On 26 Jul 2011, at 19:11, benjayk wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Hi benjayk,
I might comment other paragraphs later, but for reason of time and
business, I will just go on some points.
No problem, comment on what you want and when you feel like doing it.
OK.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
You can expect that a theory which unify all force will not be
*that*
simple. Now, with comp, if you like simplicity, you should like
that
the theory is a little theory of numbers (and that the observers is
that same theory + the induction axioms). All what I explain in the
quote can be defined precisely in that theory.
It's interesting, but I can't wrap my head around it so easily and I
am just
too lazy to study it. I don't think it would be much use for me.
The whole approach is not instrumental.
OK, but this has not much too do with whether studying the theory
feels
useful for me personally.
There are different level of use. A return to Plato and scientific
might indirectly help physician and pharmaceutics coming back to
seriousness in medicine, and that might save your life. The practice
of comp might be used to explore the galaxy, and the whole theory give
a reservoir to counterexample for invalid use of Gödel and the quantum
in philosophy of mind. I think that there is a lot of things there
which can be enjoyed both by your little ego and your higher self (if
that makes sense).
But it is fundamental science: the main use if for the fun when we are
interested in such questions.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Shit happens, provably so in the comp theory. We can practice harm
reduction, but we cannot eliminate the bad. And, indeed it has its
role in the big picture.
Yep. But harm reduction often does not work that well. You know,
like
reducing harm by illegalizing drugs. It easily leads to
authoritarianism.
And it may easily be anti-progress. Progress means also great new
dangers.
The harm-reduction philosophy comes from anti-prohibitionism. The
idea
is to inform people. It really comes from, I think, the fact that
oral
tobacco is much safer that smoking tobacco, which was hard to accept
for those who are 'religiously' against tobacco. It is known that it
is prohibition which makes the drug dangerous, so harm reduction
really means the stopping of prohibition, and sending strongly
addicted people to the hospital instead of jail (like we do with
alcohol).
Basically HARM REDUCTION = ANTI-PROHIBITION.
Sure, from your and my perspective this is clear.
Harm reduction is not a personal label. It is a label used again those
who want to eliminate the roots of the harm, instead of ameliorating
the condition of those who are in contact with such harmful things. It
is an approach like putting security belt in cars, filter on
cigarette, given clean needles to heroin user, and basically to stop
prohibition of drugs, which is recognized by the experts are much more
harmful than the drugs. They do not advocate explicitly anti-
prohibition, because they try to be more concrete than that and to
teach by examples. You can look at:
http://www.harmreduction.org/section.php?id=62
or the journal
http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/
(Harm Reduction Journal is an open access, peer-reviewed, online
journal whose focus is on the prevalent patterns of psychoactive drug
use, the public policies meant to control them, and the search for
effective methods of reducing the adverse medical, public health, and
social consequences associated with both drugs and drug policies. We
define 'harm reduction' as 'policies and programs which aim to reduce
the health, social, and economic costs of legal and illegal
psychoactive drug use without necessarily reducing drug consumption'.)
But from some people's
perspective, it's seems clear we need prohibtion to save people from
themselves.
This is harm elimination philosophy: the opposite of harm reduction,
which consists in helping people instead of condemning them for their
behavior (unless they harm other people).
The point is, we can never really be sure if harm reduction
really reduces harm. We never know.
We know that immediately. It is the difference between going in jail
and going in a center for helping you.
Harm reduction is especially critical in this respect because some
form of
"harm reduction" may be extremely catastrophic. Some people might
say we
need to stop technological progress for reducing harm, and indeed
their are
some relatively plausible arguments that technological progress may
create
massive harm. But it may equally be true that technology may create
heaven
on earth and solve many absolutely critical problems, and without
it, we are
doomed. In this case stopping progress would create disastrous harm.
Harm reduction has no long run strategies. It is a pragmatic concern
for helping suffering people here and now.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
But the ultimate soul (God), does
not fall, as in a accident. It falls, because this it what it
always
does.
It falls into itself.
All right. But not always, only one half eternity (so to speak,
again).
Hm... When exactly does he not fall?
When heart and reason makes peace.
I am not sure if this works. Peace really only comes when you get
comfortable with falling - otherwise you will only feel at peace
when you
feel (potentially illusorily) safe.
OK. I do think that to be comfortable with falling, you need some
peace between heart and reason. That might be equivalent.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
In my mind the creatures are God,
[you are probably not supposed to say this. Enlightened people
already
know, and lost souls cannot grasp]
You can say things like "I love logic", or I love this or that
plant".
I think you are a bit too anxious about saying the forbidden things.
But you
are right, it won't really help. But then, a soul that's really lost
cannot
be helped. It has to find it's way on its own.
It is worst than that. By telling incommunicable truth, you aggravate
the situation of the soul, or you make it fall.
This may be true. But then, it's critical souls that souls learn not
to
believe what other people say and trust themselves. So it really
does not
ultimately matter what you say. The more they believe a thing you
said that
they really shouldn't believe, the more they will realize the
consequences
of blind faith.
I acknowledge that this may be used to justify saying anything, and
I am
okay with that.
Telling "incommunicable" truth may still inspire people to find what
the
communcation hints at. I can't communicate the feeling at looking at
my
screen, but I can still say "I see a screen. Do you see the screen
in front
of your eyes, too?"
yes sure, I see it too. I was talking on the protagorean virtue. You
cannot say "I am enlightened", or "I am intelligent", or " I love
everybody", etc. You can say to someone "I love you", but you have to
wait for the genuine moment of intimacy.
I feel a bit uneasy because I am thinking one half in AUDA (the toy
theology of the ideally correct machine), and personal impressions. I
make shortcuts to avoid too much lengthy posts, and I will ask you to
add enough grains of sand on everything I am saying.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Well, in my mind "inconsistent" things are just labels that we can't
attach
some precise meaning to. If I say 1+1=3 is true in the usual natural
numbers, you just don't know what I mean. You might say I am
"wrong". But
maybe I just have another conception of the usual natural numbers as
you do,
or pretend so. :P We can always play this game of relativizing
descriptions.
Yes, like you can always visit France with a map of Germany.
Inconsistency is a Löbian machine's right.
But you were the one mentioning "use"! And a map of Germany, in
France, is of no use (unless you are planning an invasion, of
course).
Sure.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Well, with comp, all the rest is just 0, 1, 2, ... plus two
operations. I don't ask to assume a lot. But with less than that,
the
hypostases becomes trivial, and you can no more see how the Soul
emanates from the Noùs which emanates from God, and you cannot
see of
the soul is led to the building of matter appearances.
I just think we don't need the assumption of the existence
0,1,2,3,... We
can use it without pretending it exists "out there".
If you say that we can use it, you already accept it is "out there"
in
the weak sense I am using.
Hm... But you often speak as if it has independent ontological
truth, which
is far from a weak sense.
Independent truth = true independently of my little ego (the one who
got my identity card)
Independent ontological truth = independent truth of a statement of
existence.
In arithmetic examples of such ontological statements are:
It exists x such that x is a prime number
There is no even number x such that for all y (y > x -> y is odd)
It exist a number which is the Gödel number of the computational state
of this or that machine, etc.
All consistent theories have a non empty ontology. I just make clear
the one I use.
Bruno Marchal wrote:
Because we need to study the relation between a truth, like 1+1=2,
and
a belief by a "terrestrial little ego" B(1+1=2).
But we can use different levels of epistemological truth for that.
OK. Then "1+1 =2" means God believes that 1+1 = 2.
B(1+1=2) means benjayk (or some other machine) believes that 1+1=2.
I like this a lot more!
Yeah, but usually people prefer the statement that prime numbers
exists independently of them, than any sentence mentioning the big ONE
who has no name. We can use it in AUDA, because we make clear the
dictionary translating Plotinus theology into (meta)-arithmetic.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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