Attendance is picking up at these scheduled chats, and participation has been very good. One of the side effects has been generally increased traffic at the #virus channel, and some spontaneously intelligent and interesting discussions even in the off scheduled time. We have been having some discussions about starting a second regular time as well.
Re:virus: Chat topic teaser for 03.01.28 21:00 CST
« Reply #1 on: 2003-01-28 07:19:22 »
[rhinoceros] You might find the following useful for our #virus irc chat scheduled for Tuesday Jan 28, 21:00 CST, "Irrationality. How/why is it? and How do we deal with it?"
In "Paradoxes of Irrationality," Davidson has the following remark, which arises from, but is not limited to, the explanation of weakness of will:
"The underlying paradox of irrationality, from which no theory can entirely escape, is this: if we explain it too well, we turn it into a concealed form of rationality; while if we assign incoherence too glibly, we merely compromise our ability to diagnose irrationality by withdrawing the background of rationality needed to justify any diagnosis at all."
<snip>
When we judge or criticise some action as irrational, it does not necessarily mean that this action is unintelligible or paradoxical in its own nature. We can be perfectly aware of the normative standard of our criticism and know, or be able to conceive, the reason why such an action took place. For instance, we can understand why someone failed to quit smoking despite his resolution and still think that he is irrational for doing, or undoing, it. We need not know the exact details of its underlying causal mechanism to make the criticism. Our judgment of irrationality could be a simple matter of normative position we adopt towards certain behaviours which we believe could be corrected through personal endeavour. Irrationality does not seem to have a necessary connection with being paradoxical, at least in our normal use of everyday language.
At the end of the day, "rational" means that a thing is founded on and explicable through reasoning and reason. Irrationality is not.
Any reason based thing has a number of attributes.
It is necessitated by positive evidence. If a thing is not "necessary" then it is not reasonable to assume it. By this rule, a unicorn is no more - or less - reasonable than a god. The United States has no more a benign influence on the world than Iraq - and if we go by the "positive evidence" of the dead or impoverished, less so.
It is not contradicted by itself. By this rule an invisible pink (contradictory attributes) thing is no more reasonable - or unreasonable, than an omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful) (contradictory attributes) being. Despite the ideas of "invisible" and "pink" being much more easily conveyed. Bombing civilians - no matter how ineffective their defenses - does not enhance the prospects of peace or stability.
It is at least potentially falsifiable, and communicates something useful (allows testable predictions to be made). These are both grounds for testability. The hypothesis that all sheep are white is falsifiable. You could find a green sheep which would refute the theory. The hypothesis that the Universe was created by a god is not falsifiable - and in fact, it is not useful either as nothing can be predicted about gods as the evidence indicates that they are utterly dependent on their adherents to define them. Thus statements about gods are generally statements about their followers - and irrational.
It is not strongly contradicted by external evidence. By this rule a black sheep utterly refutes the rule that all sheep are white. Similarly, the presence of injustice proves that a just and omnipotent god cannot exist without redefining "just" into the same kind of pretzels as it takes to redefine loving to include slaughtering one's own son as a "scapegoat" for others. So too, maintaining a nation at a level of psychotic hysterical war fever does not make for a resilient economy and the sad history of all major religions indicate that they, and the beliefs they instill, are remarkably bad for the welfare of ordinary humans...
It is sharable (experience, repeatability (if possible) evidence, remnants, etc). Anything which cannot be shared is also not validatable. Which puts it outside of the realm of the rational as our minds are so easily fooled into seeing what we think (or are persuaded) that they ought to see... So e.g. a global flood is "irrational" as nobody alive experienced it, there would not be enough water to repeat it, there is no evidence supporting it, there are no remnants around to validate it - While evolution is "rational", given the evidence of the fossil record, the evidence of our RNA and DNA, and the evidence of observed evolution. Similarly, the ideas that a God or gods exist or that we can "transcend" whatever, or that there is consciousness before birth or after death are as irrational as the idea held by some people that they are Napoleon Bonaparte or whomever, being solely an idea in the minds of men, and supported only by their assertions of personal revelation and belief - while the idea that e.g. Thomas Jefferson existed is easily validatable from historic evidence and artifacts - including the DNA record. Another example might be that the scientific method is the only regime recorded by history which appears to lead to deliberate, tangible improvement in the lot of men.
In summary, rational ideas are explicable and supportable using the rules of evidence, logic and inference. As we have seen demonstrated so effectively on the CoV BBS of late, If a thing cannot be communicated on these grounds, then it cannot be validated. If a thing cannot be validated, then it is not reasonable to assert it. In short, unsupported assertions are irrational. Assertions of support which in fact contain errors or embed fallacies are irrational. Assertions which do not support useful, falsifiable conclusions are irrational.
Irrationality may be fun and can be rewarding (in a very selfish dopamine flooded fashion) - and may even be applied as a tool to explore the self, interactions and relationships. Even more interestingly, irrationality may be deliberately courted, as a bridge to span rationally unsupportable "knowledge chasms." Yet at the end of the day, if the conclusions (or positions reached) are not evaluated and if need be, modified or discarded in the light of reason, each and everytime one engages in such exercises, then the indulgence of engaging in irrational behaviour has no possible beneficial outcome. And I have observed, and experiments are tending to confirm, that whenever recourse is had to irrationality it tends to weaken the engagers association with reality, and their ability to engage rationality effectively. As Nietche put it, stare too long into the chasm, and the chasm stares back into you...
As a final thought, it is invariably possible, sometimes with great effort, to detect and communicate the fallacies, errors, flaws, weaknesses, inadequacies and contradictions of an irrational argument. Unfortunately, while one can sometimes persuade the holder of an irrational position to reevaluate their beliefs in the light of new evidence and indeed, sometimes appeals or overwhelmingly persuasive logical arguments delivered by trusted people have been known to be effective, it is almost a given that no argument which appeals only to the reason will sway a person who has already retreated into an irrational world set - usually on the basis of making an emotional decision to accept a belief based memeplex rather than reject it. Simply because permitting any belief to dominate also implies suppressing the logical faculties needed to analyse, balance and if appropriate, reject the unlikely. And supressing this capability in any area also has the side effect of supressing the ability to apply it to other areas. Which is how a memetic infestation, having begun, is usually only displaced by a more severe infestation rooted in similar, but more emotionally appealing irrationality. It is not that the recipient cannot hear or follow your arguments, it is simply that, having vested emotionally in unreason, they become utterly incapable of evaluating the truth value of what you present to them.
Sometimes, particularly when the person is important to us, we forget this. Which is why irattional differences have a greater propensity to develop into UTism and hatred than any other form of disagreement. Which might explain quite a lot about the effects of religion, politics and love. Of all authors who have addressed this phenomenon, I think that William Congreeve captured the idea most cogently in a number of his works and over a long period of time. Here are two "well-known" Congrevism's and a third which seems to me quintessionally Virian:
Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. (i.e. address irrationality at its own level)
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. (i.e. we stand to become most irrational with those for whom we care)
All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. (i.e. To develop civilized ethics, avoid war, politics and religion)
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:virus: Chat topic teaser for 03.01.28 21:00 CST
« Reply #3 on: 2003-01-29 06:49:54 »
[hermit] It is not that the recipient cannot hear or follow your arguments, it is simply that, having vested emotionally in unreason, they become utterly incapable of evaluating the truth value of what you present to them.
[rhinoceros] This is interesting. Emotions, along with direct experience, belong to what Popper used to call "World Two", the realm of subjective human experience. "World One" is the realm of physical reality, and "World Three" is the realm of cognition, including both culture and objective knowledge.
Of course, an emotional investment is a driving force, which is rather a-rational. The attempt of a person to rationalize and communicate an emotional state, however, leads to a conceptualization which can be seen as either rational or irrational. That depends on the particular definition of rationality which the particular problem allows to be used. If it is possible to use logical inference for the particular problem, then you can have an objective assessment. If it is only possible to use scientific reasoning, then you can have a tentatively objective assessment. If you can only use a social normative kind of rationality, then your judgement may be quasi-objective or subjective.
In practice, we have to deal with everyday situations which are usually neither identical, nor repeatable, nor amenable to modelling. Most of the assessments we make in our everyday lives are for problems which are not even well defined and do not allow controlled repeatable experiments. So, using logical inferences or the scientific method is not always applicable. Also, according to Popper himself, the truth or validity of a scientific theory is only tentative, the way we arrive at scientific theories is usually through conjectures and not through induction, and non-scientific theories and myths often hold truths.
In the following, Popper, after defining his demarcation for scientific theories, points out the significance of non-scientific methods, somehow reminding Dennet's "intuition pumps" (http://www.theexperiment.org/articles.php?news_id=1026).
At the same time I realized that such myths may be developed, and become testable; that historically speaking all-or very nearly all-scientific theories originate from myths, and that a myth may contain important anticipations of scientific theories. Examples are Empedocles' theory of evolution by trial and error, or Parmenides' myth of the unchanging block universe in which nothing ever happens and which, if we add another dimension, becomes Einstein's block universe (in which, too, nothing ever happens, since everything is, four dimensionally speaking, determined and laid down from the beginning). I thus felt that if a theory is found to be non-scientific, or "metaphysical" (as we might say), it is not thereby found to be unimportant, or insignificant, or "meaningless," or "nonsensical." it cannot claim to be backed by empirical evidence in the scientific sense-although it may easily be, in some genetic sense, the "result of observation."
<snip>
But it is obvious that this rule or craft of "valid induction" is not even metaphysical: it simply does not exist. No rule can ever guarantee that a generalization inferred from true observations, however often repeated, is true.(Born himself does not believe in the truth of Newtonian physics, in spite of its success, although he believes that it is based on induction.) And the success of science is not based upon rules of induction, but depends upon luck, ingenuity,and the purely deductive rules of critical argument.
I may summarize some of my conclusions as follows:
(1) Induction, i.e. inference based on many observations, is a myth. It is neither a psychological fact, nor a fact of ordinary life, nor one of scientific procedure.
(2) The actual procedure of science is to operate with conjectures: to jump to conclusions-often after one single observation (as noticed for example by Hume and Born).
(3) Repeated observations and experiments function in science as tests of our conjectures or hypotheses, i.e. as attempted refutations.
(4) The mistaken belief in induction is fortified by the need for a criterion of demarcation which, it is traditionally but wrongly believed, only the inductive method can provide.
(5) The conception of such an inductive method, like the criterion of verifiability, implies a faulty demarcation.
(6) None of this is altered in the least if we say that induction makes theories only probable rather than certain.
If, as I have suggested, the problem of induction is only an instance or facet of the problem of demarcation, then the solution to the problem of demarcation must provide us with a solution to the problem of induction. This is indeed the case, I believe, although it is perhaps not immediately obvious.
For a brief formulation of the problem of induction we can turn again to Born, who writes: ". . . no observation or experiment, however extended can give more than a finite number of repetitions"; therefore, "the statement of a law-B depends on A-always transcends experience. Yet this kind of statement is made everywhere and all the time, and sometimes from scanty material.'
In other words, the logical problem of induction arises from (a) Hume's discovery (so well expressed by Born) that it is impossible to justify a law by observation or experiment, since it "transcends experience"; (b) the fact that science proposes and uses laws "everywhere and all the time." (Like Hume, Born is struck by the "scanty material," i.e. the few observed instances upon which the law may be based.) To this we have to add (c) the principle of empiricism which asserts that in science,only observation and experiment may decide upon the acceptance or rejectionof scientific statements, including laws and theories.
These three principles, (a), (b), and (c), appear at first sight to clash; and this apparent clash constitutes the logical problem of induction.
Faced with this clash, Born gives up (c), the principle of empiricism (as Kant and may others, including Bertrand Russell, have done before him), in favour of what he calls a "metaphysical principle"; a metaphysical principle which he does not even attempt to formulate; which he vaguely describes as a "code or rule of craft"; and ofwhich I have never seen any formulation which even looked promising and was not clearly untenable.
But in fact the principles (a) to (c) do not clash. We can see this the moment we realize that the acceptance by science of a law or of a theory is tentative only;which is to say that all laws and theories are conjectures, or tentative hypotheses(a position which I have sometimes called "hypotheticism") and that we may reject a law or theory on the basis of new evidence, without necessarily discarding the old evidence which originally led us to accept it.
<snip>
[rhinoceros] The description of "reason" that Jake gave in http://virus.lucifer.com/wiki/reason, although a little hard to use in practice, leaves more room for real-life situations.
> In practice, we have to deal with everyday situations which are usually neither identical, nor repeatable, nor amenable to modelling.
OH HO HO HO wait a minute there.... Most life situations CAN be dealt through models of reality. This is what Richard Brodie( www.memecentral.com) calls "living life at level 3 of consciousness". You have a goal in mind, and choose your models based on that. (Level 1 you fear the world. level 2 you are enslaved to a model or set of models, level 3 you choose your models based on what you want to achieve). Perhaps you just haven't picked the right models to deal with everyday situations. Any in particular you would like to share ? The only "tough" part about living life at level 3 is having to keep in mind a lot of models to be retrieved quickly. You gotta be a JEDI!
[rhinoceros] I may summarize some of my conclusions as follows:
(1) Induction, i.e. inference based on many observations, is a myth. It is neither a psychological fact, nor a fact of ordinary life, nor one of scientific procedure.
f: Excuse me? Is not all of biology inductive? Natural history, ecology, taxonomy, physiology, everything we know about life, we know inductively. We do not deduce the characteristics of life from axioms. Darwin theorized around a question posed by the great flood of information about biodiversity that pored into London as the empire reached around the world. How do we explain the diversity and the distribution of forms of life that we see? Why are there thousand pound herbivours and deadly microbes?
Re:virus: Chat topic teaser for 03.01.28 21:00 CST
« Reply #6 on: 2003-01-30 07:14:54 »
[rhinoceros 1] In practice, we have to deal with everyday situations which are usually neither identical, nor repeatable, nor amenable to modelling.
[Raphael Anschau] OH HO HO HO wait a minute there.... Most life situations CAN be dealt through models of reality. This is what Richard Brodie( www.memecentral.com) calls "living life at level 3 of consciousness". You have a goal in mind, and choose your models based on that. (Level 1 you fear the world. level 2 you are enslaved to a model or set of models, level 3 you choose your models based on what you want to achieve). Perhaps you just haven't picked the right models to deal with everyday situations. Any in particular you would like to share ? The only "tough" part about living life at level 3 is having to keep in mind a lot of models to be retrieved quickly. You gotta be a JEDI!
[rhinoceros 2] Let me put it this way:
If you want to find out how many square feet is your house, you use a model from geometry.
If you are doing an experiment in physics, you use a theory of physics which holds a tentatively objective truth.
If you do economics, the models are highly empirical and they are falsified all the time, either because there are too many factors or because the theory was just a wild guess in the first place.
If you do politics, it is more so, plus you have to define more or less clearly what you are after.
If you want to hit on a chick, you may read some Don Juan manuals or lifestyle magazines or you may use your experience as you see fit... you get the idea.
If you seek happiness or a meaning for your life, it is even worse, because it is doubtful whether you even have a valid question about what you are after.
Re:virus: Chat topic teaser for 03.01.28 21:00 CST
« Reply #7 on: 2003-01-30 07:23:50 »
[rhinoceros quotes Popper] I may summarize some of my conclusions as follows:
(1) Induction, i.e. inference based on many observations, is a myth. It is neither a psychological fact, nor a fact of ordinary life, nor one of scientific procedure.
[floyd] Excuse me? Is not all of biology inductive? Natural history, ecology, taxonomy, physiology, everything we know about life, we know inductively. We do not deduce the characteristics of life from axioms. Darwin theorized around a question posed by the great flood of information about biodiversity that pored into London as the empire reached around the world. How do we explain the diversity and the distribution of forms of life that we see? Why are there thousand pound herbivours and deadly microbes?
I don't know why. There just are. Inductively.
I am in over my head. yikes
f
[rhinoceros] Not my word really. That was from Karl Popper
Please read my whole post in this thread. Popper's argument was that perfect induction only exists in mathematical proof, not in the real world, and that people use conjectures.
> > [rhinoceros 1] > In practice, we have to deal with everyday situations which are usually neither identical, nor repeatable, nor amenable to modelling. > > [Raphael Anschau] > OH HO HO HO wait a minute there.... Most life situations CAN be dealt through models of reality. This is what Richard Brodie( > www.memecentral.com) calls "living life at level 3 of consciousness". You have a goal in mind, and choose your models based > on that. (Level 1 you fear the world. level 2 you are enslaved to a model or set of models, level 3 you choose your models based > on what you want to achieve). Perhaps you just haven't picked the right models to deal with everyday situations. Any in particular > you would like to share ? The only "tough" part about living life at level 3 is having to keep in mind a lot of models to be retrieved > quickly. You gotta be a JEDI! > > > [rhinoceros 2] > Let me put it this way: > > If you want to find out how many square feet is your house, you use a model from geometry. > If you are doing an experiment in physics, you use a theory of physics which holds a tentatively objective truth. > If you do economics, the models are highly empirical and they are falsified all the time, either because there are too many factors or because the theory was just a wild guess in the first place.
Every model IS a wild guess, the only difference between models, is how accurately they represent reality. Although the model does not classify as scientific(has been falsified), you can still use it.
> If you do politics, it is more so, plus you have to define more or less clearly what you are after. > > If you want to hit on a chick, you may read some Don Juan manuals or lifestyle magazines or you may use your experience as you see fit... you get the idea. > > If you seek happiness or a meaning for your life, it is even worse, because it is doubtful whether you even have a valid question about what you are after.
There is a valid model for happiness. It's called flow. It lies between boredom and anxiety, where you are IN THE ZONE lol. Seriously "Flow: The psychology of optimum experience" provides an accurate model describing how to achieve "happy states" or "flow states".
Now for tougher questions, such as the metaphysical: "Is quantum mechanics a function of evolution" I agree that there are no models to use it. But then again, I don't think I would have any goal that would ever need it.
Safe from the pain and truth and choice and other poison devils See.. they don't give a fuck about you, like i do. Just stay with me, safe and ignorant, Go back to sleep Go Back to sleep
Re: virus: Chat topic teaser for 03.01.28 21:00 CST
« Reply #10 on: 2003-02-01 00:42:41 »
[Rhino] If you seek happiness or a meaning for your life, it is even worse, because it is doubtful whether you even have a valid question about what you are after.
[Rafael] There is a valid model for happiness. It's called flow. It lies between boredom and anxiety, where you are IN THE ZONE lol. Seriously "Flow: The psychology of optimum experience" provides an accurate model describing how to achieve "happy states" or "flow states".
[Jake] I don't know how I feel about "flow states". I'm sure it serves some good descriptive purposes of a real phenomenon, but I have my doubts that it has any prescriptive use. I can imagine how having a purpose, a goal, or some other phaith type focus, perhaps similar to Brodie's Level-3 idea, can operate to move you into such a state. Indeed I think I have been there a few times myself. But I have my doubts that focussing on such a state as a goal in itself will do much for you. Because you are focussing too much on symptoms, rather than causes -- and I mean "causes" in both ways this time Humans are tricky that way, . . . we generally have to play games with ourselves to get any real control. Being happy has never been, and probably never will be a completely straightforward issue.
Re: virus: Chat topic teaser for 03.01.28 21:00 CST
« Reply #11 on: 2003-02-01 00:42:43 »
[Rhino] If you seek happiness or a meaning for your life, it is even worse, because it is doubtful whether you even have a valid question about what you are after.
[Rafael] There is a valid model for happiness. It's called flow. It lies between boredom and anxiety, where you are IN THE ZONE lol. Seriously "Flow: The psychology of optimum experience" provides an accurate model describing how to achieve "happy states" or "flow states".
[Jake] I'm not sure about "flow states". I'm sure it serves some good descriptive purposes of a real phenomenon, but I have my doubts that it has any prescriptive use. I can imagine how having a purpose, a goal, or some other phaith type focus, perhaps similar to Brodie's Level-3 idea, can operate to move you into such a state. Indeed I think I have been there a few times myself. But I have my doubts that focussing on such a state as a goal in itself will do much for you. Because you are focussing too much on symptoms, rather than causes -- and I mean "causes" in both ways this time Humans are tricky that way, . . . we generally have to play games with ourselves to get any real control. Being happy has never been, and probably never will be a completely straightforward issue.
> [Rhino] If you seek happiness or a meaning for your life, it is even worse, > because it is doubtful whether you even have a valid question about what you > are after. > > [Rafael] There is a valid model for happiness. It's called flow. It lies > between boredom > and anxiety, where you are IN THE ZONE lol. Seriously "Flow: The psychology > of optimum experience" provides an accurate model > describing how to achieve "happy states" or "flow states". > > [Jake] I'm not sure about "flow states". I'm sure it serves some good > descriptive purposes of a real phenomenon, but I have my doubts that it has > any prescriptive use. I can imagine how having a purpose, a goal, or some > other phaith type focus, perhaps similar to Brodie's Level-3 idea, can > operate to move you into such a state. Indeed I think I have been there a > few times myself. But I have my doubts that focussing on such a state as a > goal in itself will do much for you. Because you are focussing too much on > symptoms, rather than causes -- and I mean "causes" in both ways this time > Humans are tricky that way, . . . we generally have to play games with > ourselves to get any real control. Being happy has never been, and probably > never will be a completely straightforward issue. > > Love, > > -Jake Sapiens
> [Rhino] If you seek happiness or a meaning for your life, it is even worse, > because it is doubtful whether you even have a valid question about what you > are after. > > [Rafael] There is a valid model for happiness. It's called flow. It lies > between boredom > and anxiety, where you are IN THE ZONE lol. Seriously "Flow: The psychology > of optimum experience" provides an accurate model > describing how to achieve "happy states" or "flow states". > > [Jake] I'm not sure about "flow states". I'm sure it serves some good > descriptive purposes of a real phenomenon, but I have my doubts that it has > any prescriptive use. I can imagine how having a purpose, a goal, or some > other phaith type focus, perhaps similar to Brodie's Level-3 idea, can > operate to move you into such a state. Indeed I think I have been there a > few times myself. But I have my doubts that focussing on such a state as a > goal in itself will do much for you. Because you are focussing too much on > symptoms, rather than causes -- and I mean "causes" in both ways this time > Humans are tricky that way, . . . we generally have to play games with > ourselves to get any real control. Being happy has never been, and probably > never will be a completely straightforward issue.
How about, happyness=f(control) ? We feel happy when we are in control of our lives. Being Anxious || bored || unhappy == NOT (having control). I guess this is why computer are so addictive. You have complete control over it.
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