Search ideas
Guess: We can generalise economics further and let it be subsumed by epistemology.
When we choose to try to solve certain problems, we always make trade-offs from a place of scarcity. Likewise, our conjectures wouldn't evolve without the competition enabled by scarcity in our minds.
Wait, I've probably misunderstood but in #2228 it seemed like you thought pruning was needed for scarcity, which is needed for competition between ideas and their evolution.
And you equated pruning with the meta algorithm.
And now you say the meta algoritm/pruning is not needed for the evolution of ideas?
Superseded by #2281. This comment was generated automatically.
Rational 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?
Superseded by #2279. This comment was generated automatically.
Rational Decision-Making
Expanding on #2112…
If an idea 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 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?
You 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.
Undestanding 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.
By the same logic, wouldn't neo-Darwinism also disqualify as a strand, since it's subsumed by Popperian epistemology?
I don’t think the meta algorithm is necessary for the evolution of ideas. After all, there is no meta algorithm across minds, yet ideas (memes) evolve across minds. Inside a single mind, the meta algorithm is inherited from our non-creative ancestors, where (among other things) it acted as a fail safe against erroneous behaviors.
Yeah nice, seems true. There's no objective explicit/inexplicit ratio for knowledge, it depends on the person's background knowledge.
May have misunderstood, but do you mean that explanatory knowledge corresponds to truth, whereas biological/evolutionary knowledge doesn't?
I think that was refuted by Lucas Smalldon and others: https://barelymorethanatweet.com/
Hmm never thought of that, interesting! I think since the disease involves continuous loss of brain volume, hardware decay seems like the best explanation.
In general I think it makes sense to speak of diseases in neurology (e.g. Alzheimer's, Parkinsons, stroke) as bad hardware and psychiatric disease as bad software. But it could very well be that some of those diagnoses are miscategorised.
Most people (except in Alzheimer's, etc.) don't run out of memory in the brain. If there's no scarcity for the space of ideas, why do they have to compete?
Yeah that's definitely a possible medical condition, e.g. in psychosis or after having ECT. Don't think it's the best explanation for Alzheimer's though, where the loss of brain volume is so apparent.
Alright, I remember the meta algorithm from your book but can't recall if you adress this criticism: If there's no need for a meta algorithm in biological evolution, why must there be one for the evolution of ideas?
Superseded by #2267. This comment was generated automatically.
Wait, do you view the pruning as separate from the mere competition of ideas, or simply its hardware consequences?
Superseded by #2265. This comment was generated automatically.
One of my previous comments notwithstanding, don’t be shy to mark ideas as criticisms whenever you point out a shortcoming. Otherwise, you won’t know later on which ideas you can adopt. In the context of Alzheimer’s, this sounds like a criticism.
In Darwinian evolution, competition and pruning are the same phenomena.
That doesn’t sound right. Not all competition is necessarily deleterious.
Wait, do you view the pruning as separate from the mere competition of ideas…?
Yes. When I say ‘pruning’, I’m referring to a specific mechanism of a meta algorithm in the mind. For more details, see my book A Window on Intelligence, I think chapter 5. There is no such meta algorithm in biological evolution.
One of my previous comments notwithstanding, don’t be shy to mark ideas as criticisms whenever you point out a shortcoming. In the context of Alzheimer’s, this sounds like a criticism.
I still see epistemology as distinct, and I'll try to make my case for it. Epistemology explains how humans create explanatory knowledge — unlike biological evolution, which also produces knowledge, but not explanations. Explanatory knowledge is special because it allows us to understand the world. Deutsch even suggests that this kind of knowledge tends toward convergence — a unified theory of everything — implying a deep connection between reality and its capacity to be explained.
Economics, on the other hand, isn’t distinct in the same way. It deals with trade-offs and scarcity — principles already fundamental to biology. Life itself is about managing limited resources and the trade-offs that come with them. Evolution, in turn, discovered increasingly effective strategies for doing so — including cooperation, exchange, and other relationships between and across lifeforms that facilitate these trades.
In that same vein, why couldn't we class biology (evolution) under epistemology?