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(no subject)
Mar. 23rd, 2026 03:20 pm"We are prone to think that we have here are degrees of certainty, with 2+2=4 enjoying the highest certainty. We don't realize that what we have here are not degrees of certainty, but kinds of certainty. And the kinds of certainty are as various as the kinds of proposition in question. *"
This crucial point is often lost in probability calculations. Nassim Taleb gets it though.
* “Different kinds of certainty have different kinds of grounds. And what it is that is certain is, in each such case, a categorially different kind of proposition. The grounds for mathematical certainty are deductive proofs, and mathematical propositions are rules, not descriptions. The certainty of a perceptual statement such as ‘The curtains are red’ lies in its being evident to the senses – look and see! The certainty of an empirical prediction is determined by its conclusive empirical evidence. And the certainty of a highly theoretical proposition of science, such as e = mc2, is determined by the holistic confirmation of the theory of which it is a part.
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What applies to certainty applies also to truth.
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Empirical propositions, mathematical propositions, logical propositions and ethical propositions are categorially different. And that’s why what it is for propositions of categorially different kinds to be true is also so different, even though the term ‘true’ is unequivocal.”
Peter Hacker;. “A Beginner's Guide to the Later Philosophy of Wittgenstein.”
(no subject)
Jul. 10th, 2025 09:07 amHow is it that half of America looks at Donald Trump and doesn’t find him morally repellent? He lies, cheats, steals, betrays, and behaves cruelly and corruptly, and more than 70 million Americans find him, at the very least, morally acceptable. Some even see him as heroic, admirable, and wonderful. What has brought us to this state of moral numbness?
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the thinking of Alasdair MacIntyre, the great moral philosopher
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As MacIntyre put it, “The choice between the ethical and the aesthetic is not the choice between good and evil, it is the choice whether or not to choose in terms of good and evil.”
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How do people make decisions about the right thing to do if they are not embedded in a permanent moral order? They do whatever feels right to them at the moment. MacIntyre called this “emotivism,” the idea that “all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling.” Emotivism feels natural within capitalist societies, because capitalism is an economic system built around individual consumer preferences.
One of the problems with living in a society with no shared moral order is that we have no way to settle arguments. We have no objective standard by which to determine that one view is right and another view is wrong. So public arguments just go on indefinitely, at greater levels of indignation and polarization. People use self-righteous words to try to get their way, but instead of engaging in moral argument, what they’re really doing is using the language of morality to enforce their own preferences.
If no one can persuade anybody about right and wrong, then there are only two ways to settle our differences: coercion or manipulation.
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Trump speaks the languages we moderns can understand. The language of preference: I want. The language of power: I have the leverage. The languages of self, of gain, of acquisition. He treats even the presidency itself as a piece of personal property he can use to get what he wants. As the political theorist Yuval Levin has observed, there are a lot of people, and Trump is one of them, who don’t seek to be formed by the institutions they enter. They seek instead to use those institutions as a stage to perform on, to display their wonderful selves.
-- David Brooks, 7/8/2025, the Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/trump-administration-supporters-good/683441/
Works well with Turchin's metaphor of musical chairs in politics/power.
(no subject)
Jun. 14th, 2025 11:11 amThe transition from the ‘red’ of awareness to the ‘red’ of thought is accompanied by a definite loss of content, namely by the transition from the factor ‘red’ to the entity ‘red.’ This loss in the transition to thought is compensated by the fact that thought is communicable whereas sense-awareness is incommunicable.
-- Whitehead, The Concept of Nature.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18835/18835-h/18835-h.htm
This is different for AI. Even more specifically, Jeff Dean introduced a mode of "teacher-student" transmission where both weights and elements of the model transferred between entities.
(no subject)
Jun. 10th, 2025 05:27 pmI find it really productive to think about different types of AI/ML using one of Whitehead's approaches. For example, he describes three elements of any event: physical prehension (objective data), cognitive prehension (eternal possibilities), decision. Implicitly, when we talk about an agent, the fourth element is realization, i.e. action on the decision. (upd. he also has _subjective aim_, which is the target of the decision).
Each of these elements carries modes of interaction that are fundamentally different for humans and ML. First of all, physical prehension, i.e. awareness of the world, involves radically different sensory methods. Furthermore, while human awareness relies on analog biological, evolutionary fixed senses, ML can access digital non-biological signals. Further, its awareness can be retrained on new data gathering methods. Moreover, various types of ML can be trained and retrained on new senses just like we train dogs for tracking. The possibilities for creating new types of world awareness are mind boggling.
Etc, etc, etc.
Also, Whitehead's theology is highly applicable to this subject, but I'd need more time to study and think about it.
upd: transparency of prehension would be a good topic on which to "compare and contrast"
Each of these elements carries modes of interaction that are fundamentally different for humans and ML. First of all, physical prehension, i.e. awareness of the world, involves radically different sensory methods. Furthermore, while human awareness relies on analog biological, evolutionary fixed senses, ML can access digital non-biological signals. Further, its awareness can be retrained on new data gathering methods. Moreover, various types of ML can be trained and retrained on new senses just like we train dogs for tracking. The possibilities for creating new types of world awareness are mind boggling.
Etc, etc, etc.
Also, Whitehead's theology is highly applicable to this subject, but I'd need more time to study and think about it.
upd: transparency of prehension would be a good topic on which to "compare and contrast"
(no subject)
Jun. 7th, 2025 02:58 pmThere once was an old Bedouin, who, sensing that his death was imminent,
gathered together his three sons and signified his last wishes to
them. To the eldest, he bequeathed half his inheritance, to the second one
quarter, and to the third one sixth. As he said this, he died, leaving his sons
in perplexity, for the inheritance in question consisted of eleven camels.
How were they to respect the old man's will ? Should they kill those of
the camels whose division seemed prescribed, and share the meat among
them ? Was this the required filial piety? Did their father really want them to
prove their love by accepting this loss? Or had he made a mistake, distracted
or weakened by his imminent death ? In fact, at least one error was
obvious, because one-half plus a quarter plus a sixth do not make one.
Yetto inherit on the basis of an interpretation that disqualifies a last wish, is
this not to insult to the dead? And in this case, moreover, how could one
divide ? Who would take away the remainder of the division ? All the ingredients
were there for a fratricidal war. The three brothers nevertheless
decided to try to avoid the war, that is, to wager that a solution could
exist. This means that they went to see the old sage who so often plays a
role in such stories. This old sage, on this occasion, told them that he
could not do anything for them except to offer them what might perhaps
help them: his old camel, skinny and half-blind. The inheritance now
counted twelve camels: the eldest took six of them, the second three, the
youngest two, and the old camel was returned to the old sage.
What did the twelfth camel accomplish ? By its presence, it made possible
what seemed contradictory, simultaneously obeying the father's wishes,
discovering the possi bility of respecting their terms, and not destroying
the value of the inheritance.
--- I.Stengers, Thinking with Whitehead
I'm going to steal this parable from her.
(no subject)
Jun. 7th, 2025 10:59 amА. Воробей недавно написал, что разрешает себе писать о политике только если, как минимум, час позанимался физикой или математикой. https://avva.dreamwidth.org/3576932.html
Это хорошее правило. Для меня этот час будет включать философию — начал читать книгу Isabelle Stengers "Thinking with Whitehead: free and wild creation of concepts."
Это хорошее правило. Для меня этот час будет включать философию — начал читать книгу Isabelle Stengers "Thinking with Whitehead: free and wild creation of concepts."
Misplaced concretenes
May. 30th, 2025 05:43 pmMost discussions about AI, especially AGI, suffer from what Whitehead would call the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. That is, people assume that Intelligence is something concrete existing in Nature that can be easily pointed to and described. Instead, we have a broad range of definitions covering various bundles of human and/or computer capabilities.
By contrast, discussions about industrial robots, including drones and autonomous cars, are usually much more productive because their roles are well specified in terms of tasks and accomplishments.
By contrast, discussions about industrial robots, including drones and autonomous cars, are usually much more productive because their roles are well specified in terms of tasks and accomplishments.
Here's an interesting way to make a connection between Peirce's pragmatism/logic and the category theory
Link to the paper https://ncatlab.org/davidcorfield/files/Peirce200225.pdf
Link to the paper https://ncatlab.org/davidcorfield/files/Peirce200225.pdf
(no subject)
Feb. 18th, 2025 10:28 pmWhat Nagel has discovered is a fascinating architectural feature of the human mind: We are beings who can representationally distance ourselves from ourselves and make this fact globally avail- able through conscious experience.
-- Thomas Metzinger, Being No One. 2004
Nagel's book View From Nowhere is going to be next on my reading list
Quote of the Day
Feb. 4th, 2025 08:39 pmPhilosophical problems can frequently be solved by conceptual analysis or by transforming them into more differentiated versions. However, an additional and interesting strategy consists in attempting to also uncover their introspective roots. A careful inspection of these roots may help us to understand the intuitive force behind many bad arguments, a force that typically survives their rebuttal.
--- Thomas Metzinger, Being No One, 2004.
--- Thomas Metzinger, Being No One, 2004.
(no subject)
Feb. 3rd, 2025 11:41 pm( Read more... )
However, this would require shifting incentives away from maximizing engagement and toward epistemic responsibility, which is difficult given current business models.
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It would be an interesting challenge to come with up a technology and a business model that solves the problem.
Also related https://youtu.be/qlPHGnChhI4?si=03mDoaAYAFJnEfCE&t=4004
truth conditions (theoretical intentionality) vs satisfaction conditions (practical intentionality)
However, this would require shifting incentives away from maximizing engagement and toward epistemic responsibility, which is difficult given current business models.
====
It would be an interesting challenge to come with up a technology and a business model that solves the problem.
Also related https://youtu.be/qlPHGnChhI4?si=03mDoaAYAFJnEfCE&t=4004
truth conditions (theoretical intentionality) vs satisfaction conditions (practical intentionality)
Quote of the day
Feb. 3rd, 2025 05:32 pmThe American composer, artist, and music theorist John Cage (1912–1992) wrote
about a sudden philosophical insight that he had in the late 1940s during an experi-
ment in the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. He described it like this: “[S]ilence
is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around.”
--- Thomas Metzinger, The Elephant and the Blind. 2024.
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His comparison of meditation experience to silence feels right. It's not like any other exprience, even if we say it's like flying or swimming or resting. On my smartwatch it registers as deep sleep, but I know I'm not sleeping; rather, I feel that the world around me goes into quetude of almost non-existence.
about a sudden philosophical insight that he had in the late 1940s during an experi-
ment in the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. He described it like this: “[S]ilence
is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around.”
--- Thomas Metzinger, The Elephant and the Blind. 2024.
=====
His comparison of meditation experience to silence feels right. It's not like any other exprience, even if we say it's like flying or swimming or resting. On my smartwatch it registers as deep sleep, but I know I'm not sleeping; rather, I feel that the world around me goes into quetude of almost non-existence.
