Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 20, 1:51 am, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Craig, Sorry for not answering sooner. I am very busy at the moment and realistically I cannot participate to the degree I'd like to. So this may be my last reply... I will try to keep it short. No problem, I understand. Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, it's just that low level intentionality might be almost unrecognizably primitive to us (or not - maybe it's as familiar as the feeling of holding and releasing). Emergence is a bottom up concept that I think takes for granted high level pattern recognition. It's useful instrumentally but I think ultimately fails at explaining anything on a cosmological level. Emerges from where? Why? It ignores perceptual frame of reference entirely and models the universe as an object with spontaneous magical properties. Emergence is pretty weird. Yes. That's why it fails. It doesn't make sense. I don't really have an answer for you, but it seems pretty clear to me that you get these discrete levels of emergence which function as ontologies. Chemistry is a level above physics and, for example, diffusion and the arrow of time emerge from the physics account, in which the dynamics are time-reversible. It is mysterious to me, and fascinating. I wish I had an explanation for you. But given that the ontologies we can describe at the level of physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, psychology, and sociology, are all 3p describable, the perceptual frame of reference is shared by all of us to the extent that we agree on the formal descriptions. Sure human frames of reference are shared by all of us, we're all human. We're all about the same general size and have the same perceptual refresh rate. We choose to model the universe with these levels and ontologies in mind, because it is the most profitable way to make sense of the world. But nobody is claiming that these things have magical properties, even if it is a bit mysterious as to how these levels arise. Maybe somebody better versed in the concept of emergence can make more sense of it than me. Maybe the concept of emergence is a just-so story. But I can't make sense of your account. How can something be low level and high level at the same time? How can it not? Level is in the eye of the beholder. What does the universe care for our idea of 'level'? But we're talking theories - ways of modeling the universe. The universe doesn't care about any of our models or theories. The point is, I don't find it coherent to talk of the same phenomenon existing at multiple levels, when in every case I've seen, the dynamics from one level to the next are completely independent. Completely independent? Like what? Cells that are immune to chemical changes? Languages that emerge without psychology? I can't think of anything that is independent from one level to the next. All parts of the cosmos are interdependent on some level. The different levels of reality that emerge at increasing orders of scale are characterized by completely independent dynamics. Characterized independently to us. Only to our perceptual frame of reference, our observations as creatures of a specific size and velocity. Frame of reference is everything. A nuclear bomb treats human beings and granite buildings alike, as matter. It doesn't resolve subtle levels of emergence, it addresses the whole protocol stack at the physical level. Booom. I'm talking about science which is an intersubjective endeavor in which we all agree to a reference frame called objective reality which we then fill with our shared constructions like objects and laws. We are at the point that we can no longer define reality as objective. Objective is just a compass point within the phenomenological continuum. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. Say that I decide to paint a picture of a creature that I have imagined. Like Cthulhu's more evil twin or something. How are the lower levels of neurological activity which govern my fine muscle movements, holding the paint brush, dipping the paint, etc not supervening on my higher level preferences? I and my fictional vision are driving the bus. Causality routinely crosses levels. That's what this conversation is - a personal, voluntary, high level semantic enterprise which pushes low level fingertips, keystrokes, internet switches, computer screen pixels, retina cells and neurons on the remote end. You have to look at the big picture from a more objective perspective. Your view is blindered by conventional wisdom of the 20th century. I think I incorrectly used the word 'epiphenomenal' to refer to my understanding of consciousness and will.
Re: Bruno List continued
On Oct 20, 1:51 am, Terren Suydam terren.suy...@gmail.com wrote: Hey Craig, Sorry for not answering sooner. I am very busy at the moment and realistically I cannot participate to the degree I'd like to. So this may be my last reply... I will try to keep it short. No problem, I understand. Emergent properties of electromagnetism are also electromagnetic, are they not? Electromagnetism is intentionality on every level, it's just that low level intentionality might be almost unrecognizably primitive to us (or not - maybe it's as familiar as the feeling of holding and releasing). Emergence is a bottom up concept that I think takes for granted high level pattern recognition. It's useful instrumentally but I think ultimately fails at explaining anything on a cosmological level. Emerges from where? Why? It ignores perceptual frame of reference entirely and models the universe as an object with spontaneous magical properties. Emergence is pretty weird. Yes. That's why it fails. It doesn't make sense. I don't really have an answer for you, but it seems pretty clear to me that you get these discrete levels of emergence which function as ontologies. Chemistry is a level above physics and, for example, diffusion and the arrow of time emerge from the physics account, in which the dynamics are time-reversible. It is mysterious to me, and fascinating. I wish I had an explanation for you. But given that the ontologies we can describe at the level of physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, psychology, and sociology, are all 3p describable, the perceptual frame of reference is shared by all of us to the extent that we agree on the formal descriptions. Sure human frames of reference are shared by all of us, we're all human. We're all about the same general size and have the same perceptual refresh rate. We choose to model the universe with these levels and ontologies in mind, because it is the most profitable way to make sense of the world. But nobody is claiming that these things have magical properties, even if it is a bit mysterious as to how these levels arise. Maybe somebody better versed in the concept of emergence can make more sense of it than me. Maybe the concept of emergence is a just-so story. But I can't make sense of your account. How can something be low level and high level at the same time? How can it not? Level is in the eye of the beholder. What does the universe care for our idea of 'level'? But we're talking theories - ways of modeling the universe. The universe doesn't care about any of our models or theories. The point is, I don't find it coherent to talk of the same phenomenon existing at multiple levels, when in every case I've seen, the dynamics from one level to the next are completely independent. Completely independent? Like what? Cells that are immune to chemical changes? Languages that emerge without psychology? I can't think of anything that is independent from one level to the next. All parts of the cosmos are interdependent on some level. The different levels of reality that emerge at increasing orders of scale are characterized by completely independent dynamics. Characterized independently to us. Only to our perceptual frame of reference, our observations as creatures of a specific size and velocity. Frame of reference is everything. A nuclear bomb treats human beings and granite buildings alike, as matter. It doesn't resolve subtle levels of emergence, it addresses the whole protocol stack at the physical level. Booom. I'm talking about science which is an intersubjective endeavor in which we all agree to a reference frame called objective reality which we then fill with our shared constructions like objects and laws. We are at the point that we can no longer define reality as objective. Objective is just a compass point within the phenomenological continuum. What do you mean by going both ways? Causality really does not cross levels. All we can say is that higher levels emerge from/supervene on lower levels. Say that I decide to paint a picture of a creature that I have imagined. Like Cthulhu's more evil twin or something. How are the lower levels of neurological activity which govern my fine muscle movements, holding the paint brush, dipping the paint, etc not supervening on my higher level preferences? I and my fictional vision are driving the bus. Causality routinely crosses levels. That's what this conversation is - a personal, voluntary, high level semantic enterprise which pushes low level fingertips, keystrokes, internet switches, computer screen pixels, retina cells and neurons on the remote end. You have to look at the big picture from a more objective perspective. Your view is blindered by conventional wisdom of the 20th century. I think I incorrectly used the word 'epiphenomenal' to refer to my understanding of consciousness and will.
Re: The Overlords Gambit
Craig Weinberg wrote: The thought experiment doesn't mean much in that case, it is simply neurons determining the behaviour of two brains. I don't see that it matters what the outcome of the experiment is. But the neurons are also having their behavior determined as well. That's the point. One person's high level behavior is now determining the low level behavior of another person's neurons. That is what is being argued cannot happen, so I'm showing that it can. It only works with the premise is that it can happen, otherwise neurons are determining the behaviour and some experience may arise alongside (or not). The thought experiment doesn't show anything beyond what the normal functioning of the brain and the feelings that correlate with it show. That's not a fault of the thought experiment, I don't think it is possible. I think what the thought experiment shows the most is the absurdity of control. If there is a controller, who controls the controller, and who controls that controller, etc...? Ultimately, there can't be any control, or controller, just as there can't be any designer to the universe. The same goes for causes. Mm, I don't know, I don't have a problem saying that there is a difference between voluntary actions and involuntary actions in our body. Obviously there is. But what you call voluntary and involuntary, is, seen from a deeper level, more like happening within your attention and happening outside of your attention. The feeling of it being voluntary (or not) is more like something added to this for the purpose of making it clearer, but it is not deeper than that. Take the example of breathing. Normally it is happens without our attention being on it, involuntarily. If we focus our attention on it, it may seem voluntary (I control the breath) or involuntary (I just breath naturally). There is nothing special about feeling to have control over it, it works even better if you don't - it is more natural, the feeling of control is confusing (it seems to make a seperation between your mind and your body, which feels artificial and not true). It is a bit like seeing something beautiful on the one hand and seeing something beautiful and thinking This is beautiful on the other hand. That we can think This is beautiful is not what makes it beautfiful, in the same way the feeling of control is not what makes something happen, but is a feeling that comes as we attribute an action / impulse to us as personal agents. Craig Weinberg wrote: The mutual control is supposed to expose the absurdity of the absence of top-down determination. If we have no say in our own neurons behavior, how can we say that we can have a say in someone else's neural behavior? The answer would be: We can't, just as it seems we control our neurons behaviour, so it seems that we control other persons behaviour. I don't see any difference, except that the situation in the thought experiment is more absurd, and so probably shows even less. Right, we can't. That is what I'm arguing. Others are perfectly fine with the idea of creating an artificial brain but they don't follow the consequences through to what that means as far as our own high level will to influence and control low level neurology. The thought experiment just spells it out. Ah, OK. If we pretend that neurology is the controlling factor, and we don't want to make it into something magical, we indeed get problems if the neurons are controlled by other neurons, as then the question is Where does the control really arise, then?. We could then say that the neurons are controlled by past factor and outside influence, but we can't continue that forever. So where do we stop? Is the big bang the ultimate controller? But we can't even describe it (and if we could, this would be abitrary - as we have no clue that our description is true, or why it is true), so to state that would get us back to magic, which materialist wanted to avoid. So ultimately they are either dishonest (BS - you just don't understand it), or make excuses (There is nothing magical about, we just don't understand it *yet*... - which you could say for every other mysterious explanation) or they ignore the problem (That's not a real problem anyway - like the hard problem of cosciousness) or, if they are honest, they admit that matter is inherently mysterious (which rises the question why we can't use consciousness as a primitive mysterious source, *that we can directly experience*, in contrast to the mysterious essence of matter, which makes it infinitely more plausible). I think I get now where you are coming from with this experiment... Craig Weinberg wrote: The psyche can voluntarily control entire regions of the brain, and does so routinely. I don't think so. The psyche is reflected in the brain, but I don't see how it controls it. The brain doesn't do what the person want, it reflects what the person
Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
Hi, Here is the abstract of Bostrom's Infinitarian Challenge to Aggregative Ethics Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value‐bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf Bostrom's argument seems pretty solid to me. But I am not a mathematician. What do you guys think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
On 10/20/2011 11:23 AM, nihil0 wrote: Hi, Here is the abstract of Bostrom's Infinitarian Challenge to Aggregative Ethics Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value‐bearing locations. *Speculative* modern cosmology *hypostesizes* that the world *might*... Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. But the part you can affect is the part most likely to affect you. Brent In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf Bostrom's argument seems pretty solid to me. But I am not a mathematician. What do you guys think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
What about the idea that the choices you make are likely to reflect those of an infinite number of similar individuals? It's sort of like the issue of voting or trying to minimize your energy usage to help the environment, even if your individual choice makes very little difference, if everyone decides their choices don't matter and choose the less beneficial option, then this does significantly change the outcome for the worse. It makes me think of Douglas Hofstadter's notion of superrationality which he discusses in an essay in Metamagical Themas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality Hofstadter's idea here seems like a variation on Kant's idea that the moral choice is the one that it would make sense for *everyone* to adopt (see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#ForUniLawNat )--I just skimmed Bostrom's paper but I didn't see any detailed discussion of this sort of ethical theory, which is odd since Bostrom is a philosopher and this has been a pretty influential idea in ethics. Physicist (and many-worlds advocate) David Deutsch also makes a somewhat similar point about morality in a quantum multiverse in this article: http://www.kurzweilai.net/taming-the-multiverse “By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives,” he says. “When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen.” Jesse On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 2:23 PM, nihil0 jonathan.wol...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Here is the abstract of Bostrom's Infinitarian Challenge to Aggregative Ethics Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value‐bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf Bostrom's argument seems pretty solid to me. But I am not a mathematician. What do you guys think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: The Overlords Gambit
On Oct 20, 11:06 am, benjayk benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com wrote: Craig Weinberg wrote: The thought experiment doesn't mean much in that case, it is simply neurons determining the behaviour of two brains. I don't see that it matters what the outcome of the experiment is. But the neurons are also having their behavior determined as well. That's the point. One person's high level behavior is now determining the low level behavior of another person's neurons. That is what is being argued cannot happen, so I'm showing that it can. It only works with the premise is that it can happen, otherwise neurons are determining the behaviour and some experience may arise alongside (or not). The thought experiment doesn't show anything beyond what the normal functioning of the brain and the feelings that correlate with it show. That's not a fault of the thought experiment, I don't think it is possible. I think what the thought experiment shows the most is the absurdity of control. If there is a controller, who controls the controller, and who controls that controller, etc...? Ultimately, there can't be any control, or controller, just as there can't be any designer to the universe. The same goes for causes. Mm, I don't know, I don't have a problem saying that there is a difference between voluntary actions and involuntary actions in our body. Obviously there is. But what you call voluntary and involuntary, is, seen from a deeper level, more like happening within your attention and happening outside of your attention. The feeling of it being voluntary (or not) is more like something added to this for the purpose of making it clearer, but it is not deeper than that. Take the example of breathing. Normally it is happens without our attention being on it, involuntarily. If we focus our attention on it, it may seem voluntary (I control the breath) or involuntary (I just breath naturally). There is nothing special about feeling to have control over it, it works even better if you don't - it is more natural, the feeling of control is confusing (it seems to make a seperation between your mind and your body, which feels artificial and not true). I understand what you're saying, but no. You can feel your heart beating too but its being within your attention doesn't give you direct control over it. Yogic practices or biofeedback may allow you more control over various somatic functions, but just for simplicity, I think we can agree that there is a difference to the degree to which we can control our own breathing versus our heartbeat. I think you are caricaturing my use of words like control or will. Not-doing can be control also. If you are the one deciding to relax, then that is your will. It is a bit like seeing something beautiful on the one hand and seeing something beautiful and thinking This is beautiful on the other hand. That we can think This is beautiful is not what makes it beautfiful, in the same way the feeling of control is not what makes something happen, but is a feeling that comes as we attribute an action / impulse to us as personal agents. I'm not talking about the intellectualization of voluntary action though, I'm talking about control as the actual gesture of motive actualization and it's third person manifestation as electromagnetic impulses through the nervous system. I get what you're saying though, and I agree, action and assertion are not control just because they make us feel active and assertive. Craig Weinberg wrote: The mutual control is supposed to expose the absurdity of the absence of top-down determination. If we have no say in our own neurons behavior, how can we say that we can have a say in someone else's neural behavior? The answer would be: We can't, just as it seems we control our neurons behaviour, so it seems that we control other persons behaviour. I don't see any difference, except that the situation in the thought experiment is more absurd, and so probably shows even less. Right, we can't. That is what I'm arguing. Others are perfectly fine with the idea of creating an artificial brain but they don't follow the consequences through to what that means as far as our own high level will to influence and control low level neurology. The thought experiment just spells it out. Ah, OK. If we pretend that neurology is the controlling factor, and we don't want to make it into something magical, we indeed get problems if the neurons are controlled by other neurons, as then the question is Where does the control really arise, then?. 'Zacly. We could then say that the neurons are controlled by past factor and outside influence, but we can't continue that forever. So where do we stop? Is the big bang the ultimate controller? I think the paradox evaporates if we allow that control can be shared. You can make your adrenals produce epinepherine by
Re: COMP is empty(?)
On 10/18/2011 11:30 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 07:03:38PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: This, ISTM, is a completely different, and more wonderful beast, than the UD described in your Brussells thesis, or Schmidhuber's '97 paper. This latter beast must truly give rise to a continuum of histories, due to the random oracles you were talking about. All UDs do that. It is always the same beast. On reflection, yes you're correct. The new algorithm you proposed is more efficient than the previous one described in your thesis, as machines are only executed once for each prefix, rather over and over again for each input having the same prefix. But in an environment of unbounded resources, such as we're considering here, that has no import. So the histories, we're agreed, are uncountable in number, but OMs (bundles of histories compatible with the here and now) are surely still countable. If we take the no information ensemble, and transform it by applying a universal turing machine and collect just the countable output string where the machine halts, then apply another observer function that also happens to be a UTM, the final result will still be a Solomonoff-Levin distribution over the OMs. This result follows from the compiler theorem - composition of a UTM with another one is still a UTM. So even if there is a rich structure to the OMs caused by them being generated in a UD, that structure will be lost in the process of observation. The net effect is that UD* is just as much a veil on the ultimate ontology as is the no information ensemble. Unless I'm missing something here. Lets leave the discussion of the universal prior to another post. In a nutshell, though, no matter what prior distribution you put on the no information ensemble, an observer of that ensemble will always see the Solomonoff-Levin distribution, or universal prior. I don't think it makes sense to use a universal prior. That would make sense if we suppose there are computable universes, and if we try to measure the probability we are in such structure. This is typical of Schmidhuber's approach, which is still quite similar to physicalism, where we conceive observers as belonging to computable universes. Put in another way, this is typical of using some sort of identity thesis between a mind and a program. I understand your point, but the concept of universal prior is of far more general applicability than Schmidhuber's model. There need not be any identity thesis invoked, as for example in applications such as observers of Rorshach diagrams. And as for identity thesis, you do have a type of identity thesis in the statement that brains make interaction with other observers relatively more likely (or something like that). There has to be some form of identity thesis between brain and mind that prevents the Occam catastrophe, and also prevent the full retreat into solipsism. I think it very much an open problem what that is. Hi Russell, Would the conjecture that the Stone duality provide a coherent version of this identity thesis? Minds, as per Comp, - logical algebras and Brains - topological spaces. Not not, how so? Onward! Stephen snip -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
Thanks for your response. Bostrom considers just the idea you mention in section 4.6 called Class Action. He uses the term YOU to represent all your qualitatively identical duplicates throughout the (Level 1) multiverse. According to the class action selection rule, Even though your actions may have only finite consequences, YOUR actions will be infinite. If the various constituent person-parts of YOU are distributed roughly evenly throughout spacetime, then it is possible for you to affect the world's value-density. For example, if each person-part of YOU acts kindly, YOU may increase the well-being of an infinite number of persons such that the density of well-being in the world increases by some finite amount. (p. 39) However, this class action argument assumes that the value-density approach is an acceptable way to measure the value in a world. There are a few problems with the value-density approach. First of all, it seems to give up aggregationism (total consequentialism) in favor of average consequentialism. Average consequentialism has the counterintuitive implication that we should kill people who have below- average utility and few friends or loved ones, such as some hermits and homeless people. Secondly, the value-density approach places ethical significance on the spatiotemporal distribution of value. This is at odds with consequentialism's commitment to impartiality (the idea that equal amounts of value are equally good to promote, no matter who or where the beneficiaries are). Third, the value-density approach fails to apply to inhomogeneous infinite worlds . . . because value-density is undefined for such worlds. (16) Perhaps some other combination of approaches will be more promising. On Oct 20, 3:04 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: What about the idea that the choices you make are likely to reflect those of an infinite number of similar individuals? It's sort of like the issue of voting or trying to minimize your energy usage to help the environment, even if your individual choice makes very little difference, if everyone decides their choices don't matter and choose the less beneficial option, then this does significantly change the outcome for the worse. It makes me think of Douglas Hofstadter's notion of superrationality which he discusses in an essay in Metamagical Themas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality Hofstadter's idea here seems like a variation on Kant's idea that the moral choice is the one that it would make sense for *everyone* to adopt (seehttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#ForUniLawNat)--I just skimmed Bostrom's paper but I didn't see any detailed discussion of this sort of ethical theory, which is odd since Bostrom is a philosopher and this has been a pretty influential idea in ethics. Physicist (and many-worlds advocate) David Deutsch also makes a somewhat similar point about morality in a quantum multiverse in this article:http://www.kurzweilai.net/taming-the-multiverse “By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives,” he says. “When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen.” Jesse On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 2:23 PM, nihil0 jonathan.wol...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Here is the abstract of Bostrom's Infinitarian Challenge to Aggregative Ethics Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value‐bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf Bostrom's argument seems pretty solid to me. But I am not a mathematician. What do you guys think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
Thanks for your response. Bostrom considers the idea you mention in section 4.6 called Class Action. He uses the term YOU to represent all your qualitatively identical duplicates throughout the (Level 1) multiverse. According to the class action selection rule, Even though your actions may have only finite consequences, YOUR actions will be infinite. If the various constituent person-parts of YOU are distributed roughly evenly throughout spacetime, then it is possible for you to affect the world's value-density. For example, if each person-part of YOU acts kindly, YOU may increase the well-being of an infinite number of persons such that the density of well-being in the world increases by some finite amount. (p. 39) However, this class action argument assumes that the value-density approach is an acceptable way to measure the value in a world. There are a few problems with the value-density approach. First of all, it seems to give up aggregationism (total consequentialism) in favor of average consequentialism. Average consequentialism has the counterintuitive implication that we should kill people who have below- average utility and few friends or loved ones, such as some hermits and homeless people. Secondly, the value-density approach places ethical significance on the spatiotemporal distribution of value. (p. 16) This is at odds with consequentialism's commitment to impartiality (the idea that equal amounts of value are equally good to promote, no matter who or where the beneficiaries are). Third, the value-density approach fails to apply to inhomogeneous infinite worlds . . . because value-density is undefined for such worlds. (p. 16) Hopefully some other combination of approaches will be more promising. On Oct 20, 3:04 pm, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: What about the idea that the choices you make are likely to reflect those of an infinite number of similar individuals? It's sort of like the issue of voting or trying to minimize your energy usage to help the environment, even if your individual choice makes very little difference, if everyone decides their choices don't matter and choose the less beneficial option, then this does significantly change the outcome for the worse. It makes me think of Douglas Hofstadter's notion of superrationality which he discusses in an essay in Metamagical Themas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality Hofstadter's idea here seems like a variation on Kant's idea that the moral choice is the one that it would make sense for *everyone* to adopt (seehttp://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#ForUniLawNat)--I just skimmed Bostrom's paper but I didn't see any detailed discussion of this sort of ethical theory, which is odd since Bostrom is a philosopher and this has been a pretty influential idea in ethics. Physicist (and many-worlds advocate) David Deutsch also makes a somewhat similar point about morality in a quantum multiverse in this article:http://www.kurzweilai.net/taming-the-multiverse “By making good choices, doing the right thing, we thicken the stack of universes in which versions of us live reasonable lives,” he says. “When you succeed, all the copies of you who made the same decision succeed too. What you do for the better increases the portion of the multiverse where good things happen.” Jesse On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 2:23 PM, nihil0 jonathan.wol...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Here is the abstract of Bostrom's Infinitarian Challenge to Aggregative Ethics Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value‐bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf Bostrom's argument seems pretty solid to me. But I am not a mathematician. What do you guys think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
On 10/20/2011 6:37 PM, nihil0 wrote: However, this class action argument assumes that the value-density approach is an acceptable way to measure the value in a world. There are a few problems with the value-density approach. First of all, it seems to give up aggregationism (total consequentialism) in favor of average consequentialism. Average consequentialism has the counterintuitive implication that we should kill people who have below- average utility and few friends or loved ones, such as some hermits and homeless people. Secondly, the value-density approach places ethical significance on the spatiotemporal distribution of value. This is at odds with consequentialism's commitment to impartiality (the idea that equal amounts of value are equally good to promote, no matter who or where the beneficiaries are). But this kind of consequentialism is already unworkable. Who counts as a beneficiary? a fetus? someone not yet conceived? chimpanzees? dogs? spiders? In practice we value the well-being of some people a lot more than others and we do so for the simple reason that it makes our life better. Brent Third, the value-density approach fails to apply to inhomogeneous infinite worlds . . . because value-density is undefined for such worlds. (16) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Where is Truth?
Dear Stephen, as long as we are not omniscient (good condition for impossibillity) there is no TRUTH. As Bruno formulates his reply: there is something like mathematical truth - but did you ask for such specififc definition? Now - about mathematical truth? new funamental inventions in math (even maybe in arithmetics Bruno?) may alter the ideas that were considered as mathematical truth before those inventions. Example: the zero etc. It always depends on the context one looks at the problem FROM and draws conclusion INTO. John M On Sun, Oct 16, 2011 at 12:48 AM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.netwrote: Hi, I ran across the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_indefinability_theorem *Tarski's undefinability theorem*, stated and proved by Alfred Tarskihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tarskiin 1936, is an important limitative result in mathematical logic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_logic, the foundations of mathematics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_mathematics, and in formal semantics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics. Informally, the theorem states that *arithmetical truth cannot be defined in arithmetic*. Where then is it defined? Onward! Stephen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
I think most consequentialists, especially utilitarians, consider all sentient beings to have moral status. Utilitarians say an action is morally better to the extent that it produces more well-being in the world. Anyway I would prefer to focus on whether act consequentialism implies that all actions as morally equivalent, if the universe might be canonically infinite. Jon On Oct 21, 2:50 am, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/20/2011 6:37 PM, nihil0 wrote: However, this class action argument assumes that the value-density approach is an acceptable way to measure the value in a world. There are a few problems with the value-density approach. First of all, it seems to give up aggregationism (total consequentialism) in favor of average consequentialism. Average consequentialism has the counterintuitive implication that we should kill people who have below- average utility and few friends or loved ones, such as some hermits and homeless people. Secondly, the value-density approach places ethical significance on the spatiotemporal distribution of value. This is at odds with consequentialism's commitment to impartiality (the idea that equal amounts of value are equally good to promote, no matter who or where the beneficiaries are). But this kind of consequentialism is already unworkable. Who counts as a beneficiary? a fetus? someone not yet conceived? chimpanzees? dogs? spiders? In practice we value the well-being of some people a lot more than others and we do so for the simple reason that it makes our life better. Brent Third, the value-density approach fails to apply to inhomogeneous infinite worlds . . . because value-density is undefined for such worlds. (16) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Has anyone responded to Bostrom's argument against aggregative ethics?
On 10/20/2011 7:20 PM, nihil0 wrote: I think most consequentialists, especially utilitarians, consider all sentient beings to have moral status. But *equal* moral status? I cannot believe anyone has ever even attempted to live by such an ethic. Utilitarians say an action is morally better to the extent that it produces more well-being in the world. But measured over what time period? Anyway I would prefer to focus on whether act consequentialism implies that all actions as morally equivalent, if the universe might be canonically infinite. There seems to an inconsistency at the heart of this. The multiverse is postulated to avoid wave-function collapse, so the world evolves strictly unitarily, which is to say deterministically. So you have no libertarian free will with which to make choices anyway. Brent Jon On Oct 21, 2:50 am, meekerdbmeeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/20/2011 6:37 PM, nihil0 wrote: However, this class action argument assumes that the value-density approach is an acceptable way to measure the value in a world. There are a few problems with the value-density approach. First of all, it seems to give up aggregationism (total consequentialism) in favor of average consequentialism. Average consequentialism has the counterintuitive implication that we should kill people who have below- average utility and few friends or loved ones, such as some hermits and homeless people. Secondly, the value-density approach places ethical significance on the spatiotemporal distribution of value. This is at odds with consequentialism's commitment to impartiality (the idea that equal amounts of value are equally good to promote, no matter who or where the beneficiaries are). But this kind of consequentialism is already unworkable. Who counts as a beneficiary? a fetus? someone not yet conceived? chimpanzees? dogs? spiders? In practice we value the well-being of some people a lot more than others and we do so for the simple reason that it makes our life better. Brent Third, the value-density approach fails to apply to inhomogeneous infinite worlds . . . because value-density is undefined for such worlds. (16) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: COMP is empty(?)
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 08:00:55PM -0400, Stephen P. King wrote: There has to be some form of identity thesis between brain and mind that prevents the Occam catastrophe, and also prevent the full retreat into solipsism. I think it very much an open problem what that is. Hi Russell, Would the conjecture that the Stone duality provide a coherent version of this identity thesis? Minds, as per Comp, - logical algebras and Brains - topological spaces. Not not, how so? Onward! Stephen I have to confess to not having the slightest inkling what you're saying here. I did briefly look at Stone duality on Wikipedia, but it didn't help much. I assume that you're interested in some duality between an algebra (perhaps one of Bruno's hypostases, if they're an algebra) and a topological space that could stand in for physical reality, but beyond that I'm totally lost :). -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
