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@zelalem-mekonnen shared in my Twitter space that he has been ‘summoned’ for jury duty. It seems strange and incompatible with freedom that the courts can just ‘command’ you to perform a service for them.
#3278·Benjamin Davies, about 1 month ago… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “through the population”? Doesn’t this presuppose a replicator needs to exist within a population to do what it does? The first replicator spread with no population to spread into.
A population of 1 is still a population.
#3278·Benjamin Davies, about 1 month ago… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “through the population”? Doesn’t this presuppose a replicator needs to exist within a population to do what it does? The first replicator spread with no population to spread into.
Accounts of the origin of replicators (such as RNA World) involve proto-replicators. By the time the first ‘full-fledged’ replicator came on the scene, it was already part of a larger population of proto-replicators.
#3278·Benjamin Davies, about 1 month ago… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “through the population”? Doesn’t this presuppose a replicator needs to exist within a population to do what it does? The first replicator spread with no population to spread into.
I suppose it’s theoretically possible for the very first replicator to exist in isolation until it replicates for the first time. But that’s what it does right away anyway.
#3279·Benjamin Davies, about 1 month ago… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “at the expense of its rivals”? Isn’t the concern to spread at all, regardless of the outcome of rivals?
I’m using standard neo-Darwinian phrasing. Compare, for example, BoI chapter 4:
The most general way of stating the central assertion of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is that a population of replicators subject to variation (for instance by imperfect copying) will be taken over by those variants that are better than their rivals at causing themselves to be replicated.
And, same chapter:
[T]he knowledge embodied in genes is knowledge of how to get themselves replicated at the expense of their rivals.
See also several instances in chapter 15 in the context of meme evolution.
Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene has a ton on rivals (alleles), too, for example (chapter 2):
Ways of increasing stability and of decreasing rivals’ stability became more elaborate and more efficient. Some of them may even have ‘discovered’ how to break up molecules of rival varieties chemically, and to use the building blocks so released for making their own copies.
#3279·Benjamin Davies, about 1 month ago… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “at the expense of its rivals”? Isn’t the concern to spread at all, regardless of the outcome of rivals?
Rivalry means competition, win/lose outcomes. If one replicator spreads, it will be at the expense of its rivals (if any), eg taking up niches that rivals would otherwise have taken up.
#3289·Benjamin Davies revised about 1 month agoMy charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” is a loose way of saying something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “occurs less and less often in the multiverse”.
That’s fine if you want to interpret it charitably, but that isn’t a criticism. Maybe you’re implying that I’m not being as charitable as I should be. That would be a criticism, but it should be made explicit.
#3285·Benjamin Davies, about 1 month ago“([T]hey say)” presumably means he is paraphrasing people who get it wrong.
I realize that. I don’t see how that’s a criticism.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” means something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “occurs less and less often in the multiverse”.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” is a loose way of saying something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “occurs less and less often in the multiverse”.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” means something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “a smaller and smaller occurrence in the multiverse”.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” means something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “occurs less and less often in the multiverse”.
#2084·Dennis Hackethal, 3 months agoConsequently (they say), whether or not it was ever possible for one person to understand everything that was understood at the time, it is certainly not possible now, and it is becoming less and less possible as our knowledge grows.
If something already isn’t possible, how could it become less possible?
Isn’t possibility a binary thing? As opposed to difficulty, which exists in degrees.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” means something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “a smaller and smaller occurrence in the multiverse”.
#2084·Dennis Hackethal, 3 months agoConsequently (they say), whether or not it was ever possible for one person to understand everything that was understood at the time, it is certainly not possible now, and it is becoming less and less possible as our knowledge grows.
If something already isn’t possible, how could it become less possible?
Isn’t possibility a binary thing? As opposed to difficulty, which exists in degrees.
“([T]hey say)” presumably means he is paraphrasing people who get it wrong.
#2276·Erik Orrje, 3 months agoBy the same logic, wouldn't neo-Darwinism also disqualify as a strand, since it's subsumed by Popperian epistemology?
Why does neo-Darwinism qualify as a strand, if it can be understood as a component of Popperian epistemology?
#2278·Dirk Meulenbelt, 3 months agoYou say that trade-offs and scarcity are fundamental to biology. I agree, and this implies economics as a more fundamental science than biology or evolution. It still applies in our computer models, where biological details may not.
Economics is simply at the intersection of evolution and epistemology.
While a lot of what’s involved in understanding a language is inexplicit, it is not possible to come to understand a language without ever dealing with it explicitly.
This is what separates explanatory knowledge from other types of knowledge.
While a lot of what’s involved in understanding a language is inexplicit, it is not possible to come to understand a language without ever dealing with it explicitly.
This is part of what separates explanatory knowledge from other types of knowledge.
#2277·Dirk Meulenbelt, 3 months agoUndestanding does not flow from explanatory knowledge the way you imply. I understand Dutch and English, but a lot of my understanding of it is inexplicit.
While a lot of what’s involved in understanding a language is inexplicit, it is not possible to come to understand a language without ever dealing with it explicitly.
This is what separates explanatory knowledge from other types of knowledge.
#2200·Dennis Hackethal, 3 months agoIn the neo-Darwinian view, any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals. This view is what Dawkins (IIRC) calls the gene’s eye view, and it applies to ideas as much as it does to genes. Any adaptation of any replicator is primarily in service of this concern.
So I think the answer to your question, “Are ideas also guesses of how to survive in the mind and across substrates …?”, is ‘yes’.
… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “at the expense of its rivals”? Isn’t the concern to spread at all, regardless of the outcome of rivals?
#2200·Dennis Hackethal, 3 months agoIn the neo-Darwinian view, any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals. This view is what Dawkins (IIRC) calls the gene’s eye view, and it applies to ideas as much as it does to genes. Any adaptation of any replicator is primarily in service of this concern.
So I think the answer to your question, “Are ideas also guesses of how to survive in the mind and across substrates …?”, is ‘yes’.
… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “through the population”? Doesn’t this presuppose a replicator needs to exist within a population to do what it does? The first replicator spread with no population to spread into.
What happens when you fail to commit to these values?
I think forgiveness could be another core value. Something like 'when I make mistakes, I will pick myself up at the earliest possible time and keep going.'
What happens when you fail to commit to these values?
I think forgiving yourself could be another core value. Something like 'when I make mistakes, I will pick myself up at the earliest possible time and keep going.'
#3261·Dennis Hackethal revised about 1 month agoWhat happens when you fail to commit to these values?
I think forgiveness could be another core value. Something like 'when I make mistakes, I will pick myself up at the earliest possible time and keep going.'
Based on what you write in #3270, it sounds like you’re talking specifically about forgiving oneself, not forgiveness in general.
I am a life-long nail-biter. I am thinking a habit like nail-biting can be thought of as an addiction in this way.
I have an explicit preference for letting my nails grow normally, and an inexplicit/unconscious preference for removing rough/uneven parts of my nails as soon as possible (this part seems entrenched).
I am a life-long nail-biter. I am thinking a habit like nail-biting can be thought of as an addiction in this way.
I have a preference for letting my nails grow normally, and a preference for removing rough/uneven parts of my nails as soon as possible (which I often enact by biting my nails automatically/uncritically/mindlessly).
#3264·Dennis Hackethal, about 1 month agoNice, thanks.
Thinking about it some more, I wonder if honesty is more fundamental than some of the other virtues. As I’ve written elsewhere, honesty includes the refusal to ignore certain criticisms. That’s a prerequisite of rationality. Whereas justice, for example, seems downstream of rationality.
Is “the refusal to ignore certain criticisms” not a case of treating ideas justly?
#3264·Dennis Hackethal, about 1 month agoNice, thanks.
Thinking about it some more, I wonder if honesty is more fundamental than some of the other virtues. As I’ve written elsewhere, honesty includes the refusal to ignore certain criticisms. That’s a prerequisite of rationality. Whereas justice, for example, seems downstream of rationality.
I’m having trouble with the idea that honesty is a prerequisite of rationality. This seems to imply honesty somehow comes before rationality.
I think it is more accurate to say rationality and honesty are interdependent, and from there you can deduce that rationality depends on honesty (in a way that maybe it doesn’t depend on justice).
#3259·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month agoI haven’t used Obsidian, so I don’t understand what you are requesting. Is it that, whenever you open a bracket, you want the closing bracket to appear automatically?
I’ve asked Gemini to explain it:
1. Auto-Closure (Insertion State)
When the user inputs an opening delimiter, the system immediately injects the corresponding closing delimiter and places the caret (cursor) between them.
Input: (
Buffer State: (|)
Logic: insert(openingchar) + insert(closingchar) + move_caret(-1)
2. Type-Through (Escape State)
If the caret is positioned immediately before a closing delimiter that was autopaired, and the user types that specific closing delimiter, the system suppresses the character insertion and instead advances the caret.
Context: [text|]
Input: ]
Buffer State: [text]| (Not [text]])
Logic: if (nextchar == inputchar) { movecaret(+1); preventdefault(); }
3. Atomic Deletion (Regression State)
If the caret is between an empty pair of delimiters, a backspace event deletes both the opening and closing characters simultaneously, returning the buffer to the pre-insertion state.
Context: (|)
Input: Backspace
Buffer State: |
Logic: if (prevchar == open && nextchar == close) { delete_range(caret-1, caret+1); }
4. Selection Wrapping (Transformation State)
If a text range is selected (highlighted) and an opening delimiter is typed, the system wraps the selection rather than replacing it.
Context: |selected_text|
Input: [[
Buffer State: [[selected_text]]
Logic: surroundselection(inputpair)
5. Markdown-Specific Heuristics
Obsidian applies context-aware logic for Markdown syntax (e.g., * or _). It often checks word boundaries to determine if the user intends to bold/italicize or use a bullet point.
Context (Start of line): | + * + Space -> Bullet list (autopair disabled/consumed by formatting).
Context (Middle of line): word | + * -> word | (autopair enabled for italics).
#3263·Dennis Hackethal, about 1 month agoI think forgiveness could be another core value. Something like 'when I make mistakes, I will pick myself up at the earliest possible time and keep going.'
This sound like it’s meant to be an example of forgiveness, but I’m not sure it is. It sounds more like an example of resilience.
What do you think forgiveness means, @zelalem-mekonnen?
One of the definitions from Merriam-Webster is 'to cease to feel resentment against (an offender).' Resilience is defined as 'an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.' When you fail against your own value, you are offending yourself.