Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

NYT: The end of genius

Contingency! I do have to thank certain limited folks on this forum for assisting me in my own growth. I remember getting a little irritated when Grant described me as having "raw intelligence" a few years ago, but in retrospect it was certainly accurate.

 

[Einherjar86]

Emergence isn't a tree/pyramid structure at all. If anything, it's comprised of infinitely-overlapping Venn diagrams, some larger than others and infiltrating other spheres of influence.

Let's go concrete again: the sphere of a traffic jam infiltrates more, and much larger, spheres of influence than fuel injectors, but this doesn't mean we don't find fuel injectors in multiple locations. It simply means that fuel injectors cross less into the sphere of larger complex systems than a traffic jam might.

In response to your accusation that emergence is short-sighted, less me ask you this: when assessing psychological impact that extreme traffic congestion has on a middle-aged man heading home from work, how much time must we spend explaining the function of fuel injectors? We know that fuel injectors have already played a role; we know that they allow cars to work. On the level, or plane, at which we're debating, it serves little purpose to mention fuel injectors. The traffic jam is also participating, as is the person whose mental health is at stake. At this point, we can observe these phenomena occurring, and assess their impact, without resorting to explaining the mechanisms that allow cars to work.

EDIT: that article depicts the historical conditioning of concepts like "genius" really well.

Now, for something else on... emergence:

http://www.technologyreview.com/vie...mergence-organisation-and-the-origin-of-life/

They go on to show how evolution can work on a single autocatalytic set, producing new subsets within it that are mutually dependent on each other. This process sets up an environment in which newer subsets can evolve.

“In other words, self-sustaining, functionally closed structures can arise at a higher level (an autocatalytic set of autocatalytic sets), i.e., true emergence,” they say.

That’s an interesting view of emergence and certainly seems a sensible approach to the problem of the origin of life. It’s not hard to imagine groups of molecules operating together like this. And indeed, biochemists have recently discovered simple autocatalytic sets that behave in exactly this way.

But what makes the approach so powerful is that the mathematics does not depend on the nature of chemistry–it is substrate independent. So the building blocks in an autocatalytic set need not be molecules at all but any units that can manipulate other units in the required way.

These units can be complex entities in themselves. “Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to think, for example, of the collection of bacterial species in your gut (several hundreds of them) as one big autocatalytic set,” say Kauffman and co.

The lines in bold highlight the importance of contingency for emergence. All emergence says is that similar wholes can still arise from disparate parts. Contingency plays a role at all levels for the mechanisms within those levels; but as we shift our perspective to different levels, we find that these mechanisms need not play an important role for assessing the quality of relationships of varying complexity, because different mechanisms can give rise to the same complex whole.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on emergence:

For Mill and Broad, emergence involves the appearance of primitive high-level causal interactions that are additional to those of the more fundamental levels. Alexander, by contrast, is committed only to the appearance of novel qualities and associated, high-level causal patterns which cannot be directly expressed in terms of the more fundamental entities and principles. But these patterns do not supplement, much less supersede, the fundamental interactions. Rather, they are macroscopic patterns running through those very microscopic interactions. Emergent qualities are something truly new under the sun, but the world's fundamental dynamics remain unchanged.

 

[Einherjar86]

Privacy, Surveillance, and Revenge:

 

[Dak]

Emergence isn't a tree/pyramid structure at all. If anything, it's comprised of infinitely-overlapping Venn diagrams, some larger than others and infiltrating other spheres of influence.

Contradicts:

But what makes the approach so powerful is that the mathematics does not depend on the nature of chemistry–it is substrate independent. So the building blocks in an autocatalytic set need not be molecules at all but any units that can manipulate other units in the required way.

Which essentially contradicts itself. Despite the fact that a model can have interchangeable variables, this neither necessarily validates the model nor makes outcomes substrate independent.

Privacy, Surveillance, and Revenge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLihNlDhu_E

Watts lifts bro. I concur, more or less, with his solution direction. If it exists, it is never safe. Snapchat shot to popularity for the destruction mechanism - which turned out to be less effective than advertised, but still. He mentioned Lavabit, didn't know about the other one. I wish the slides had been included.

 

[Einherjar86]

Contradicts:

You're going to have to explain, because I don't see how.

Watts lifts bro. I concur, more or less, with his solution direction. If it exists, it is never safe. Snapchat shot to popularity for the destruction mechanism - which turned out to be less effective than advertised, but still. He mentioned Lavabit, didn't know about the other one. I wish the slides had been included.

I don't agree with his scorched-earth argument; but I accept the biology.

 

[Einherjar86]

As some here probably already know, I'm simultaneously fascinated and appalled by Nick Land. I've recently come across some new information from scholar Robin MacKay (relayed by Craig Hickman) that only drills this obsession deeper:

Makay tells us that there came a point in Land’s pursuit of his project that it bore down into an abstract kernel: “Land would increasingly be found, having taken the very minimum amount of sleep possible (by this point he lived in his office), pursuing intense ‘mechanomical’ research involving shuffling symbols endlessly on the green screen of his obsolete machine into the depths of the night.” He’d become for all intents and purposes a techno-kabbalist pursuing the numeric and coded sequences of a programmatic algorithm that might finally disturb the universe. Ultimately this experiment in numeric minimalism led to what Mackay can only describe in clinical terms as “Land did ‘go mad.’” At this point the experiment was over.

Like many in the Secular Age who have pushed the limits of thought to their final conclusion: Blake, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, and many others, Land, too, crossed that zone into the abyss. We could cite scholars on Shamanism, Voodoism, etc. cultures that had mapped the use of thought and natural plant substances in pursuit of the Void, how they had developed intricate psychic maps of these uncharted terrains that could be replanted in initiates through special techniques, etc. But these were ancient or living indigenous cultures, not the atheistic secular worlds of our own age cut off as they are from such knowledge’s and roadmaps into the abyss. When Mackay contacted Land about republication of his work Land was fine with it but said of that era: “I think it’s best to gently back off. It belongs in the clawed embrace of the undead amphetamine god.” Ultimately Mackay would tell us that it is Land’s collected essays Fanged Noumena, not his full length work A Thirst for Annihilation which would be remembered. Yet, even now, Mackay reminds us that Land – living in Shanghai as a journalist, harbors thoughts of that strangeness that is overtaking humanity: “A planet piloted from the future by something that comes from outside personal or collective human intention, and which we can no longer pretend has anything to do with reason or progress.”

http://darkecologies.com/2014/07/24...man-accelerationism-nick-land-and-his-legacy/

http://divus.cc/london/en/article/nick-land-ein-experiment-im-inhumanismus

 

[Dak]

Contradicts:



Which essentially contradicts itself. Despite the fact that a model can have interchangeable variables, this neither necessarily validates the model nor makes outcomes substrate independent.

You're going to have to explain, because I don't see how.

A model which boasts substrate independent outputs, besides being problematic in itself, is certainly not in line with anything approaching a "Venn" conceptualization of emergence.

 

[Einherjar86]

Because effects in spheres thrice-removed somehow do touch the sphere they're thrice-removed from?

That was sarcasm. I don't think you have any solid means of proving that emergence can't be roughly explained through recourse to the metaphor of a Venn diagram. Venn diagrams are models, nothing more, and they're useful in thinking of how various networks complexly interact. "Substrate independence" doesn't entail hierarchy, or imply that substrate-independent effects are somehow "higher." They're simply distinguishable from the components of the substrate.

 

[Einherjar86]

Paraphrasing:

The current fad of brain scanning is... of almost no scientist interest whatsoever. I think brain scanning is mostly non-scientific fishing expeditions, trying to find correlations between psychological events on the one hand, and brain events on the other. And sometimes they appear to find such correlations. But there are two very big "buts" even if they find the correlations: the first is they don't know what they're correlating, and... they aren't driven by theory, about what's actually going on, about what the brain is doing, about what are the psychological functions that the brain is actually making possible.

http://iai.tv/video/neuroscience-vs-philosophy

 

[Dak]

Because effects in spheres thrice-removed somehow do touch the sphere they're thrice-removed from?

That was sarcasm. I don't think you have any solid means of proving that emergence can't be roughly explained through recourse to the metaphor of a Venn diagram. Venn diagrams are models, nothing more, and they're useful in thinking of how various networks complexly interact. "Substrate independence" doesn't entail hierarchy, or imply that substrate-independent effects are somehow "higher." They're simply distinguishable from the components of the substrate.

I was saying emergence can be explained via recourse to Venn's - just that all the stuff you have been posting and quoting do not seem to align with that understanding. Substrate independent, as used, means that you can plug in any substrate, and get the same result. This is absurd, and completely un-Venn-like.


Responding to the thing with Menger, you essentially had two separate issues that can be summed with the following:

First:

The Austrian argument is sound on paper, but it can't explain anomalies and instances of deviation, which aren't rare. Furthermore, it can't account for the dynamics of historical development.

......

Austrianism's individualist explanation makes great sense and sounds logical from an internal perspective; the only problem is it's basically useless today on a practical level. When I say "practical," I don't mean immediate interactions between a small number of individuals. I mean the entire, interconnected, global network, which is the modern economic reality.

What "anomalies" and "deviations" are you referring to as discrediting and unexplainable? Throwing around "dynamic global economy" is an old hand wave by central planning for some time, and yet central planning has only the same tools for "managing the complex dynamism" (dynamism which comes from - billions of actors!) that have always existed - controlling the money/credit supply, and regulation/taxes, and necessarily manages it to a destructive end. Appealing to complexity is playing to a market strength, not attacking a weakness.

I really don't know where the idea that "we would have to go back to barter" comes from.


Second:

Even Menger admitted that government has a role to play in the printing of money. The reason for this claim is that Menger acknowledged the complexity of the modern system. Westley completely ignores Menger's monetary theory because he has no use for it; it doesn't jive with his resistance to regulation. It doesn't jive with the Mises Institute's general resistance to the state in its modern form.

And Rothbard thought gold/silver would always only be the best option, and yet plenty of Austrians support digital currencies. One doesn't have to swallow everything.

The entire political economy hinges on satisfying human wants and needs, which are subjective, ordinal, and fluid. You have agreed before that "economics is a social science", and it is an approach in the tradition that includes Menger that approaches economics with this understanding.

Now, I do agree, in a way, that "monumental changes in the 19th-20th century displaced the individual", but it was most certainly disastrous in both (then) current and future terms. World wars, secular nationalism, globalized networks of central banks, etc. have all been offspring of the progressive anti-individual movement. These have all been quite destructive, and continue to be so.


I mainly shared that article for this segment:

Nonetheless, the values of all of the goods of whatever order are derived from the initial subjective desire on the part of the individual to satisfy a felt need, so that rubber has value not in itself or in the work effort going into its production, but because of the initial human desire for transportation, leading to a human preference for cars. This understanding of goods contrasted greatly with the Classical economist’s notion that the value of economic inputs is based on their technical usefulness in production. Menger’s value theory represents an expansion of Say’s Law that supply creates its own demand, and is the proper theoretical response to the monetary and credit cranks (of Menger’s time as well as today) who see no difference between government-created and -directed capital and privately-created and -directed capital.

In truth, government-created capital satisfies the needs of the political classes and the special interests connected to it, whereas privately-directed capital is directed at the satisfaction of consumer wants.

 

[Einherjar86]

Substrate independent, as used, means that you can plug in any substrate, and get the same result. This is absurd

It's not absurd; in fact, it's been observed to happen. I can't understand why you find it so inconceivable that the same phenomenon can arise from different combinations of acting agents.

and completely un-Venn-like.

Explain why.

Responding to the thing with Menger, you essentially had two separate issues that can be summed with the following:

First:

...central planning has only the same tools for "managing the complex dynamism" (dynamism which comes from - billions of actors!) that have always existed - controlling the money/credit supply, and regulation/taxes, and necessarily manages it to a destructive end.

Billions of actors do exist, as do processes and systems that operate efficiently without appealing to the desires and demands of every individual. It's just a matter of identifying where the influence lies. Does it lie in individuals? Sure; but it also derives from the top down.

I really don't know where the idea that "we would have to go back to barter" comes from.

It's the easiest way to avoid regulatory complications over governments that print money.

Now, I do agree, in a way, that "monumental changes in the 19th-20th century displaced the individual", but it was most certainly disastrous in both (then) current and future terms. World wars, secular nationalism, globalized networks of central banks, etc. have all been offspring of the progressive anti-individual movement.

I disagree. I think those individuals who formed the central banks and initiated wars (to some extent) had very individual goals in mind.

I still admit that the individual has considerable influence; but I'm unwilling to admit, based on anything you've said, that the individual is the basic unit of modern complex social phenomena. I think influence runs both ways, and I think this means that some systems remain out of human hands, so to speak.

That said, on a political level, I'm ready to disown the individual. The more we trace modern phenomena back to the individual, the more we discover that the individual is an impotent bag of bones.

 

[Dak]

It's not absurd; in fact, it's been observed to happen. I can't understand why you find it so inconceivable that the same phenomenon can arise from different combinations of acting agents.

Explain why.

So I can spray some paint in the air and throw beer at it and voila consciousness? Or something? What has been observed?

The only model I can think of that you can feed anything into it, that gives the same output, requires a particular zeroing constant. So I guess if death is emergent there is always that. But I suspect that isn't what is being referred to.

Responding to the thing with Menger, you essentially had two separate issues that can be summed with the following:

First:

Billions of actors do exist, as do processes and systems that operate efficiently without appealing to the desires and demands of every individual. It's just a matter of identifying where the influence lies. Does it lie in individuals? Sure; but it also derives from the top down.

It's the easiest way to avoid regulatory complications over governments that print money.

There is an interplay, but top down influence has significant limitations - you can create booms to a point, and you can limit the bust to a point, but you only have those two options and you can't control the end of the boom nor infinitely delay the bust.

"Operating efficiently" doesn't mean anything important as used. Efficiency is entirely subjective. Assuming for the moment barter is the only way to avoid regulation (it's not, and also doesn't always), it is quite efficient in that regard.

In a system that stomps on the individual, of course anti-individual mechanisms appear the most efficient way to do that. You couldn't efficiently be anti-individual by being definitionally pro-individual.

I disagree. I think those individuals who formed the central banks and initiated wars (to some extent) had very individual goals in mind.

I still admit that the individual has considerable influence; but I'm unwilling to admit, based on anything you've said, that the individual is the basic unit of modern complex social phenomena. I think influence runs both ways, and I think this means that some systems remain out of human hands, so to speak.

That said, on a political level, I'm ready to disown the individual. The more we trace modern phenomena back to the individual, the more we discover that the individual is an impotent bag of bones.

Many/most systems remain out of a given individuals complete, direct control, but it does not follow therefore that individuals are impotent. Sociality requires the human, as the human requires sociality just by the nature of "two or more".

 

[Einherjar86]

So I can spray some paint in the air and throw beer at it and voila consciousness? Or something? What has been observed?

I know you're not stupid; but this is a stupid comment.

As far as everything else goes, I should have been clearer: I acknowledge that the individual isn't impotent, but I insist upon the impotence of the individual for political reasons.

I don't see individualism as logically sound for our purposes of conceptualizing and comprehending modernity. You probably don't see this as logically sound. But this whole individualism debate is worthless to me, because is every argument I've seen the individual is never the conclusion of a line of reasoning; it is always the premise, or the rationale, from which Austrian and neoliberal arguments are derived. The classic defenses of individualism always end up fixating on some kind of preeminent kernel that I don't believe exists (e.g. Cartesian subjectivity). Thus, in response to what I perceive as fundamentalist insistence on, and near-worship of, the individual, I counter with a critique of individualism. I firmly believe that there is a reason we're seeing an increase in such critiques and posthumanisms around us today: because modernity is making it increasingly clear that the individual is nothing more than an ideological construction and not fundamental or essential being.

Society as defined by humans requires the human. We wallow in solipsism. Thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of the living.

 

[Dak]

I know you're not stupid; but this is a stupid comment.

I have not seen no evidence of substrate independent anything, nor even the possibility. Because of contingency, we know that even were something independent of a particular course of action or event, it is not independent of all potential actions or events. For instance:

One might argue that x_president would still be president even if you removed y number of voters from the equation. This is not true substrate independence, but would appear to be independence of some measure of the substrate. However, this ignores all other possibilities for those voters as well as the unknown effects for removing them completely. To not remove them entirely leaves open a host of other possibilities - all of which can and/or will affect the presidency in some fashion.

I don't see your position as logically sound. You probably don't see mine as logically sound. .... Thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of the living.

The entire approach that sees social and other systems and technology as running around independent of humans I find completely lacking in any practical aspect. It fails the rubber/road test. While there may be statements that could be construed or interpreted as sound after a fashion, or even potentially enlightening (like that last sentence), they do not have a logical conclusion of "substrate independence", because this simply diverges from applicability.

"Thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of the living". One way to interpret this is that we often think in ways that are not beneficial to ourselves, we are sometimes pressured by expectations of those dead or those which may as well be. This does not mean that thinking is independent of the substrates of either the individual, context, or history.

 

[Einherjar86]

Because of contingency, we know that even were something independent of a particular course of action or event, it is not independent of all potential actions or events.

This is your problem: you don't understand the term. Substrate independence doesn't mean that "high-level" complexities exist without any help whatsoever from their substrates. It means that different combinations of whatever substrate you're working with possess the potential to arrive at the same complex phenomenon. Not only that, certain phenomena may even arise from an entirely different substrate. The article I posted earlier about chemical complexities being substrate-independent merely mean that mathematically, these chemical processes can emerge via entirely different components and combinations thereof.

So, human beings possess this thing we call consciousness, which we don't fully understand. However, as computers get more and more complex, they also begin to approximate this thing we call consciousness. Consciousness, in this respect, can only be explained via the phenomenal observations of it, since we do not have any real grasp of its components. As computers become increasingly sophisticated (like the recent computer that purportedly passed a Turing Test), they will exhibit the phenomenon known as consciousness. However, the "substrate" of computer consciousness is entirely different from that of human consciousness, but they look remarkably similar.

Thus, "consciousness," as observed by us, is substrate independent because it can arise from combinations of different components.

 

[Dak]

But determining what is in fact "the same" is pretty debatable.

 

[Einherjar86]

But determining what is in fact "the same" is pretty debatable.

You're exactly right. So, because of the fact that we cannot be certain about their similarity, we should entirely discount something that appears, in various forms, to be the same?

The theory of emergence derives from empirical observation, mathematical calculation, and experimentation; everything that you typically endorse. Complex systems have observable/measurable qualities that their components do not have; traffic jams have the quality of impacting global climate, a quality that all the steering wheels put together in a big pile do not have.

Human consciousness can enable interaction/communication between human actors, a quality that advanced computer consciousness also possesses; but a single neuron or synapse, or a single piece of computer wiring, does not possess this capacity.

Emergence is about complex models that can arise from multiple combinations of component parts. For all intents and purposes these models behave and function in the same way. And your argument is that we don't know if they're absolutely the same? Well, investigations into the parts themselves have been going on for centuries, and to no avail; and now we have computers and programs capable of running simulations and testing this data, and it's becoming quite clear that various combinations can result in the appearance of similar, if not the same, complex phenomena.

 

[Dak]

This becomes a definitional problem. A single neuron cannot communicate because that would require 2. But two neurons do communicate. How do we know the communication isn't every bit if not more complex than our "conscious" communication. Worlds within worlds.

But I get it. You could still have a traffic jam if all the combustible engine and steering wheel designed cars were replaced with electric engines and gamepads designs. However, changing the design type might change the when/where/if/how/why of a jam, and also may change our treatment of the jam. The more vague we get, the more everything can start looking the same. I mean, there's no difference between a joystick and a steering wheel. It is a "control device". Electric vs combustion is still merely an "engine". The lines being drawn to describe emergence in the above fashion are quite self serving in fashion, as the situation requires. "These are all merely cars, but these are not all merely steering/control devices". Basically, wanting it specific as possible until the next to last stage, where it must be as general as possible.

 

[Einherjar86]

This becomes a definitional problem. A single neuron cannot communicate because that would require 2. But two neurons do communicate. How do we know the communication isn't every bit if not more complex than our "conscious" communication. Worlds within worlds.

Now you're backpedaling. Sure, maybe there's some hidden aspect of neural communication that eludes us, making it mystically complex! You can claim unknown unknowns for anything, sir.

But as far as we can tell, neural communication is simply electronic; bio-electronic impulses taking place between neurons. The "mystery" is: how does consciousness arise from this?

Communication between two neurons is qualitatively different than a conscious human brain. Part of the actually-recorded scientific data has to do with the fact that a full brain comprises a network, within which neural communication results in feedback loops that: a) construct a conscious system, and b) that are affected in turn by the downward causation of an entire conscious system.

Two neurons cannot create the complexity of the conscious brain; it simply isn't possible, and we've measured this, we've observed it. The communication is of a qualitatively different nature, the observed phenomenon is different.

But I get it. You could still have a traffic jam if all the combustible engine and steering wheel designed cars were replaced with electric engines and gamepads designs. However, changing the design type might change the when/where/if/how/why of a jam, and also may change our treatment of the jam.

Sure, but it won't change the fact that the "jam" still possesses qualities lacking among the component parts.

 

[Dak]

Now you're backpedaling. Sure, maybe there's some hidden aspect of neural communication that eludes us, making it mystically complex! You can claim unknown unknowns for anything, sir.

But as far as we can tell, neural communication is simply electronic; bio-electronic impulses taking place between neurons. The "mystery" is: how does consciousness arise from this?

Communication between two neurons is qualitatively different than a conscious human brain. Part of the actually-recorded scientific data has to do with the fact that a full brain comprises a network, within which neural communication results in feedback loops that: a) construct a conscious system, and b) that are affected in turn by the downward causation of an entire conscious system.

Two neurons cannot create the complexity of the conscious brain; it simply isn't possible, and we've measured this, we've observed it. The communication is of a qualitatively different nature, the observed phenomenon is different.

Just like intelligence is observed and measured via IQ tests? Seems like wanting it both ways. Two neurons do not create the complexity of the conscious brain - apples and oranges. That doesn't mean potentially equal or superior complexity isn't there. Merely different.

Sure, but it won't change the fact that the "jam" still possesses qualities lacking among the component parts.

To be clear, are you stating that the jam possesses qualities none of the individual components possess individually, or that the jam possesses qualities which have no corresponding component?