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My profile shows my revision to #5126 under Wall and under Activity, but not the post itself under the Wall. The revision is a jumble of red and green highlighted text (in this case, because the revision was significant), hard to read. Wall should only show latest versions of posts, not edits to them. Edits should go under Activity. And/or have the previous post versions viewable with the little arrows, as usual (and as done in the idea-focused view, after you click on the idea itself). Always show latest versions of ideas on the Wall so it's clear and easy to read.
#5130·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoMaybe natural selection logically does not require death, but when we introduce a scarcity of resources, isn't death an inevitable byproduct? Eventually, the best replicating will be those which take the resources from others? If no death, then number of entities increases without bound. So any real system will have it, or will stop functioning when the limit is reached.
It's sort of like: the "this is replicating less" criticism has no actual weight to it unless there is a point beneath which any less fecundity = bye-bye.
**If things with arbitrarily low fecundity are left intact forever, how is differential replication a criticism?**
In addition to scarcity, you have to assume unbounded growth of the population in an ecosystem, which does not happen.
#5130·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoMaybe natural selection logically does not require death, but when we introduce a scarcity of resources, isn't death an inevitable byproduct? Eventually, the best replicating will be those which take the resources from others? If no death, then number of entities increases without bound. So any real system will have it, or will stop functioning when the limit is reached.
It's sort of like: the "this is replicating less" criticism has no actual weight to it unless there is a point beneath which any less fecundity = bye-bye.
**If things with arbitrarily low fecundity are left intact forever, how is differential replication a criticism?**
Scarcity of resources should not be assumed. You want underlying necessity of the mechanism, not a strained analogy. There is no scarcity for idea resources.
#5133·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoNon-specific criticisms, those not taking into account the content of their target, are always "analogue" (or quantitative as opposed to qualitative) in the sense of being based on a variable whose quantity changes in a medium distinct from that hosting the knowledge it is serving as criticism for. (E.g. capital allocation in an economy; number of instances of a replicator.)
The change in population of a replicator is non-specific to its content?
#5133·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoNon-specific criticisms, those not taking into account the content of their target, are always "analogue" (or quantitative as opposed to qualitative) in the sense of being based on a variable whose quantity changes in a medium distinct from that hosting the knowledge it is serving as criticism for. (E.g. capital allocation in an economy; number of instances of a replicator.)
The capital allocated to a business is non-specific to its content? Conflating with the prices of a good?
#5132·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoSpecific criticisms, those taking into account the content of their target, are always discrete and absolute because they identify a contradiction. (E.g. criticisms of a scientific theory.)
But the extinction of a replicator by destroying its last instance does seem absolute, unlike the change in its population, which I suggest is non-specific to the content in #5133.
#5136·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoWouldn't it have to be instantiated in the overall system itself, which contains the replicators (among other things?)? Otherwise, how could that variable be a form of criticism by the system?
Yes, the quantity variable is instantiated in the collective physical substrate comprising all of the replicator instances.
#5135·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoNone of the replicators have that information. If that quantity variable exists, it's instantiated somewhere else.
Wouldn't it have to be instantiated in the overall system itself, which contains the replicators (among other things?)? Otherwise, how could that variable be a form of criticism by the system?
#5134·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoHow is the quantity of a replicator not based in the same medium as the replicator?
None of the replicators have that information. If that quantity variable exists, it's instantiated somewhere else.
#5133·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoNon-specific criticisms, those not taking into account the content of their target, are always "analogue" (or quantitative as opposed to qualitative) in the sense of being based on a variable whose quantity changes in a medium distinct from that hosting the knowledge it is serving as criticism for. (E.g. capital allocation in an economy; number of instances of a replicator.)
How is the quantity of a replicator not based in the same medium as the replicator?
#5132·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoSpecific criticisms, those taking into account the content of their target, are always discrete and absolute because they identify a contradiction. (E.g. criticisms of a scientific theory.)
Non-specific criticisms, those not taking into account the content of their target, are always "analogue" (or quantitative as opposed to qualitative) in the sense of being based on a variable whose quantity changes in a medium distinct from that hosting the knowledge it is serving as criticism for. (E.g. capital allocation in an economy; number of instances of a replicator.)
Specific criticisms, those taking into account the content of their target, are always discrete and absolute because they identify a contradiction. (E.g. criticisms of a scientific theory.)
#5121·Benjamin Davies, 3 months agoI think it is a mistake to say or imply that variation and selection IS conjecture and criticism. At best C&C is the subset of V&S that occurs in minds. The biosphere doesn’t actually conjecture anything.
Why aren't mutations made to DNA a form of conjecture? I think of conjecture as being a pretty general term -- isn't all knowledge conjectural, ours or otherwise? Maybe semantics. Agreed that criticism is a subset of selection: selection that is a function of the knowledge in the target, perhaps? Whereas differential replication is how selection proceeds without referring to the specific knowledge in the target..? [Overall idea stands despite my concession above]
#5124·Zakery Mizell revised 3 months agoNatural selection requires differential replication, not death. (Death is just an extreme form of differential replication, when compared to any allele that does replicate.)
Maybe natural selection logically does not require death, but when we introduce a scarcity of resources, isn't death an inevitable byproduct? Eventually, the best replicating will be those which take the resources from others? If no death, then number of entities increases without bound. So any real system will have it, or will stop functioning when the limit is reached.
It's sort of like: the "this is replicating less" criticism has no actual weight to it unless there is a point beneath which any less fecundity = bye-bye.
**If things with arbitrarily low fecundity are left intact forever, how is differential replication a criticism?**
#5122·Benjamin Davies, 3 months agoDid you mean "Any given set of knowledge cannot grow itself inferentially"?
No, my thinking here is that any given set of knowledge can only do inference: apply what transformations it has to whatever data it has, and that's it. It can't output things that are not already implicit in it, so cannot grow, in any epistemic sense. Even if running some kind of evolutionary procedure. An external source of novelty is required for growth, with respect to any given set of knowledge.
Natural selection requires differential replication, not death. (Death is just an form of extreme differential replication, when compared to any allele that does replicate.)
Natural selection requires differential replication, not death. (Death is just an extreme form of differential replication, when compared to any allele that does replicate.)
#5089·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoKnowledge growth (such as in genes in the biosphere, or in a person) can only proceed by conjecture and criticism -- variation and selection. In a system which can create knowledge, but has not yet, there are no modes of substantive criticism available, since that would itself require knowledge. So how can the system create knowledge at all? Because although substantive criticism is not yet possible, the crudest form of full-on refutation is: the destruction of the information medium on which a conjecture is based, i.e., death. Death is the only "undesigned" refutation. So any initial knowledge created in an otherwise empty knowledge-creating system can only be that relating to how to avoid death in the local environment. This is the knowledge which defines replicators.
Natural selection requires differential replication, not death. (Death is just an form of extreme differential replication, when compared to any allele that does replicate.)
#5102·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoConversely, non-inferential novelty does not follow by any inference or deduction; it is not implicit in existing knowledge, so it is not in any set of knowledge's implication space (except that of the laws of physics...).
Knowledge which is novel in this way is what constitutes creation in the sense we mean in epistemology. The two known examples of non-inferential knowledge growth are biological evolution and some of the thinking which takes place in the minds of people (human or AGI).
Any given set of knowledge cannot grow itself non-inferentially. There must be a source of novelty, of variation, that is epistemically external to it.
If we take that claim as general, then the mutation of DNA constituting the creation/novelty/knowledge-growth in biology is a specific instance: cosmic ray strikes and errors in copying due to chemistry are sources of variation not caused by the DNA’s knowledge).
Did you mean "Any given set of knowledge cannot grow itself inferentially"?
#5089·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoKnowledge growth (such as in genes in the biosphere, or in a person) can only proceed by conjecture and criticism -- variation and selection. In a system which can create knowledge, but has not yet, there are no modes of substantive criticism available, since that would itself require knowledge. So how can the system create knowledge at all? Because although substantive criticism is not yet possible, the crudest form of full-on refutation is: the destruction of the information medium on which a conjecture is based, i.e., death. Death is the only "undesigned" refutation. So any initial knowledge created in an otherwise empty knowledge-creating system can only be that relating to how to avoid death in the local environment. This is the knowledge which defines replicators.
I think it is a mistake to say or imply that variation and selection IS conjecture and criticism. At best C&C is the subset of V&S that occurs in minds. The biosphere doesn’t actually conjecture anything.
#5118·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoAn example of this is prices in a market: a price communicates information about (or caused by) knowledge in a system while being agnostic to the content; the specifics and interactions of the target knowledge are abstracted away, so any changes made by sources receiving the price information remain blind to the target, and therefore can remain a source of novelty to them (the prices themselves are not a source of novelty; they are a means of retaining a causal relationship while preventing the “collapse” of two epistemic systems into one)...
Any relation in all this to entanglement and decoherence? In the picture laid out here, the non-specificity of feedback seems to be preventing decoherence of a sort...
#5113·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoConjecture: a source of variation with its own knowledge can remain blind and external to its target while nonetheless receiving feedback from the target, so long as the feedback is non-specific to any content in the target.
I.e., information caused (if only partially) by some source can be "content independent" w.r.t. that source in a similar sense to how information itself is substrate independent.
#5113·Tyler MillsOP, 3 months agoConjecture: a source of variation with its own knowledge can remain blind and external to its target while nonetheless receiving feedback from the target, so long as the feedback is non-specific to any content in the target.
An example of this is prices in a market: a price communicates information about (or caused by) knowledge in a system while being agnostic to the content; the specifics and interactions of the target knowledge are abstracted away, so any changes made by sources receiving the price information remain blind to the target, and therefore can remain a source of novelty to them (the prices themselves are not a source of novelty; they are a means of retaining a causal relationship while preventing the “collapse” of two epistemic systems into one)...
#5116·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months ago
should_adopt?andpending_criticismsare implemented in terms of each other. Doesn’t that cause an infinite regress?
No because 1) there’s always a finite amount of deeply nested criticisms, and 2) the discussion graph is acyclic.
#5114·Dennis HackethalOP revised 3 months agoRecursive Epistemology
Veritula implements a recursive epistemology. For a criticism to be pending, it can’t have any pending criticisms itself, and so on, in a deeply nested fashion.
rubydef should_adopt? ideapending_criticisms(idea).none?enddef pending_criticisms ideacriticisms(idea).filter { |c| should_adopt?(c) }enddef criticisms ideachildren(idea).filter(&:criticism?)endThis approach is different from non-recursive epistemologies, which handle criticisms differently. For example, they might not consider deeply nested criticisms when determining whether an idea is currently criticized.
should_adopt? and pending_criticisms are implemented in terms of each other. Doesn’t that cause an infinite regress?
Simplify code
Recursive Epistemology
Veritula implements a recursive epistemology. For a criticism to be pending, it can’t have any pending criticisms itself, and so on, in a deeply nested fashion.
def criticized? ideapending_criticisms(idea).any?enddef pending_criticisms ideacriticisms(idea).filter { |c| pending_criticisms(c).none? }enddef criticisms ideachildren(idea).filter(&:criticism?)end
This approach is different from non-recursive epistemologies, which handle criticisms differently. For example, they might not consider deeply nested criticisms when determining whether an idea is currently criticized.
Recursive Epistemology
Veritula implements a recursive epistemology. For a criticism to be pending, it can’t have any pending criticisms itself, and so on, in a deeply nested fashion.
def should_adopt? ideapending_criticisms(idea).none?enddef pending_criticisms ideacriticisms(idea).filter { |c| should_adopt?(c) }enddef criticisms ideachildren(idea).filter(&:criticism?)end
This approach is different from non-recursive epistemologies, which handle criticisms differently. For example, they might not consider deeply nested criticisms when determining whether an idea is currently criticized.