[FRIAM] Philosophy, Ethics, Academia (PEA)

[Frank Wimberly]

Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God comes to mind.  The power set or set
of comprehension a of the submodules is a model.  To say it's superior to
the best model is self-contradictory. FWIW.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Fri, Apr 2, 2021, 3:52 AM ⛧ glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Excellent point, assuming I'm grokking it. The Proof of Stake v PoW
> conversation touched on it. But my broken mind keeps hearkening back to
> Wolpert's limit that there can be only one most accurate model of the
> universe that's within the universe. I don't know if he's (or anyone else
> has) derived the comprehensions or power set of the lesser accurate models
> of the universe.
>
> It seems to me the question you pose is the extent to which such
> comprehension can be flattened/democratized.  Improvements like PoS over
> PoW help, but are still limited in their power to express the whole polity,
> way better than "price". But, banally, they're still only available to the
> Morlocks, opaque to the Eloi, in the same sense as the Blackrock funds
> pushing big pharma to develop vaccines without concern for profits.
>
> Can we come up with a comprehension of ALL available sub-models of the
> world that maximizes the availability of that meta-model to as many
> stakeholders as possible? I'm optimistic we can, given a closed universe.
> But what if the universe is open?
>
> What if Wolpert's result implies that, from minute to minute, the most
> accurate model changes because the universe changes ... and the possible
> comprehensions of sub-models also changes?
>
> And yes, I see the 3 Constitutions (liberal, conservative, libertarian) as
> attempts to wiggle around our current one, all of which are sub-models of
> the world based on some form of social justice. But, as with our
> conversation about Originalism, to what extent will they remain accurate as
> the world changes?
>
> To round out this post, my targeting of myopic cartoons like
> anarch-capitalism isn't an attempt to discourage work on such problems.
> It's an attempt to police ourselves, those of us who do think it can be
> done (at least in a piecewise stable universe). Anarcho-capitalists and
> many libertarians seem, to me, to be arguing in bad faith (in Sartre's
> sense). But anarcho-syndicalists don't seem that way to me. I'm surely
> biased, of course.
>
> Thanks for bringing so many contexts together into a theme! I don't feel
> like I've addressed the 1-way algorithm question directly. But if I could
> answer some questions about comprehensions of sub-models, then I could talk
> more coherently about how to fix one comprehension over another.
>
> I'm also worried that everything I think at 2am is nonsense anyway. Sorry
> if that's true.
>
> On April 1, 2021 1:38:16 PM PDT, David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu>
> wrote:
> >Glen,
> >
> >I like the fact that you word the following so as to suggest it’s
> >impossible by tautology:
> >
> >> How can there *ever* be any form of capitalism that's NOT "crony"? If
> >there's a state, the state will be ... [cough] ... leveraged to gain
> >asymmetric power.
> >
> >I like it because the implication that something looks impossible makes
> >us take seriously that it is at least hard.
> >
> >
> >Can I propose that this is a good starting point for defining some
> >aspects of democracy in aspirational terms, as a performance criterion
> >for which one then seeks solutions.
> >
> >There are many things that look intuitively like they should be
> >impossible by tautology, and which turn out to have useful solutions
> >that took work to find or build.
> >
> >1. How can there be securities markets with large scope for autonomous
> >action but that are strongly effective in blunting the exercise of
> >power by wealthy actors to manipulate prices, extract information about
> >counterparties, or otherwise go outside the domain of contract?  But
> >the whole Fama-French efficiency assertion (which is wrong, but for
> >more subtle reasons) gives a good quantification of how many such
> >actions the design of securities markets does blunt.
> >
> >2. How can there be a cognitive discipline built around the moral of
> >the Emperors New Clothes (the aspiration of science).  Anyone should be
> >able to overturn a position no matter how firmly held, by providing
> >evidence of its error, and ballot-stuffing should not be strong enough
> >to overcome that lever.  To the extent that scientific claims are taken
> >to have a reliability that is different from just whoever’s opinion
> >about whatever, they measure whether this has been achieved.
> >
> >3. How can there be an encryption algorithm that provides easy
> >encryption in public but effectively unaffordable decryption by the
> >same agents?  How can there be proofs of identity that are cheaply
> >verifiable but effectively unspoofable?  Etc.  The world that was
> >opened by 1-way algorithms.
> >
> >
> >I am comfortable taking as a starting framing that the problem with the
> >traditional formalization of economics is as the study of problems of
> >allocation in the arena where power is excluded from operating.
> >Mathematically one can put some constructions behind that, but then to
> >what areas of life do we think the absence of power is at all an
> >adequate approximation?  (Your question above, but I think there are
> >some for which the cartoon is quite helpful; auction design is a nice
> >example of a problem with many good solutions, arrived at technically.)
> >
> >That leaves to Political Science (or whatever mash of disciplines) the
> >study of power, its uses, consequences, nature, or whatever.
> >
> >The two are then bound, in a formalism Shubik used to use enough times
> >that it is tattooed in my traces — the Economy exists within the Polity
> >and the Society.
> >
> >So we can ask:  to what extent can rules of governance be designed to
> >have a 1-way character in blunting certain forms of the exercise of
> >power, enough to make the polity a safe holder of power that can
> >constrain its use by other actors?  Are there 1-way aspirations that
> >are provably unreachable?  By trying to prove nonexistence theorems
> >that aren’t true, do we gain insights that might lead to the discovery
> >of 1-way algorithms we aren’t currently using?  People seem to think
> >the Magna Carta and the US Constitution were significant contributions
> >(to several aims, but I think that was one).  I take your posts on the
> >communities looking at constitutional reform and redesign as efforts to
> >find more.
> >
> >This all seems a good framing to me.
> >
> >Eric
>
> --
> glen ⛧
>
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