[FRIAM] science privilege — fork from acid epistemology

[Prof David West]

Automation will displace humans at the exact rate that we define human as that which a computer can do. If a computer cannot do it, then it is not a real human ability.

My claim, as such, is more analogous to the argument that audiophiles advance with regard digital sound. When you digitize you create a square wave within the confines of the analog wave. Unless your sampling rate is infinite, there will always be some information loss — the gaps between the two wave forms. Audiophiles say that the lost information is important and that they can detect its absence. The computer scientist responds with BS - the information lost is below the sensitivity of the human ear and therefore does not matter. Empirical tests with commercially used sampling rates prove the computer scientists wrong.

The kind of social-cultural-economic-political problems I speak of, with all their dimensions, multiplies the "lost information" along all those dimensions and, I believe, that information matters. Computational thinking is necessarily constrained by what the computer can do — the square wave. Solving such problems requires a way of thinking that incorporates all of that lost information (that the Comp Thinker deem irrelevant).

Organically inspired is not organic — the map is not the territory.

davew


On Sat, Mar 14, 2020, at 5:43 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Dave writes:
> 
> < A closely related, I think, topic is the push by computer science to have "computational thinking" embedded in elementary and secondary education as "essential." Computational thinking is exactly the wrong kind of thinking as most of the critical things we need to think about are not algorithmic in nature. >
> 
> I would say the rate at which automation displaces humans will indicate whether you are wrong or not. Biologically-inspired systems, but plainly computational ones, are already very powerful, and there is a lot of money being spent to make them more powerful. For example, Cerebras now has 1.2 trillion transistors on one wafer. If your claim is more about the inspiration, I would say that is a distinction without a difference, except that humans aren't good at computation.
> 
> https://www.cerebras.net/
> 
> Marcus
> 
> 
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm>
> *Sent:* Saturday, March 14, 2020 4:21 AM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] science privilege — fork from acid epistemology 
> 
> Glen, I really appreciate your response and insights. 
> 
>  You are certainly correct that much, or most, of my pique is simply impatience. But, I am here now, with these questions, and with a limited window within which to be patient. Should my great grandchildren have my interests, Science might serve them well, but is is frustrating right now.
> 
>  Science is far more reflective that I generally give it credit for. Your examples, save one, illustrate that. The one that I object to is "assessing scientific literacy" which, based on limited exposure, seems to be more of "checking to see if you are bright enough to agree with us" than evaluating what it would mean to be scientifically literate.
> 
>  A closely related, I think, topic is the push by computer science to have "computational thinking" embedded in elementary and secondary education as "essential." Computational thinking is exactly the wrong kind of thinking as most of the critical things we need to think about are not algorithmic in nature. The scientific and computational part of the climate crisis is the easy part. figuring out the complex social-cultural-economic-politcal answers to the problem is the hard part and I doubt it is reducible to scientific thinking and absolutely positive it is not amenable to computational thinking.
> 
>  Maybe when Hari Seldon has his psychohistory all worked out it will be different. :)
> 
>  It may very well be possible to develop a science of philosophy, but it will require relinquishing what, again to me, appears to be a double standard. Scientists are willing to wax philosophical about quantum interpretations but would, 99 times out of a hundred, reject out of hand any discussion of the cosmological philosophy in the Vaisesika Sutras — despite the fact that that Schrodinger says the idea for superposition came from the Upanishads.
> 
>  George Everest (the mountain is named after him) introduced Vedic teachings on math and logic to George Boole, Augustus de Morgan, and Charles Babbage; shaping the evolution of Vector Analysis, Boolean Logic, and a whole lot of math behind computer science.
> 
>  One could make a very strong argument that most of the Science that emerged in England in the 1800-2000, including Newton, was derived from Vedic and some Buddhist philosophies. But try to get a Ph.D. in any science today with a dissertation proposal that incorporated Akasa. [The Vedas posited five elements as the constituents of the universe — Aristotle's four, earth, air, fire, water, plus Akasa, which is consciousness.]
> 
>  Swami Vivekananda once explained Vedic philosophical ideas about the relationship between energy and matter to Nicholas Tesla. Tesla tried for years to find the equation that Einstein came up with much later. Try to get a research grant for something like that.
> 
>  A practical question: how would one go about developing a "science" of the philosophy of Hermetic Alchemy and its 2500 years of philosophical investigation. Information, perhaps deep insights, that was tossed out the window simply because some pseudo-alchemists tried to con people into thinking that lead could be turned into gold.
> 
>  Of course the proposal for developing such a science would have to be at least eligible for grants and gaining tenure, or it is not, in a practicial (take note Nick) sense.
> 
>  davew
> 
>  On Fri, Mar 13, 2020, at 3:21 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
>  > Excellent! Thanks for making the arc more clear.
>  > 
>  > I think the advent of studies of the psychedelics as therapeutic 
>  > interventions *do* apply to fields like alchemy, mysticism, and altered 
>  > states. So, your (1) is either wrong or overstated. In particular, the 
>  > attempt to show correlations between "bad trips" and neuroticism is a 
>  > step in the right direction. Other examples might be the instances 
>  > where meditation can correlate with *anxiety* as opposed to calm. I 
>  > know these disambiguations of "good trips" vs. "bad trips" is waaay too 
>  > coarse for you. What you want is very fine-grained parsing of the 
>  > difference between one conversation with Hui Neng and another or 
>  > answers to questions like the dangerosity of covid-19, sample-size-one 
>  > questions, black swan questions, etc. Those people who claim science 
>  > will *never* answer such questions or provide fine-grained experience 
>  > parsing tools *might* be wrong. I believe they are. Science is simply 
>  > too young for what you want. If humans survive long enough, we'll see 
>  > science mature to a point where it can address such. And what you're 
>  > doing right now *might* be part of that maturing. I don't know.
>  > 
>  > Re: (2) - Science is (a little bit) and will be (more and more) 
>  > scientific over time. When you say the empirical evidence suggests 
>  > science is not scientific, what about reflective studies assessing 
>  > scientific literacy among the population? Or the recent studies of the 
>  > replication crisis? Are these not science evaluating itself? I also 
>  > lump into this rhetoric those studies of religious belief, game 
>  > theoretic studies of altruism, susceptibility to "fake news", etc. 
>  > Sure, such studies are "soft". But I believe they'll get "harder" over 
>  > time, as science matures.
>  > 
>  > And re: (3), I believe you *can* have a science of philosophy. 
>  > Classifications like "the big 5" (introversion, openness to new 
>  > experience, ...), correlations between politics and psychological 
>  > traits, so-called political ethics, etc., however flawed, target the 
>  > fuzzy boundary between these domains. All that would be required for a 
>  > science of philosophy would be to think up and execute experiments on 
>  > philosophical people and artifacts. Again, your attempts to map 4 
>  > sources of knowledge across different philosophical traditions *could* 
>  > be made scientific if you incorporated some *methodical* 
>  > experimentation.
>  > 
>  > It seems to me that you're simply impatient and overly restrictive in 
>  > what you call "science" (as I think Nick tried to point out).
>  > 
>  > On 3/13/20 4:21 AM, Prof David West wrote:
>  > > I will try to reduce it to three elements:
>  > > 
>  > > 1) Once upon a time I had hoped that that Peirce in specific and Science in general might provide some "sense making" tools/insights that I could apply to fields of inquiry like alchemy, mysticism, and altered states. I am concluding that the hope is untenable as Science and Peirce have excluded them, deemed them "unworthy." They are not Real, by definition, hence can never be Scientific or addressed Scientifically. In parting ways, I imply, rather snidely, that Science is capable only of addressing the "easy problems."
>  > > 
>  > > 2) If Science / the Scientific approach merits privilege should it not, at minimum, "eat its own dog food?" Should it not be Scientific? The empirical evidence suggests it is not.
>  > > 
>  > > 3) At the fringes (e.g. quantum stuff) Science is necessarily Philosophical (metaphysical) and metaphorical. The Fringe exists as Science evolves into the future and as Science has evolved from the past. From philosophy you came and to philosophy you will return. :) Also, philosophy is, in some sense, meta to Science. You can have a philosophy of science but not a science of philosophy.
>  > > 
>  > > Ignore for the moment the labored attempt to make an analogy between programming and scientific theory. I will restate that at another time in a clearer manner (if warranted by the discussion).
>  > 
>  > -- 
>  > ☣ uǝlƃ
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