Enjoying the Dangerous View from the Frontier

[cozy]

Just curious...how did you come about the title for this thread, "Enjoying the Dangerous View from the Frontier"?

Also, as for this. It's related to me coming back to Urbit, and one of the developers. It's about pushing the boundaries of knowledge and the danger there. It's about questioning the status quo, and, for example, reading the things that have been passed over by the history books (like a denouncement of the Declaration of Independence). It's also a reference to a comment on the blog post that inspired the original post, which I mention in the last paragraph.

Interestingly, I'm a member of a private chatroom that talks about Bitcoin core development, and there was mention of connections between Vitalik (founder and leader of Ethereum), and Curtis Yarvin--who I mentioned in the first post. I also occasionally listen to Lex Fridman, who had an interview with Eric Weinstein who is kind of a Silicon Valley magnate, where he mentions Curtis Yarvin. Anyway, and interesting thing related to the original post. I see some similarities with this NYT article as well, a guy who blogs some controversial but insightful stuff and is apparently a psychologist for some of those rich dudes in silicon valley, using a pseudonym (which the NYT doxxed at the height of the 'cancel culture' stuff early pandemic).

[Josh]

The intro to Deutsch's Constructor Theory of Information piqued my interest enough to print the whole thing out for easy reading/note taking. Unfortunately, I simply didn't understand anything beyond the intro. The Wiki page was easier to swallow but could do with some examples. Popper prepared a proper paper. Thanks for that.

The argument of 'knowledge' seems like a semantic one to me. My understanding of the word 'knowledge' (and I think most people's) involves a mind. Of course, the greatest minds throughout history have proven time after time that 'most people's definition' of almost anything is inaccurate or at least incomplete. This may hold just as true for knowledge itself as it does for anything that is acknowledged. But, because the word 'knowledge' is being expanded beyond the scope that most people are comfortable with (the scope of the mind) we either need a new definition for what our minds are doing or we need a new term that includes things that the mind does that are also observable in the physical world (outside the mind).

Einstein's bathtub

Wasn't that Archimedes?

[cozy]

Regarding Constructor Theory, the official site helps a lot, but personally I didn't quite totally grasp it until I read Marletto's book "The Science of Can and Can't".

I guess you could argue it's "just semantics," but I think the meaningfulness of semantics is kind of the point. If one says it's "just semantics," they may be trying to solve a parochial ("practical") problem that's right in front of them, but arguments about semantics and meaning are where discussion happens on the frontiers of knowledge and understanding. Is that not what, for example, the Supreme Court does? No one more pedantic than the supreme court, lol.

Anyway, the previous paragraph goes a long way to agree with you, I think. Except I think I want to take issue with "greatest minds." I think all minds are great, not just the ones that we put on pedestals.

"Explanatory knowledge is the nemesis of hierarchy."

The point of creating a new foundation of physics, though heretical, and contrary to the whole spirit of empiricism, is to solve a problems that aren't solvable within the existing framework. I think there are direct links between our limited understanding of consciousness and quantum theory that directly relate to empiricism in the foundations of science.

Wait, the bathtub thing was Archimedes?

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody >
 You don't have my vote...Still waiting for a response to this: 
"So those politicians who strive hard get elected and choose how the tax money gets used should be the last ones to get money for the programs that their constituents voted for them to prioritize? "

The principle operates with two constants...
1. If you get a slice, it will be the last remaining slice
2. You certainly should never get a slice before anyone else.

So it's not only about the programs or how the money is spent from a specific piece of legislation. If a specific piece of legislation, and the process of legislating results in violation of either of the above two points of the principle, then it should not be legal. At the moment, lobbying is legal, and represents a major part of the legislation process. It's where the cake is born and where first slices are allocated.

Originally posted by Cody >
 Show me an observation that's not theory laden and I'll show you a charlatan.

Observations are by scientific definition not theory at all. Observations are the evidence that either support a hypothesis, or support the debunking of that hypothesis. "Theories" arrive well after rigorously putting the hypothesis through testing and trying like hell to debunk it.

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody > 
 We like to turn scientific discovery into a narrative/story that makes it centered on observation: eg Newton's Apple, Einstein's bathtub.

Maybe for kids' picture books. Not actual qualified scientists in their fields of study. Even as a layman, I do not do this.

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody >
 Observation and experience are both interpretation...

I disagree. Observation and experience may lead to interpretation of what has been observed or experienced, but they themselves are NOT interpretation.

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody >
 "Acquired"  through experience is not how new knowledge comes into being, it comes into being through conjecture.

Knowledge does _not "_come into being". Knowledge is a label for what humans have so far learned through trial and error, and have successfully catalogued. Maybe an argument can be made that a specific person's knowledge colloquially comes into being the moment they have read and understood a page of a physics textbook, but I object to any nebulous statement of knowledge existing or "coming into being" independently of the learner.

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody > 
Acquired means copied (or interpreted and re-instantiated in the case of humans minds, which is ALSO a form of conjecture--even in the "copying"), in this existing definition of knowledge.

Dude, I have no idea what you are talking about. LOL.

Acquire does not mean copy. Acquisition could occur via the "copy" mechanism, but they are not one in the same.

[snoopy]

To summarize, I think you have misread and misinterpreted Popper's paper. In it, he never once diverges from his thesis "Scientific knowledge". You appear to believe that it's talking about how the unqualified layman learns about the world around them. That is not what Popper is writing about in that paper.

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody >
 "Explanatory knowledge is the nemesis of hierarchy."

This caption below your Nixon image seemed odd to me so I looked it up. It appears you've been posting it exactly like this on Twitter a few times. But I found that the origin of this comes from David Deutsch's _"But from the cosmic perspective, explanatory knowledge is the nemesis of the hierarchy rule. It's the destroyer of the great monotony."
_
Your version is misleading to me because you omitted "the" and "rule".  Deutsch's makes perfect sense as he is talking about how how explanatory knowledge can cause more rapid course change due to novelty in collective human thinking.

[snoopy]

After billions of years of monotony, the universe is waking up

Theoretical physicist David Deutsch delivers a mind-bending meditation on the "great monotony" -- the idea that nothing novel has appeared in the universe for billions of years -- and shows how humanity's capacity to create explanatory knowledge could be the thing that bucks this trend. "Humans are not playthings of cosmic forces," he says. "We are users of cosmic forces."

(www.ted.com)

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody >
 Show me an observation that's not theory laden and I'll show you a charlatan.

I wanted to further examine your offer so here we go...
Observation not theory laden : H2O becomes solid when in sufficiently cold temperatures
Show me a charlatan.

[cozy]

Your version is misleading to me because you omitted "the" and "rule".  Deutsch's makes perfect sense as he is talking about how how explanatory knowledge can cause more rapid course change due to novelty in collective human thinking.

I wasn't trying to mislead you, but your interpretation, your conjecturing of my ideas as expressed in English as I have structured it, seems to have been? Or, perhaps I should elaborate?

Now, why is there a great monotony in the universe at large, and what makes our planet buck that trend? Well, the universe at large is relatively simple. Stars are so simple that we can predict their behavior billions of years into the future, and retrodict how they formed billions of years ago. So why is the universe simple? Basically, it's because big, massive, powerful things strongly affect lesser things, and not vice versa. I call that the hierarchy rule.

Above is the context for the "hierarchy rule," he refers to. "Hierarchy" is a word, and abstraction for a pattern found in nature. It's useful for explanations about reality. But not in the context of human minds and the growth of knowledge. Just as you have done in conversation, I've used a word colloquially. I don't think it's misleading at all any more than saying "the world," can also mean "reality" in many conversations.

Also, why is "nebulus" such a useful word for describing the way I communicate again?

[cozy]

H2O becomes solid when in sufficiently cold temperatures

This is an explanation, not an observation. There's also caveats to it regarding the environment and specific temperature.

Could say something like, "some liquids become solids when..." for a more scientific phrasing I think. But even that is an explanation, and still involves interpretation. It doesn't just exist in nature and get copied around willy nilly from some perfect Form.

The freezer we use at work uses electromagnets to keep water from crystalizing as temperatures drop so that when the water does crystalize the crystallization occurs more quickly, this allows the crystal to form with more detail and not break the cell wall of raw food products frozen in this way.

When human bodies are experiencing frostbite it can actually feel like it's on fire, so this leads many to take off all their clothes to get cool again. We know this is ridiculous because we have the above explanation for it.

Reading that sentence also involves interpretation: what is H20, what does it mean to "become...when" (this grammatical structure indicates causality), same with "cold temperatures". I list these things because they, perhaps, seem "obvious," like they are just there. "Cold is obvious, it's cold." "Water is obvious, it's water." But each one of those words is an explanation, in the form of an abstraction, about reality. They exist in many languages in different forms, and there is no perfect language within which to express them. So we could still find better ways to express that explanation, infinitely.

[cozy]

I think Josh is right we're kind of talking past each other. Maybe we should move to the new question based, Socratic method, style thread format? I would be cool with that.

Regarding the cake cutting:

The principle operates with two constants...
1. If you get a slice, it will be the last remaining slice
2. You certainly should never get a slice before anyone else.

I want to ask some question about this again, still see some issues with it that I don't understand how it would be beneficial to me or anyone. BUT, I again think Josh is right, I think we should move to a new thread specifically for that topic. It's confusing enough as it is in this thread.

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody >
 This is an explanation, not an observation...

Originally posted by Fidel > 
 H2O becomes solid when in sufficiently cold temperatures.

I disagree. It's an observation. A reply to the question of "How does this liquid become solid?" would be an explanation. If that explanation were rigorously tested and put through the falsification ringer and survived as the best available explanation as to how H2O becomes solid, that explanation becomes accepted by the scientific community as a theory. Anything less is just a hypothesis.

Another example would be evolution. The theory of evolution is what explains how life evolves. It's a theory because it has withstood the falsification ringer.

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody >
 I wasn't trying to mislead you, but your interpretation, your conjecturing of my ideas as expressed in English as I have structured it, seems to have been? Or, perhaps I should elaborate?

No need to elaborate. I just couldn't understand his quote because you left out two key words. I understand the quote fine now because I found the source.

Originally posted by Cody > 
 There's also caveats to it regarding the environment and specific temperature.

All of that would be part of the hypothesis that attempts to explain the process of solidification.

In short and to summarize...

I don't agree that observations are theory laden because I am sticking to the scientific definitions of observation and theory and it appears you may be invoking the colloquial use of the term "theory" as in hunch or gut feeling. Therefore, I cannot agree with any supposed subsequent premise that relies on the italicized statement.

[snoopy]

Originally posted by Cody >
 Also, why is "nebulus" such a useful word for describing the way I communicate again?

I think the fact that you lose me on definitions by redefining and/or interchanging between scientific usage and colloquial usage, and THEN extrapolate out further, which results in what sounds to me like a collection of words that, together, make not much sense to me.

[snoopy]

Here is an example of what becomes nebulous to me and the breakdown(my next post) of why it sounds that way to me...

Originally posted by Cody >
This is an explanation, not an observation. There's also caveats to it regarding the environment and specific temperature.

Could say something like, "some liquids become solids when..." for a more scientific phrasing I think. But even that is an explanation, and still involves interpretation. It doesn't just exist in nature and get copied around willy nilly from some perfect Form.

The freezer we use at work uses electromagnets to keep water from crystalizing as temperatures drop so that when the water does crystalize the crystallization occurs more quickly, this allows the crystal to form with more detail and not break the cell wall of raw food products frozen in this way.

When human bodies are experiencing frostbite it can actually feel like it's on fire, so this leads many to take off all their clothes to get cool again. We know this is ridiculous because we have the above explanation for it.

Reading that sentence also involves interpretation: what is H20, what does it mean to "become...when" (this grammatical structure indicates causality), same with "cold temperatures". I list these things because they, perhaps, seem "obvious," like they are just there. "Cold is obvious, it's cold." "Water is obvious, it's water." But each one of those words is an explanation, in the form of an abstraction, about reality. They exist in many languages in different forms, and there is no perfect language within which to express them. So we could still find better ways to express that explanation, infinitely.

[snoopy]

The very first statement you make "This is an explanation, not an observation" starts it all. The statement I made "H20 becomes solid..." is not an explanation. the statement, by itself, it has absolutely no explanatory power. If the sentence were to go something like "Because H2o becomes solid..." THAT would qualify as an explanation, or part of an explanation, and would not be an observation. Since we had this disagreement, it made everything you wrote after that have no meaning to me. For example...

You went on to say _"Could say something like, "some liquids become solids when..." for a more scientific phrasing I think. But even that is an explanation, and still involves interpretation. It doesn't just exist in nature and get copied around willy nilly from some perfect Form."

_I am confused by this because..."some liquids become solids when..."
1. is NOT an explanation.
2. is not any more scientific phrasing than _"H20 becomes solid..."

_Scientific explanations are called "theories" and do not involve interpretation. Once achieving theory status that explanation, through the rigorous scientific testing process, does not involve interpretation. If it did, then rigorous testing and falsification would not be possible because varying interpretations would yield varying results.

With that said, this sentence becomes nebulous to me, LOL..."_It doesn't just exist in nature and get copied around willy nilly from some perfect Form."

_And then you added the following  two sentences, while interesting, I cannot engage with because in order to do so, I must first agree with your definition of scientific explanation, but I don't...

A. "The freezer we use at work uses electromagnets to keep water from crystalizing as temperatures drop so that when the water does crystalize the crystallization occurs more quickly, this allows the crystal to form with more detail and not break the cell wall of raw food products frozen in this way."

B.  "When human bodies are experiencing frostbite it can actually feel like it's on fire, so this leads many to take off all their clothes to get cool again. We know this is ridiculous because we have the above explanation for it."

And by those final 7 words, I will now show you how I get to the feeling that your communication is nebulous...

_When human bodies are experiencing frostbite it can actually feel like it's on fire, so this leads many to take off all their clothes to get cool again. We know this is ridiculous because we have this explanation: The freezer we use at work uses electromagnets to keep water from crystalizing as temperatures drop so that when the water does crystalize the crystallization occurs more quickly, this allows the crystal to form with more detail and not break the cell wall of raw food products frozen in this way.

_I couldn't draw a straight line from B to A anywhere. In any case, by the time I had read your entire post my brain had already taken an off-ramp at the first sentence.