Glen Wrote:
. In so doing, I accused Nick of having
asserted that faith underlies all reality. I
expected him to evolve during the course of the
conversation to explain what actions constitute
"faith". If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's
physical theory of everything! Those actions would
be the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive
component of all other things.
This is a really good question. Nobody has ever asked
me to do that before. I am suddenly made aware of why
Peirce wrote some of the tortured passages he wrote. I
am going to have to think about this.
In the meantime, Eric may be able to tell you what an
evolved Nick will say.
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of glen
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2012 7:48 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] faith, zombies, and crazy people
Arlo Barnes wrote at 09/17/2012 04:03 PM:
> But what if the compressible class turns out to be
the same as the
> uncompressible class?
Well, even if that's true in principle, as long as
there is a predicate to slice them all into two sets: 1)
really really hard to compress vs.
2) pretty easy to compress, we still have a
fundamental, practical, and measurable difference
between say humans and thermostats, respectively.
> It seems the only way to tell is to test every
possible case, as you
> say in your second paragraph.
I don't think it's as much a matter of classifying
every possible system into one or the other classes. I
can see a nice ivory tower job (or perhaps an employee
of the justice dept) for such a taxonomist. But most of
us merely want to handle 80% of the cases well. It's OK
if I can't determine which class Nick, Doug, or any one
individual falls into or even if they spew
disinformation to make me mis-classify them. As long as
I can get most zombies and actors in the right class.
> What it comes down to, though, is that, again as
you say, you are
> talking about knowledge, how people model the
world. But do you [not]
> believe there is a world if there is nobody to
model it?
Let me rephrase it to avoid the whole "conscious
observer" thing. Is there a super system if all
sub-systems are compressible? Yes, absolutely. Just
because there exists some part of the universe that can
adequately model any given part of the universe does
_not_ imply that the universe doesn't exist.
The real problem we face if there are no incompressible
sub-sytems is one of "first cause" or ad infinitum. If
every detail out there is completely explainable from
its initial conditions, then what was the cause of the
initial conditions? (We'll find ourselves looking for
"the one true Actor" in patterns in the cosmic
background radiation!) But if we posit that, say, empty
space is really a dense foam of incompressible systems,
then all we need do is look for a way to scale up.
> COuld there not be the objective
> fact of physical laws, even if they are never
articulated, or at least
> not correctly or fully?
No, not the way I'm using the word "law" (and based on
my own private definition of "articulated" ;-). An
unimplemented "law" is a "thought", which as I said a
few posts ago, in this rhetoric anyway, is not real.
It's a convenient fiction that helps some of our
subsystems maintain control over other of our
subsystems. But an implemented law (like a computer
program and the machine that executes it) _is_ what's
objective. Not only are implementations what is real,
they are the _only_ thing that's real. (The word
"implementation" is unfortunate because it implies the
existence of an abstract thing that's being
implemented. So I really shouldn't use that word ... I
should use "realization" or somesuch that has a higher
ontological status.)
Note that I started this rhetorical position in
response to Nick's assertion that there always exists
"faith" at the bottom of any justification. In order to
make my rhetoric interesting, I have to take a hard line
and agree with Nick that things like beliefs are simply
collections of actions. Hence, all things in the class
containing beliefs (including laws) are not really
things, at least not in and of themselves. In so doing,
I accused Nick of having asserted that faith underlies
all reality. I expected him to evolve during the course
of the conversation to explain what actions constitute
"faith". If we got that far, then we'd have Nick's
physical theory of everything! Those actions would be
the (or at least a) fundamental constitutive component
of all other things.
As usual, the conversation hasn't gone the way I
wanted. Dammit. >8D But I'll still hold my final
trump card to my chest just in case it takes a turn back
in my favor.
--
glen
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