularity as you just immediately change the neural networks and design of the brain real fast without thinking about anything, just put anything inside it, any design goes, be really wrong, make all kinds of mistakes, just do it man, do it, you can do it.

Now, design me a new modified mind, please, even very simple like this (the complexity can be condensed inside the deeply mysterious symbols) :

WHHWHEGGRR  T  (IIIUU) )    -----------

You can also invent your own bible if you want…

“Fundamentally there is no way for me to show that there is such a thing as objective reality. I acknowledge all of this, and I know that philosophically that’s an important thing to acknowledge.”

And you should “show” this to who ? Or what ? And why should you want to “show” this to “it” that you want to show it to ? And what if you showed it to “it”, but the “it” lies to you and says, “yes, I have now seen objective reality, thank you, but deep inside he is thinking, I haven’t seen anything, the guy is a crackpot” , would you ever know ? could you ever know ? do you want to know ? And if you knew, could you be sure that you knew it ? And what would you do with it ? How would you use it, what is the “intentionality of use” ? But essentially do you really care, aren’t you just talking to yourself anyways ? Another infinite recursion of impossible - intractable problems (or are they even problems and not experiences of the mind playing games with itself ?).

This is the way to show that there is objective reality: just say it. Now who cares if the other mind accepts it, doesn’t, if it is even true, if you even care to believe in it, if the other mind is even alive or real, everything is just a sequence of symbols that make believe that they are real.

Wake up, you are in a simulator.

James:

I’m sure you remember that we’ve been down this path before, and it didn’t end all that well for you. This is just another warning that I’ll be ignoring you on this thread, too, unless you

  1. Speak without ad hominem
  2. Justify your assertions instead of just stating them
  3. Acknowledge when a point has been settled, even if the conclusion is that you were wrong.

SuperCulture:

I believe it’s probably no longer worth our time to exchange ideas. I’ll briefly say why.

In many ways you speak as if you have authoritative knowledge – on topics where you clearly have anything but. Here are some quick examples.

There isn’t a mathematician in the world who would agree with this. Perhaps you somehow know more than all those trained in the relevant subject put together, but I’m sure you’ll agree it’s much more likely that you’re simply wrong. The vast wealth of math has no plausible observational correlations. I can give you detailed examples to justify this as well if you’re interested. Here’s a quick one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgery_theory

Your error here undermines a great deal of your later claims, but not all of them. As for the rest, I can assure you that I have never said truth may only be ascertained or expressed mathematically, nor do I believe it. But a lot of your specifics suffer from your incorrect claims about what mathematics is. Math is the study of what truths logically follow from what axioms. Mathematicians obviously have collections of axioms, and sorts of truths, that they prefer as people; however as a field, it is nothing more than pure logic.

Again, this is absolutely and thoroughly false. Statistically, this may even be the opposite of true. Probably the most pragmatically useful field of physics is quantum mechanics – after all, it gave us all the electronics we know and love. This field depends on math that has no direct observational basis at all. High-dimensional manifolds, complex differential equations, and other constructs that are very natural in a purely logical setting, but don’t have direct observational correlates.

The application of math to the rest of science is this: math is true, and perfect, in a purely logical system. Certain math follows from certain axioms. Physical scientists determine which axioms, or situations, their studies describe, and then employ the relevant mathematics to arrive at conclusions they would not otherwise have known.

Again, this just suggests to me that you have no idea what mathematics is. Tammet is a human calculator. He is computing simple numerical operations. He is not doing mathematics. Not even remotely close.

I believe I addressed this point above. But SuperCulture, this is an unfortunately and unnecessarily presumptuous and provocative sentence. It seems odd to me that someone (and I’m assuming here, so please correct me if I’m wrong) with no scientific training would criticize a professional scientist for being scientifically illiterate. In both your posts now, you’ve made presumptions about me that turned out to be about as false as you can get.

So I think the upshot, SuperCulture, is this. It seems to me that you don’t know anything of substance about math, or really about science in general, and yet you speak with a tone of authority as if you’re an expert. This is a useful set of traits for coming across as knowledgeable to those who are not, while not having to become knowledgeable yourself. But it is a terribly destructive combination of traits if you’re trying to sustain a conversation with someone who is knowledgeable, or if you’re trying to become knowledgeable yourself. Useful conversations are predicated on both parties having a reasonable awareness of what they do know and what they don’t know, and proceeding from there.

You can feel free to continue this conversational thread, but like with James Saint, who has similar conversational difficulties, if you want me to respond, you’re going to have to be more reasonable in your discussions. If you’re going to make claims about mathematics, prefacing them with “I was under the impression” would be a good start, or else it sounds like someone with no mathematical training is trying to teach a mathematician about the nature of math. Backing up your claims with more examples and arguments, rather than just asserting them, is essential. If you’d rather not go to that trouble, I think it’s reasonable to end our chat here.

James and SuperCulture:

I think you would both benefit enormously from taking this under very serious consideration:

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=175439

I mean that honestly, although it will likely come off as a personal attack. I believe this explains very accurately your seeming beliefs that you are knowledgeable about science, your style of forum posts, your attitude towards training, and the fact that you would benefit from training.

If you have comments about the study itself, I think it would be best to post those under the linked page rather than this one.

I’m sorry twiffy you are incapable of understanding what we are trying to tell you, you do not fundamentally grasp that I can tell you the truth and you cannot grasp it because that is NOT how human reasoning works. You do not have universal truth grasping capacity, I’m sorry to inform you - your mammalian brain has flaws, and human knowledge is necessarily structured in a particular way according to the foibles of the human mind - this what you don’t fundamentally understand.

You need to learn some science first your scientific ignorance about your false unscientific view of human reasoning:
youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

It is a scientific fact that the vast majority of your thoughts are not accessable to your conscious awareness. You’re blinded by your misunderstanding of what I’ve tryed to tell you because you are incapable of seeing your own mistakes in your own thinking process. You’re bringing up red herrings that have nothing to do with what we are talking about what-so-ever.

Mathematicians aren’t cognitive scientists, most mathematicians aren’t even aware of what has been discovered in cognitive sciences in the last 40 years, and until you’re well read enough you’ll continue to make a fool out of yourself on these forums. Your ignorance of cognitive science is showing in a major way and until you get your ignorance under control you will continue to spin your wheels against your false representation of what we are saying. You are not anywhere near well read enough to have a cogent disussion here I’m sorry to say it. I know for a fact that you didn’t know that most thought is unconscious and that the enlightenment view of reason is fundamentally incorrect which you’ve aptly demonstrated by your perfect misinterpretation and misrepresentation of what I’ve said.

Sigh

There is no “sigh” you weren’t even aware of basic facts of cognitive neuroscience and you dare come into the forum preaching your genius to people who are way more up to date on the latest findings of cognitive neuroscience. You weren’t even aware that the vast majority of human thought is unconscious then you continue to preach and worship mathematicians like they have some monopoly on the truth. That is all the proof we need to put you at the bottom of the intellectual fucking pile my friend.

If it were up to me I’d slap you upside the head for your arrogant egotistic narcism you have too much blind faith in your cognitive ability and not enough wisdom to see that what you think you know is not an easy thing to understand. The scientific evidence shows us that much of what we think isn’t even available or accessible to our awareness.

Many people on this forum spent years coming to terms with grasping insight into the nature of how much they do not know and you come in here full of bluster when you aren’t even half decently well read. You’re just another math snob without having even a basic understanding of the scientific literature about the mind so please go home.

Wow.

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=175439

This thread’s locked for 24 hours.

Superculture, you’re on an unofficial warning for incivility.