Benjamin Davies
@davies·Joined Oct 2025·Ideas
A life aimed at infinity 🦉 🐚 🕯️ 🚀
#5384·Benjamin Davies, 10 days agoThis is addressed in section 5 of Dennis' paper: The Structure of Rational Thought.
‘How can we rationally proceed when all known ideas have pending criticisms?’
By treating ideas as immutable and discrete, even if content overlaps. For example, as a description of reality, general relativity has pending criticisms. But there are no serious contenders. Instead, take the idea: ‘Although GR has pending criticisms as a true description of reality, it’s an excellent approximation, makes precise predictions, and powers technology such as GPS. So we keep using it until we find a replacement.’ As written, this idea has no pending criticisms, so its advocacy is rational.
it’s an excellent approximation
It's an excellent approximation to what? Reality? How do we know that?
#5382·Benjamin Davies revised 10 days agoBy this criterion, it is irrational to adopt or advocate either GR or QM, as they have pending criticisms.
According to every physicist I have heard speak on the matter, GR and QM conflict.
@bart-vanderhaegen has also said to me that GR falsely predicts the orbit of electrons, and QM falsely predicts the mass threshold at which black holes form.
This is addressed in section 5 of Dennis' paper: The Structure of Rational Thought.
‘How can we rationally proceed when all known ideas have pending criticisms?’
By treating ideas as immutable and discrete, even if content overlaps. For example, as a description of reality, general relativity has pending criticisms. But there are no serious contenders. Instead, take the idea: ‘Although GR has pending criticisms as a true description of reality, it’s an excellent approximation, makes precise predictions, and powers technology such as GPS. So we keep using it until we find a replacement.’ As written, this idea has no pending criticisms, so its advocacy is rational.
By this criterion, it is irrational to adopt or advocate either GR or QM, as they have pending criticisms.
By this criterion, it is irrational to adopt or advocate either GR or QM, as they have pending criticisms.
According to every physicist I have heard speak on the matter, GR and QM conflict.
@bart-vanderhaegen has also said to me that GR falsely predicts the orbit of electrons, and QM falsely predicts the mass threshold at which black holes form.
#4902·Dennis HackethalOP revised 4 months agoRational Decision-Making
Expanding on #2112…
If an idea, as written, has no pending criticisms, it’s rational to adopt it and irrational to reject it. What reason could you have to reject it? If it has no pending criticisms, then either 1) no reasons to reject it (ie, criticisms) have been suggested or 2) all suggested reasons have been addressed already.
If an idea, as written, does have pending criticisms, it’s irrational to adopt it and rational to reject it – by reference to those criticisms. What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt it anyway?
Or, simplified:
It is rational to adopt only those ideas which, as written, don’t have pending criticisms, and to reject ideas that do.
By this criterion, it is irrational to adopt or advocate either GR or QM, as they have pending criticisms.
#5270·Dennis Hackethal, 20 days agoThis approach breaks search functions, where the system only goes off the ‘Criticized’ flag. Now the system shows some ideas as rationally adoptable even though they aren’t.
Would it be better to make them all root ideas?
They are seperate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on the former. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.
They are separate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on their formers. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.
#5262·Dennis Hackethal, 21 days agoThere’s a risk in posting follow-up thoughts as nested comments. The risk is that criticism chains won’t bubble up far enough.
If you want to add more information to an idea, I suggest revising it.
They are seperate ideas, and the latter ideas depend on the former. If there is a flaw in former ideas, they apply to latter ideas, but if there is a flaw in latter ideas, they don’t necessarily apply to the former. So arranging them like this was intentional, to respect that hierarchy.
#5246·Benjamin DaviesOP, 21 days agoWhen we reject explanation B in favour of explanation A, there must be some property of the explanations that comprehensively distinguishes A as better than B.
Progress does not require a complete ranking of every live explanation. If B has a fatal flaw while no fatal flaw is currently known in A or C, the flaw in B is enough to reject B while A and C both remain live. There does not need to be one property that all three explanations possess to different degrees.
#5250·Benjamin DaviesOP, 21 days agoThe more HTV an explanation is, the more closely it corresponds to reality.
Take the same explanation in two possible realities. The explanation has the same content and the same HTV in both, but it can correspond to one reality and fail to correspond to the other. HTV alone therefore cannot determine correspondence.
An explanation can be harder to vary than a rival and still contain a fatal flaw of another kind. Unless every possible fatal flaw is itself a form of ETV, HTV cannot comprehensively determine which explanation should be rejected.
#5248·Benjamin DaviesOP, 21 days agoA surviving the criticism does not show that A is progress over B. We could reject one error while moving even further from reality.
Explanation A surviving criticism does not establish that explanation A is objective progress over explanation B. But the claim that one fatal flaw in explanation B is enough to reject explanation B does not depend on explanation A being objective progress. Rejecting explanation B and establishing explanation A as objective progress are separate claims.
The more HTV an explanation is, the more closely it corresponds to reality.
#5246·Benjamin DaviesOP, 21 days agoWhen we reject explanation B in favour of explanation A, there must be some property of the explanations that comprehensively distinguishes A as better than B.
That property is hard-to-vary-ness.
#5247·Benjamin DaviesOP, 21 days agoOne fatal flaw in B is enough to reject B. A does not also need to possess some opposite property that makes it the winner.
A surviving the criticism does not show that A is progress over B. We could reject one error while moving even further from reality.
#5246·Benjamin DaviesOP, 21 days agoWhen we reject explanation B in favour of explanation A, there must be some property of the explanations that comprehensively distinguishes A as better than B.
One fatal flaw in B is enough to reject B. A does not also need to possess some opposite property that makes it the winner.
When we reject explanation B in favour of explanation A, there must be some property of the explanations that comprehensively distinguishes A as better than B.
#5241·Benjamin Davies, 21 days agoDiet isn't ruled out just by comparing a large dinner with an empty stomach before bed.
You've said that you often put off eating and struggle to eat as much as you intend to. If you're regularly under-eating or going long stretches without food, that may be keeping adrenaline and cortisol elevated into the evening, making it harder to wind down, fall asleep and stay asleep.
That could also explain why you're physically tired but still mentally alert and able to keep working at night.
https://youtu.be/boWSKR7OrUw?t=627&si=V4UOiSZym6i0ZhjO
From 10:27 onwards, this video goes over a variety of diet related elements that affect sleep. Might be useful.
Something simple you could try is heavily dimming your computer and other devices and using strong red filters for the last few hours before bed.
Not just the standard night shift features, which are often far too weak. I mean making the screen properly red so that almost all of the blue and green light is removed.
You might be surprised by how dim you can make your devices while still being able to use them fine. You just need to give your eyes a minute to adjust. I routinely have my iPhone and MacBook on their dimmest settings.
Dimming or reddening the room lighting could help too. (Following up on #5243.)
#5207·Tyler MillsOP, 23 days agoOn days where I have not looked at a screen at all, my trouble falling asleep is the same.
This doesn't rule out blue light from other sources disturbing your ability to wind down and fall asleep.
#5209·Tyler MillsOP, 23 days agoI suspect the issue is mental, because I sometimes feel tired getting into bed, then immediately feel progressively less tired, the longer I am in bed. The tiredness sometimes comes and goes, over the course of maybe one or two hours, before sleep comes. This suggests to me that my thinking is causing my wakefulness. I have observed this effect for as long as I can remember.
Becoming progressively less tired is compatible with physiological causes, such as those I mention in #5241.
#5210·Tyler MillsOP, 23 days agoIf I had a large dinner only two hours before attempting sleep, the trouble to fall asleep seems about the same as if I have an empty stomach, or any other degree of fullness on that continuum.
Diet isn't ruled out just by comparing a large dinner with an empty stomach before bed.
You've said that you often put off eating and struggle to eat as much as you intend to. If you're regularly under-eating or going long stretches without food, that may be keeping adrenaline and cortisol elevated into the evening, making it harder to wind down, fall asleep and stay asleep.
That could also explain why you're physically tired but still mentally alert and able to keep working at night.
#5102·Tyler MillsOP, about 1 month 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, about 1 month 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.