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Computational Universality only implies that all computable programs can be run by UCs. But what is relevant here is what programs can be reached by a given program -- synthesized by it. A UC with knowledge that only contains objectively whirlpool-scale conjectures (resulting from external stimulus or not) will not have niches relating to molecule-scale theories. Such theories solve no problems for it. So there will be no selection for those theories, so evolution will not develop them. Molecule-scale theories constitute intractable niches for the whirlpool system. They are still possible to run, if present, but that is not what's at issue. Observer Theory is correct if it is saying that the theories of reality developed by systems will depend on the abstraction level of their knowledge with respect to reality.

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#4680·​Tyler Mills, 7 months ago

The aliasing that happens with the flipbook is a consequence of an imaging system. To suggest that theories/programs/explanations would be subject to aliasing in the same way suggests that they are derived from observation, which is Empiricism (false). They are created from mutation and criticism of existing knowledge, and this process can be performed by all universal computers. Any explanation/rendering/program runnable on one UC is runnable on all, so two observers can always converge to the same laws of physics.

#4679·​Tyler Mills, 7 months ago

I'm realizing this is very related to Stephen Wolfram's "Observer Theory", which is interesting, but sounds worryingly relativist to me at times. Something like: Different observers will coarse-grain different laws of physics than the ones we have, for the same reason that the flipbook appears to have motion to us, but not to an observer viewing through a high-speed camera. Debating with LLMs about how that seems to violate computational universality has left me frustrated.

#4676·​Tyler Mills, 7 months ago

Better example maybe: A whirlpool in water only exists to an observer that can create whirlpools in its VR. If the observer only has molecule-scale abstraction, it cannot coarse-grain, so there are no whirlpools for it, or explanations in terms of them. (Such a system also cannot be a person, because a person can create all possible explanations).

#4675·​Tyler Mills, 7 months ago

Is all emergence relative? I notice that when a flipbook or a zoetrope gives rise to the perceived motion of still images when they're rapidly changed, that is a result of aliasing on the part of the observer. Is this true in all cases of emergence, perceptual and otherwise..?

#4615·​Tyler Mills, 7 months ago

Can you say more about what you mean by “relative”? I agree about the flipbook example, but the term “relative” is throwing me off a bit here.

#4623·​Dennis Hackethal, 7 months ago

Can there be such a thing as too much fun?
Can there be such a thing as too much profit?

In both cases, I think ‘no’. And I wonder if the fear of ‘too much’ fun and ‘too much’ profit is fundamentally the same thing.

Like, when parents worry that their kids are having too much fun, and when socialists are suspicious of companies turning a profit… is that an expression of the same fear?

Maybe the role of profit in the economy is the same as that of fun in a single mind: it signals successful discovery of common preferences.

#4474·​Dennis Hackethal, 8 months ago

Coercion in the economy is when a trade happens even though the price would otherwise be too high for at least one of the parties involved.

If emotions are price signals in the mind, maybe bad emotions signal a high price. Coercing yourself to do something you don’t want to do then means to disregard that high price and do the thing anyway. You pay a high price you wouldn’t otherwise pay. Similar to coercion in the economy.

Is there a universal evil at work in both coercive economies and coercive minds? A kind of socialism of the mind?

#4647·​Dennis Hackethal, 7 months ago

Can there be such a thing as too much fun?
Can there be such a thing as too much profit?

In both cases, I think ‘no’. And I wonder if the fear of ‘too much’ fun and ‘too much’ profit is fundamentally the same thing.

Like, when parents worry that their kids are having too much fun, and when socialists are suspicious of companies turning a profit… is that an expression of the same fear?

Maybe the role of profit in the economy is the same as that of fun in a single mind: it signals successful discovery of common preferences.

#4474·​Dennis Hackethal, 8 months ago

Curing addiction

If I’m right that the cause of addiction is an entrenched conflict between preferences (#3040), then there’s a simple cure for addiction:¹ common-preference finding with yourself.

Common-preference finding is a concept I am borrowing from a parenting philosophy called Taking Children Seriously (TCS), cofounded by David Deutsch:

A common preference is a solution to a problem, or resolution of a disagreement, that all parties prefer to their prima facie positions, and to all other candidate solutions they can think of. It is the solution that pleases everyone involved in the disagreement.

I think common-preference finding is not only the solution to conflicts between people, but also to conflicts between preferences inside a single person. When such conflicts inside a single mind are entrenched, we are dealing with addiction. Since addiction is a special kind of conflict, the solution to addiction is the same as the solution to conflicts generally: common-preference finding.

Consider an alcoholic. The two entrenched preferences, in the simplest possible terms, are: to drink, and to stop drinking. In this context, I think it helps to view this single alcoholic as two people. In other words, we can view each preference as a person, or an autonomous actor of sorts. Not because the alcoholic necessarily has a split personality in the clinical sense – although we’ll soon see that the addict acts as his own adversary – but because it helps illustrate the logic behind common-preference finding: it’s fundamentally no different within a single person than across people.

So again, let’s view an alcoholic as two people, just as a thought experiment. They’re forced to be roommates and combine their finances. One of them wants to drink and spend their money on alcohol, whereas the other does not want that. Moving out – choosing not to associate – is not an option because there’s no freedom of association inside a single mind. Although we may choose not to be roommates with an alcoholic, the alcoholic has no choice but to be roommates with himself.

How are these two ‘people’ to live together in harmony? As long as they’re in conflict, they will try to undermine each other. One will put the liquor in the top cabinet to make it harder to reach – the other will get it anyway. One will ask a friend to hold on to his credit card, the other will convince that same friend to give it back.

We can see the same self-adversarial dynamic in addictions to various things. For example, somebody asked (emphasis mine):

What can I do against my addiction to certain websites? I'm addicted to some sites, and I already tried to block them, but I always go back to unblock. I always waste a lot of time on them, and I'm annoyed by myself than I can[’t] stay away from them.

Do you see the dynamic? He’s like two people: person A blocks the website, until the urge to visit it gets too strong and person B unblocks it. Then person A gets annoyed at person B – who was presumably annoyed at person A for blocking the site in the first place. And the only way to get (temporary) relief from this conflict is to indulge and visit the site again – or so it seems.

This person’s frustration makes it easier to see that, again, knowledge inside a single mind does not act fundamentally differently from knowledge across minds. When you’re in conflict with somebody else, you may feel hopeless at times, like there’s no way to reach that person, and you wish they’d just listen to reason. But that situation is not fundamentally different when that other person is yourself! People sometimes think you should be able to just ‘will away’ those conflicting preferences inside you, but that isn’t always easier to do with yourself than it is with someone else.

Somebody responded to the tortured soul above. Again we see the same self-adversarial dynamic at play:

I have the same problem.

The only solution I have is to remove your accounts completely, or make it so that you can never login again.

A good way for this is to implement a 2-way verification on your account with an Authentication app, then you logout, remove your TOKENS in the Authentication app, and then clear the web browser. You can also reset the backup codes for the 2 way authentication before log out the final time and don't save them.

Now you are out for good.

Except you’re not. Remember, the addict is his own creative adversary. He’ll find ways to get what he wants. So the same respondent immediately contradicts himself (emphasis mine):

I did this, but I managed to get back in by talking to the owner of the site. Why did I do this? 😔

The key is to never give yourself the permission to never under any circumstances look at the site again. … If you look at the site again, I will guarantee you that you will find a way to get back in.

In other words, this person suggests that the ‘solution’ to this conflict between preferences is to entrench it even further by having one run roughshod over the other. That’s not a solution. On the contrary, I suspect it would just frustrate that other part of him, which would then want to visit the site even more, and find even more creative ways to visit it. If somebody else disregarded your preferences, wouldn’t you feel justified in disregarding theirs? Yes. Why should that be any different when that somebody else is yourself? It isn’t.

This respondent continues:

Find something else to do. Because you can not [sic] remove a habbit [sic], you [c]an only replace it by something else. This is the secret [to] habbit building. Maybe every time you feel the urge to look at the website, take a book from your bookshelf and start reading that instead.

Hope this helps.

Now, whether reading is an actual solution to this conflict depends on the person. Given this respondent’s previous statements, I suspect he’s merely suggesting another form of self-coercion: read whether you like it or not. Again, that will not work; it may well worsen the addiction. But if reading is something both parts of him prefer to their respective initial position, then the addiction should disappear quickly because there’s no reason for either part to continue holding its initial position.

The logic would be the same for the alcoholic from our thought experiment: if part A of his mind wants to spend money on alcohol, while part B wants to spend that money on movie tickets instead, but then they find they both prefer to spend the money on a new book, then they will be in harmony again.

In short, the cure to addiction is common-preference finding with yourself. Unfortunately, there’s no predetermined recipe that you could follow. What you can do, though, is best described by the quote from The Beginning of Infinity from #760:

[W]hat is necessary for progress is to exclude ideas that fail to survive criticism, and to prevent their entrenchment, and to promote the creation of new ideas.

By definition, once you’re addicted, it’s too late to prevent entrenchment. But that still leaves two possible actions: discarding ideas that fail to survive criticism and promoting the creation of new ideas. In essence, using Veritula.

The cure for addiction is to create new ideas until you find at least one that you are completely unconflicted about.

---

1. Simple, not necessarily easy! Also, I don’t think addiction (of the mind) is a disease, so I use the term ‘cure’ loosely/figuratively.

#4624·​Dennis HackethalOP, 7 months ago

Is all emergence relative? I notice that when a flipbook or a zoetrope gives rise to the perceived motion of still images when they're rapidly changed, that is a result of aliasing on the part of the observer. Is this true in all cases of emergence, perceptual and otherwise..?

#4615·​Tyler Mills, 7 months ago

Most ridiculous are takes about so-called Turing test, which, AFAIK, originally was just a bad misogynic joke. Some kind of evolutionary psychology experiments, which people already have set up to study limits of different animals cognitive abilities and abilities to make judgements (e.g. role-playing, like: what ones know about other know about them, and vice versa), or a development of infant children's abilities to interpret concepts like geometry of space, cause and consequence -- would be way better criteria for the AGI system metrics evaluation.

#4541·​Yurii Pytomets, 7 months ago

Ayn Rand on why middle-of-the-roaders can be worse than outright opponents:

[Page 1]
August 21, 1946

Mrs. Rose Wilder Lane
Route 4, Box 42
Danbury, Connecticut

[…]

Now to your second question: “Do those almost with us do more harm than 100% enemies?” I don’t think this can be answered

[Page 2]
Page 2 Mrs. Rose Wilder Lane August 21, 1946

with a flat “yes” or “no”, because the “almost” is such a wide term and can cover so many different attitudes. I think each particular case has to be judged on his own performance, but there is one general rule to observe: those who are with us, but merely do not go far enough, yet do not serve the opposite cause in any way, are the ones who do us some good and who are worth educating. Those who agree with us in some respects, yet preach contradictory ideas at the same time, are definitely more harmful than the 100% enemies. The standard of judgement here has to be the man’s attitude toward basic principles. If he shares our basic principles, but goes off on lesser details in the application of these principles, he is worth educating and having as an ally. If his “almost” consists of sharing some of the basic principles of collectivism, then we ought to run from him faster than from an out-and-out Communist.

As an example of the kind of “almost” I would tolerate, I’d name Ludwig von Mises. His book, “Omnipotent Government”, had some bad flaws, in that he attempted to divorce economics from morality, which is impossible; but with the exception of his last chapter, which simply didn’t make sense, his book was good, and did not betray our cause. The flaws in his argument merely weakened his own effectiveness, but did not help the other side.

As an example of our most pernicious enemy, I would name Hayek.[**] That one is real poison. Yes, I think he does more harm than Stuart Chase. I think Wendell Willkie did more to destroy the Republican Party than did Roosevelt. I think Willkie and Eric Johnston have done more for the cause of Communism than Earl Browder and The Daily Worker. Observe the Communist Party technique, which asks their most effective propagandists to be what is known as “tactical non-members”. That is, they must not be Communists, but pose as “middle-of-the-roaders” in the eyes of the public. The Communists know that such propagandists are much more deadly to the cause of Capitalism in that “middle-of-the-road” pretense.

Personally, I feel sick whenever I come up against a compromising conservative. But my attitude is this: if the man compromises because of ignorance, I consider him worth enlightening. If he compromises because of moral cowardice (which is the reason in most cases), I don’t want to talk to him, I don’t want him on my side, and I don’t think he is worth converting.

As to George Peck, I don’t know enough about him to be able to tell whether he is worth educating or not. I have just received a letter from him in answer to mine. It is a very nice letter, in that he tries to answer criticism honestly, but I am appalled by his mental confusion. He maintains, for instance, that Hitler is worse than Stalin. I don’t know by what possible standard one can establish degrees of evil as between dictators representing exactly the same

[Page 3]
Page 3 Mrs. Rose Wilder Lane August 21, 1946

principle. I am afraid that George Peck means well, but has not given our cause a serious study. Perhaps, he is worth educating. But stay away from Hayek, if you want my opinion; he is worse than hopeless.

Now, am I a good correspondent?

With best regards,

Sincerely,

Ayn Rand

p.s.
I had just finished this letter to you, when, strangely enough, I received an appalling answer to the question you asked me—a final proof that our “almost” friends are our worst enemies. It was the worst shock in all my experience with political reading. I received the Economic Council Letter of August 15th. (Incidentally, I subscribed to that Letter mainly in order to get your book reviews.) And I read that Merwin K. Hart, a defender of freedom and Americanism, is advocating a death penalty for a political offense.

I am actually too numb at the moment to know what to say. I don’t have to explain to you that once such a principle is accepted, it would mean the literal, physical end of Americans; nor to ask you to guess who would be the first people executed under such a law; nor to remind you that the crucial steps on the road to dictatorship, the laws giving government totalitarian powers, were initiated by Republicans—such as the draft bill, or the attempt to pass a national serfdom act for compulsory labor.

I know that you know all that. What I wonder is: is it in your spiritual power to discuss this with Hart? If you can, if you have arguments that would reach him—please do it. I confess I’m helpless in such an instance. It’s too monstrous.

[…]

**F. A. Hayek, who shared the 1947 Nobel Prize in Economics. For AR’s marginal comments on Hayek’s best-known work, The Road to Serfdom, see Mayhew ed., Ayn Rand’s Marginalia, pp. 145–60. 

In her August 24, 1946, response, Lane wrote, “That Council Letter gave me the same shock…. I can take it up with Hart and I shall.”

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#4524·​Dennis Hackethal, 8 months ago

Most ridiculous are takes about so-called Turing test, which, AFAIK, originally was just a bad misogynic joke. Some kind of evolutionary psychology experiments, which people already have set up to study limits of different animals cognitive abilities and abilities to make judgements (e.g. role-playing, like: what ones know about other know about them, and vice versa), or a development of infant children's abilities to interpret concepts like geometry of space, cause and consequence -- would be way better criteria for the AGI system metrics evaluation.

#4541·​Yurii Pytomets, 7 months ago

Since the carrier language is the fundament, I'm stuck significantly in attempts to elaborate this topic deeper. https://x.com/VictorTaelin did a huge progress in this direction, I believe, but I know no details. Disappointingly few people working on this around the world (though, it could change quickly with modern trends). The next small step -- not only representation of knowledge and reasoning about it, but compression and knowledge synthesis (which LLM in it's way doing not so bad, but not so consistently and effective), thru AIXI. Then -- epistemic framework, like NARS, to learn from real-world empiric experience. And only then -- complex game theory/goal setting/economics/interaction with, and interpretation of other's behavior. And only after that -- there's make sense to discuss consciousness, as an introspection of other's observation/interpretation/modeling.

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#4540·​Yurii Pytomets, 7 months ago

The Beginning of Infinity

Heard about it, have not read though. I do not expect AGI from LLM. But it's an awesome tool that helps speed-up learning, research and prototyping. And also all this hype accelerate some money to this topic, which is good. Indeed, if natural intelligence possible, why artificial -- can not? According to the roadmap, I more trust in good old-fashioned symbolic AGI and formal methods. NARS + AIXI + elegant dependent modal or substructural (maybe homotopic) typed programming language with strong meta-theoretic properties, as a carrier of observations, knowledge and judgments + a bit of game theory and evolutionary psychology = this is the way, I believe.
And maybe some tricky computational non-von Neumann architecture to have a nice computational complexity for that (not sure about that, but plausible it make sense to utilize some sort of analogous computations in addition to digital ones).

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#4539·​Yurii Pytomets revised 7 months ago