Fabien.Beliefs page history

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Web Monetization is not enabled. To learn about it and support this website financially check Monetization.

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Beliefs {Fabien}

(redirected from Fabien.MyBeliefs)

"If we had it [a characteristica universalis], we should be able to reason in metaphysics
and morals in much the same way as in geometry and analysis.”

"If controversies were to arise, there would be no more need of disputation between
two philosophers than between two accountants (Computistas).
For it would suffice to take their pencils in their hands,
to sit down to their slates (abacos),
and to say to each other … :
Let us calculate (Calculemus)."

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

from the Computational Metaphysics project
with Edward N. Zalta, Branden Fitelson and Paul E. Oppenheimer

Principle

  • transform epistemology to a praxis, cf Wikipedia:Praxeology
    • e.g. through EthicalFramework providing a simple "ethical test passed, go on" or "fail, check other possibility" that can be used prior to each critical decision
  • reward others who by challenging my views in an epistemologically coherent fashion help me to progress
  • clarify my position during arguments
  • provide an affordance on causal chains
    • being able to backtrack my thinking process and debug it
  • allow others if I am in situation in which I can not make a decision by myself and one has to be taken in my account (coma, death, etc)
  • facilitate beliefs comparison
    • ideally in an automated fashion through distances (initially just diff)
      • BeliefsMatcher(Me,SomebodyElse) -> 80% similarity, ou qqchose du genre :P
  • provide a solid basis for cognitive and epistemological refactoring

List of beliefs

  • #B1 = everything is computational
  • #B2 = morals, like everything else, can be studied scientifically
  • #B3 = pretty much anything can be learned
  • #B4 = there is no soul but there might be a consciousness and it might be "socially trained"
  • #B5 = everything is physical, including thoughts and emotions
  • #B6 = everything is connected
  • #B7 = there is no peaceful ecosystem
  • #B8 = emotions are heuristics
  • #B9 = stress is an estimation of the uncertainty in important affordances

WARNING: there should be no B10, rather try to simplify, factor or remove unnecessary beliefs

Beliefs

  • #B1 = everything is computational
  • #B2 = morals, like everything else, can be studied scientifically
    • explanation
      • morals are a set of rules defined by members of a group over time in order to maintain itself. They are fixed at an instant T but are perpetually re-evaluated based on changes in the environment, including resources availability, size of the group, distribution of the group, ...
    • degree of confidence
      • 90%
    • references
    • alternatives
      • moral ideals are too complex to be found
      • moral is purely subjective as the survival of the group is not what defines morality
  • #B3 = pretty much anything can be learned
    • explanation
      • learning is re-organizing information through experiences. This process can have different degrees of difficulty being recursive, but is still just a process that has to be optimized to use the available resources, whatever those may be.
    • degree of confidence
      • 90%
    • references
    • alternatives
      • it is impossible to learn skill X if you do not have ability Y
        • example of down syndrome, autism or other psychological disorder
  • #B4 = there is no soul but there might be a consciousness and it might be "socially trained"
    • explanation
      • ?
    • degree of confidence
      • 90%
    • references
    • alternatives
      • there is a non-physical "thing" that
  • #B5 = everything is physical, including thoughts and emotions
    • explanation
      • thoughts in general are just information being interpreted by a physical brain apparatus.
    • degree of confidence
      • 90%
    • references
    • alternatives
      • ?
  • #B6 = everything is connected
    • explanation
      • since everything is physical then, through transitivity, everything is connected. Links can be loose and having very weak interactions though.
      • interesting consequences
        • every logistic based problem solved through an abstract model over a network can be applied to similar and eventually more generalist problems
        • routing problems are fundamental
        • one can assimilate KM and the documentation of a project as a an history of problems and their solution, thus routing
          • being able to parse the KM of a system allow thus for efficient routing thus better usage of the documented system overall even though it initially appear very time consuming for little reward
          • note that the KM can itself be highly inefficient if its own structure is unclear for the consumer of information and might indeed require more resource than directly peering through the system one is aiming at using
      • important remarks
    • degree of confidence
      • 90%
    • references
    • alternatives
      • there exist some "bubbles" with no causality link to other "bubbles"
  • #B7 = there is no peaceful ecosystem
    • explanation
      • because of the 2nd law of thermodynamics there are limited amount of resources, even less with a positive EREOI. Because of this situation the red queen principle applies, consequently a post scarcity situation is not stable, the arm race is the stable situation.
        • note that the nature state of stasis or equilibrium is a social bias. Human usually see a forest as a system in balance in which each organism help each other and does not use more resource that it needs. This results first from him being totally detached from the resource competition in the system but also his mesoscale of perception and analysis, time in a pond and time with trees are totally different from a human lifespan.
      • postscarcity and sustainable peace is impossible
        • predation won't stop as long as the 2nd law of thermodynamics holds
      • related answer http://www.quora.com/Warfare/Should-all-war-end-If-so-how
    • degree of confidence
      • 90%
    • references
    • alternatives
      • ?
  • #B8 = emotions are heuristics
    • explanation
      • Emotions are thoughts as practical heuristics based on biased statistics (from senses and socially defined norms). Each following example include a very complex estimation function that, for economical purpose, has to be replaced by an heuristic or, most likely, a set of heuristics.
        • love = confidence in relative fitness of your partner. Fitness in term of selection and thus on how adapted he or she is according to your history of relationships, your current situation and your goals. This could be biased by self-reinforcement either by yourself or the partner in order to maintain the current situation, a form of status quo.
        • pride = perceived large increased chances of survival of your action, including chores like cleaning or fixing SaintMaur#TheoreticalConsiderations
        • stress = perceiving environmental constraints which could potential lead to decrease chances of survival
      • it does not imply that "listening to your emotions" is irrational since the alternative of using a formalized model can cost you more in resources than using the imperfect heuristic.
    • degree of confidence
      • 70%
    • references
      • Introduction to The Emotion Machine by Marvin Minsky, draft of 2005
    • alternatives
      • ?
  • #B9 = stress is an estimation of the uncertainty in important affordances
    • explanation
      • the more ones need to rely on someone or something, the stronger the coupling is, i.e. if a person or an object is required to conduct an action, it has a high importance. The closer it is to survival, the more important it is thus the stronger the coupling is. Consequently, the higher uncertainty regarding either the current status or an estimation of the future reliability of this person or object is, the more frequently information has to be acquired about this element, the more resources it takes.
      • see also Chances of Survival (CoS) as a measure of how likely an organism estimate his or other ability to sustain homeostasis in an environment
      • note that items on this very page also are affordances and in that respect challenging them should create a form of stress for any person in agreement with them
        • this could explain why debates on important topic become passionate to the point of drifting away from analysis to emotions and sophisms
    • degree of confidence
      • 60%
    • references
      • maybe in cognitive science overall and in particular Marutana and Varela
    • alternatives
      • ?

Witnessing "miraculous" events

As one age and come to a better understanding of the lack of reliability of its own physiology, one has to be even more precotious against misconception and misperceptions. If I was to one day encounter a situation that I could not comprehend of explain and that would be associated with miraculous events, coherent with religion or not, I would have to accept what I experienced as precisely a subjective set of perceptions. I would have to recall it as well a I can but also to remember that perceptions are imperfect and get processed by cognitive filters imperfectly too. They also get memorized by association hence the tendency to rely on existing socially accepted depictions. A very simple way to be reminded of how trickable the mind is first to look at the simplest optical illusions then eventually, if one is not already convince, to witness the act of a magician. See also ReligionVsScience. After all this taken into consideration for the all aparati of obsveration used and if the incoherency subsists then one would have to challenge the very set of beliefs that this pages organizes.

Known similar processes

To do

  1. add beauty ~= the aesthetic of efficiency
  2. add a degree of confidence
    1. consider OpenCog use of Probabilistic Logic Networks (PLN) and its TruthValue
  3. define a proper framework
    1. Less Wrong community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality.
    2. Wikipedia:Confirmation bias Wikipedia:Bounded rationality Wikipedia:Satisficing
    3. research in decision making
      1. Decision Science News by Dan Goldstein
      2. Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions? TED.com 2008
  4. check coherence in particular with
    1. Seedea:Research/Motivation
    2. Seedea:Content/Predictions
  5. find an automated way to check if they are coherent with the current state of the art in research in that domain and thus up to date
    1. if not, provide learning roadmap to reach it with an estimated time while keeping Wikipedia:Rational ignorance in check
      1. Cognition#EducationSelfUpdate
  6. use a hierarchical structure
    1. at least an order
  7. in the long run if this is working well
    1. use the same generative principle on to make low-res for Person
  8. visualization (visual epistemic network)
    1. thought X is based on Y based on belief B1, then drawing the chain
    2. thin link when confidence is low
      1. see what domain, concept, ... requires improvement
    3. thick link when confidence is high
  9. keep only "architectural" beliefs
    1. granularity level limited to to Wikipedia:Conjecture in order to have a manageable result
  10. integrate Fundamental Concept Tree
    1. started nearly 2 years earlier in July 2008
    2. oriented toward strict formalization
    3. aimed to use brain imaging techniques
    4. review it
      1. why did it stall?
  11. ask review on #lesswrong
    1. regarding the structure and the process, not the content.
  12. could science be intrinsically relative to the subject?
    • i.e. is something scientific only to my own ability to understand it? if no, it is *to me* a belief even if the entire educated society understands it perfectly and justify it with evidences.
  13. Seedea:Utopiahanalysis/Hypothesis
  14. explain more
    1. degree of confidence?
      1. how sure am I
      2. 0% "I really have no idea"
      3. 100% "I would literally bet my life on it"
  15. consider exploding B* to individual pages
    1. in their own group
    2. in the current group Fabien/MyBeliefsB*
    3. through URL rewrite
  16. add general duplication
    1. an individual that would by one mean or another, on a biological substrate or not, self-sustaining (partly or entirely duplicated), constitute an entirely independent individual
    2. the origin of the duplicated information would have consequences
      1. resources possessed by the individual would most likely become shared
        1. thus indivisible resources might become competed for including but not limited to
          1. relationships
          2. societal
    3. the knowledge of the process itself will impact the 2 individuals and thus their behavior
    4. see also
      1. IAmAStrangeLoop BeingNoOne
      2. How to Defeat Your Own Clone by Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson, Random House February 2010
  17. check for blindspots
    1. what are the intrinsic problems of the set of beliefs proposed?
    2. note that is different from coherence
  18. consider deja-vu and similar displeasing emotions as precisely displeasing because, maybe relying on bias or not, they challenge personal beliefs

See also

Inspired by

Layered Model and the talk by Sam Harris Science Can Answer Moral Questions, TED 2010 but also my earlier attempt with a more brain imaging twist. Probably before that PersonalModel.

ToRefactor