Thanks for this Glen; very helpful. I didn’t realize there was a term for impredicative construction, but will be glad to have it. Will save me long typed harangues trying to describe a thing I don’t have a good understanding of. I assume that a lot of work on questions of this sort is done in “reflection” or whatever the technical name is in computer science. When executables contain a characterization of themselves in some interpreter.
Also good to have the Klein interview and the book. Eric > On Jul 17, 2021, at 12:01 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ <[email protected]> wrote: > > Re: impredicative construction, building a system with the system being built > - Can *we* animals do this whereas a *typical* machine cannot? By "typical", > of course, I mean *tools*, things with an a priori passthrough > accountability. So, my question is an example of itself, circular, petitio > principii. It seems like part of the psychologist's job is to delineate which > parts of the machine are impredicative and which parts are analytically > reducible ... I guess a bit like Tononi's IIT. > > Re: institutional lifting - In the podcast where Ezra Klein interviews this > guy: > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbookshop.org%2fbooks%2fwork-a-deep-history-from-the-stone-age-to-the-age-of-robots%2f9780525561750&c=E,1,rsODS_cXowZxQ--tmVu4e6wr2Djv6tqi1zAoVNvAAA2bEIiEGKmJ9nzoxuxOd8Y_9tLub3_POs5rZD1eVn_4MQW_lyI-8k8dxFq3FNKO2IyBEpYGYeuwcTQlzYMw&typo=1 > they talk quite a bit about needs vs. wants. What rang a bell for me was this > idea that I have of the meaning of life. Each of us (animals and plants) are > here to explore regions of the "space" that no other individual is exploring. > It is our purpose to do that. As Marcus points out, some of those regions of > the space cannot be reached without some *thing* creating a huge gravity well > of convex space. E.g. our Federal government gifts us with things like > interstate highways and nationwide laws that make my region of space > reachable ... particularly ARPANet. > > So your (and Harriot's) path toward The Country's > responsibility/accountability can be tied to this lifting. And I think we can > do the same with social media companies, maybe by a modification of the logic > that gave us the Citizens United ruling. But we can't get there through > predicative, analytical legal calculus. Somehow, we have to infuse these > artificial persons (like Facebook, incorporated corporations) with a similar > self-referencing bootstrapped construction to that we animals have. > > I've been calling this (pseudo) domain "artificial morality". But that's as > far as I've gotten. 8^D > > On 7/15/21 5:28 PM, David Eric Smith wrote: >> This is a nice thread. >> >> Like any good narrow question, it quickly makes itself insoluble because it >> gets entangled with the whole wider world. In particular, the final >> paragraph, which I like, requires us to get back into the morass of “why >> punish”. >> >>> On Jul 16, 2021, at 8:21 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>> I have a rebuttal to the Matthias argument that I purposefully did not link >>> to, just in case my trawl led to an interesting catch. (Know 10 things, say >>> 9.) And although Frankenstein's monster is a good start, it pales in >>> comparison to the modern questions of explainable/interpretable AI and >>> *ethical* AI. Can we *read through* an algorithm to effectively blame an >>> algorithm's author? Or, if not the author, the post-authorship *user* of >>> the author's product? Or, as a postmodernist might argue, should we take >>> the author's product as a stigmergic naturfact and treat the author and her >>> artifact as *excused* ... they were only being creative ... as with gun >>> manufacturers ... the blame lies with the user of the artifact. Algorithms >>> don't kill people. People kill people! >> >> This is one where I am very much _not_ like a professional working >> psychologist, who might be inclined to say “because I can’t derive its >> mechanism analytically within a philosophical system that I can articulate, >> I am inclined to believe there is no there there.” I am strongly on-board >> with the psychologist, in what I would call the view that the language our >> society uses to get to punishment choices doesn’t stand up well as an >> analytic language of concepts and mechanisms. But my response would be to >> say “it’s all part of the structure of message-passing within the >> many-actor, many exchange system, arrived at through whatever filtering on >> the behaviors of those actors and exchanges; it may not be a description >> _of_ itself as a concept (even though it presents itself as being that), but >> that doesn’t make it uninformative _about_ whatever its nature really is, if >> we could find a language to describe it”. (And of course, I recognize that >> that is also just what the >> psychologist is after as well.) >> >> But to get back to the point: whatever reason we use for punishing people is >> simply non-sequitur for artifacts that are brought into existence and are of >> a completely different nature. >> >> I did hear one thing that struck me as a nice framing, on a somewhat related >> topic. Al Franken did an interview with Michael Harriot >> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2falfranken.com%2flisten%2fmichael-harriot-senior-writer-for-theroot-com-the-nations-largest-black-online-newspaper&c=E,1,d9LjgT6dvddYRlZVPVrIAcn5GeYKYoSJNCRLf4XOge_Xt5dRyR527HqTVNmAP-6b48GEx6ZORLV9Sy0GWeO0OlVDixmokcUJLlNhkcgrHVorZKwiIp0,&typo=1 >> >> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2falfranken.com%2flisten%2fmichael-harriot-senior-writer-for-theroot-com-the-nations-largest-black-online-newspaper&c=E,1,5iMDhx3hHWKLv8J8JsJg-i8dfVgwUUrAOEI7jzk6V-ZWhlQRaHwr5G03AhiN5_9W4aQkerXegVenhoIy_cgIWuA6ulH6XTUhF7k5xPAHXw,,&typo=1> >> who I guess is a senior writer for The Root. >> >> Harriot has a nice take on reparations, which is both practically great for >> getting around many of the dodges that people would use to try to exempt >> themselves, and also rather a nice principle from which to reason. He says >> reparations are owed to black people by “The Country” as a political and >> civil institution, the same way as national defense, lawmaking, a currency, >> public health, regulation of truth in advertising or contract, etc. etc. are >> the remit of The Country. It works very well with the rest of the whole >> conversation. To the extent that racism is systemic, that is precisely >> because it can systematically harm people without specific intent by one or >> another actor. The reason favored groups can hold and accumulate wealth at >> faster rates than exploited groups, even if the favored groups are not >> descendants of slaveholders and the disfavored groups not descendants of >> slaves (both, e.g., being more recent immigrants), is that the complex >> fabric of law, institution, >> and norms ensnares them all into certain situations or roles. So >> reparations are best framed the way one would frame a budgetary >> responsibility or a development goal or any other national priority. >> >> I wonder if there is some variant on that overall approach that could be the >> basis of law for these social media providers. Clearly the Volokh article >> can’t be used if it omits the role of recommendation, which although not >> identical to editing is certainly every bit as active. (The other article >> handled that from the start, so no problem of omission overall.) But I feel >> like trying to “reduce” (in the way non-physicists usually mean the term as >> an expression of disdains for physicists) the legal jeopardy to the builder, >> to one or another content-provider or end user, etc., looks like it fails to >> recognize the existence of a de facto layer of institutionally that is >> emerging out of these technical capabilities. >> >> Eric > > -- > ☤>$ uǝlƃ > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,pScN9B67a9aMFGjrBPtvqKMRkJDFKBla_nADfn-ftvhfMBQ_7RTVSR4ubxrc3TNzNTiJYh9T2P0jKPAGL7zf7bt6F46dvNJdLRg55kwsiql2ezIOdA,,&typo=1 > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,kXTGUd_0lxEXqH8BA2JTqOibHUqh6TY1MpVhcg2NNa8k_P1WzdS_OWiwzuxYz0WVuSZvmE5aR7XJJVXuS3jW93PAP4iTcjPrtiVgxxknAGhJaySw8W2Y16YqCUs,&typo=1 > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . 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