Search Ideas

Claim: It is useful (if not crucial) to distinguish between two notions of novelty: inferential and non-inferential.

Knowledge that is inferentially novel may never have been seen before, but was already implicit in existing knowledge; it results from application and composition of existing knowledge (e.g. the running of programs). What is novel in this way can be instantiated without any external epistemic (knowledge-related) influence. A program needs infrastructure to allow its computation to occur; it does not need another program, in an epistemic sense: If there's a dependency, we should consider the two to be part of the same "epistemic system." Let's say the dependent target has no "implication space" until its needed source is causally linked to it. The source may have its own implication space. Once "joined," a new implication space is defined.

Inferentially novel output (the instantiation of knowledge in an implication space) is all that current computer software (and all AI) is capable of. These systems "create" knowledge only in this sense.

Assuming Sam did mean to criticize my opposition to assigning strengths to criticisms:

The issue isn’t that we don’t have a way to fix the hole. (We often do.)
The issue is that we have no rigorous way to tell how big the hole is. So, rather than evade criticisms by saying ‘but it’s only a small hole’, I’m saying we should always either fix holes in the boat, no matter their size, or choose a different boat.

Unclear what the boat stands for.

Sam criticized my idea, so presumably he means for the boat to represent #4711. But the way his criticism is phrased, it sounds more like the boat represents the methodology of assigning strengths to criticisms.

I wonder if there is any significance to the "distance" the laws of physics are from us, in the sense of emergence. Each quantum application of the laws of physics (conceived as discrete steps) is so far down, but maybe it need not be so. Maybe there are people in other laws of physics, where the laws are much closer at hand. Do the laws need to have a certain minimum range of emergence for personhood to be possible..? Couldn't people like us exist in a universe where fundamental physics is no more complex than the operation of our minds, or is the "breathing room" we have here necessary?

To be clear, the boat represents the idea that we should judge criticisms by their strength?

if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

Agreed. My point is that you can't refute a flaw by saying the flaw doesn't have a workable system to resolve it. "Your boat has a hole in it". "Yeah, well I don't have any way of fixing it". That doesn't resolve the criticism of the boat. If it's unfixable and a real flaw, you might just need a new boat.

Logically, yes. But in practice, it won’t be the same.

For example:

Idea A: ‘Newtonian gravity is true.’ → Has pending criticisms (some predictions don’t match observation).
Idea B: ‘Newtonian gravity is not true.’ → Also has pending criticisms: ‘Not helpful’; ‘Doesn’t tell us how gravity works’; etc.

Related: https://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/2014/08/simple-refutation-of-the-bayesian-philosophy-of-science/

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but if somebody suggests some system they can’t put into practice, then the system is no good.

This sounds like a version of #2195, see criticism #2198.

Then the idea ‘I could either address that pending criticism or, if I fail to do that, look into all the other pending criticisms’ would have no pending criticisms.

If other criteria for the selection of conjectures were built into the system, such as in the genes of a human, the growth of knowledge would be bounded to only conjectures meeting those criteria, even if the variation/conjecture aspect of the process were proceeding via a random process with no built-in knowledge. Fixed criteria means bounded knowledge, means no universality. So for unbounded progress (universality), the criteria must also be varied. But how are they criticized? What criteria for their selection can there be to avoid a regress, except survival?

All subsequent knowledge in the system will be descended from the initial knowledge. So all knowledge in a knowledge-growing system must be either created by or comprised of replicators.

Knowledge 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.

Is rejecting an idea equivalent to adopting it's negation?

But what if the idea that you should be suspicious of a large volume of criticism in a short time has pending criticism itself?

An inability to improve on the criticized aspect of a system is not a refutation of that criticism.

This approach does not specify how long you should spend coming up with criticisms before adopting it, therefore it cannot be put into action as stated. The delay must be nonzero otherwise, the fresh idea "you should ignore criticisms" would nullify the system.

Now also available on PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/archive/HACTSO-6.pdf

I’ve formalized some of these ideas in my first paper, ‘The Structure of Rational Thought’.

https://www.academia.edu/170297518/The_Structure_of_Rational_Thought

And again, not convinced any external world or feedback is required for open-endedness (per Deutsch). It might merely be very helpful.

Yes, and perhaps this helpfulness is underestimated? One guess is therefore that the plateaus that have occurred is due to the difficulty of escaping the hardware case of the computer. Our vehicles (bodies) allow for much easier physical instantiation of replicators, compared to replicators inside computers.

There must be a minimum amount of available memory needed for a program to be a person. What can the program not do, below that minimum? What is that minimum M bits being used for that cannot be done with M-1 bits?

I usually get conspiracy vibes from anti-fluoride sources, but I haven’t looked into it much.

Gemini's response to that tweet: "The text uses legitimate biochemical concepts—like the fact that fluoride is a potent halogen that hardens minerals and can be toxic in high doses—to build a narrative based on skewed history. It fabricates a geological explanation for Hereford, Texas, to erase the very thing that actually protected the town's teeth: naturally occurring fluoride."

Possibly related: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/what-is-the-difference-between-a-person-and-a-re

Is a quale a sequence of information states? Is this true of any given computation? Does the quale "care" if the states are computed afresh or read from memory?