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  • mazsa 13:59 on December 26, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Philosophy, ,   

    Fukuyama on the absent left:

    [...] It has been several decades since anyone on the left has been
    able to articulate, first, a coherent analysis of what happens to the
    structure of advanced societies as they undergo economic change and,
    second, a realistic agenda that has any hope of protecting a
    middle-class society.

    The main trends in left-wing thought in the last two generations have
    been, frankly, disastrous as either conceptual frameworks or tools for
    mobilization. Marxism died many years ago, and the few old believers
    still around are ready for nursing homes. The academic left replaced
    it with postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism, critical theory,
    and a host of other fragmented intellectual trends that are more
    cultural than economic in focus. Postmodernism begins with a denial of
    the possibility of any master narrative of history or society,
    undercutting its own authority as a voice for the majority of citizens
    who feel betrayed by their elites. Multiculturalism validates the
    victimhood of virtually every out-group. It is impossible to generate
    a mass progressive movement on the basis of such a motley coalition:
    most of the working- and lower-middle-class citizens victimized by the
    system are culturally conservative and would be embarrassed to be seen
    in the presence of allies like this.

    Whatever the theoretical justifications underlying the left’s agenda,
    its biggest problem is a lack of credibility. Over the past two
    generations, the mainstream left has followed a social democratic
    program that centers on the state provision of a variety of services,
    such as pensions, health care, and education. That model is now
    exhausted: welfare states have become big, bureaucratic, and
    inflexible; they are often captured by the very organizations that
    administer them, through public-sector unions; and, most important,
    they are fiscally unsustainable given the aging of populations
    virtually everywhere in the developed world. Thus, when existing
    social democratic parties come to power, they no longer aspire to be
    more than custodians of a welfare state that was created decades ago;
    none has a new, exciting agenda around which to rally the masses.

    AN IDEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE

    Imagine, for a moment, an obscure scribbler today in a garret
    somewhere trying to outline an ideology of the future that could
    provide a realistic path toward a world with healthy middle-class
    societies and robust democracies. What would that ideology look like?

    [...] the agenda it put forward to protect middle-class life could not
    simply rely on the existing mechanisms of the welfare state. The
    ideology would need to somehow redesign the public sector, freeing it
    from its dependence on existing stakeholders and using new,
    technology-empowered approaches to delivering services. It would have
    to argue forthrightly for more redistribution and present a realistic
    route to ending interest groups’ domination of politics. [...]

    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136782/francis-fukuyama/the-future-of-history

     

  • mazsa 13:48 on December 26, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Philosophy,   

    The Strong Free Will Theorem

    [...] our theorem asserts that if experimenters have a certain freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom. Indeed, it is natural to suppose that this latter freedom is the ultimate explanation of our own.
    [...] It may well be true that classically stochastic processes such as tossing a (true) coin do not help in explaining free will, but [...] adding randomness also does not explain the quantum mechanical effects described in our theorem. It is precisely the “semi-free” nature of twinned particles, and more generally of entanglement, that shows that something very different from classical stochasticism is at play here.
    Although the FWT [Free Will Theorem] suggests to us that determinism is not a viable option, it nevertheless enables us to agree with Einstein that “God does not play dice with the Universe.” In the present state of knowledge, it is certainly beyond our capabilities to understand the connection between the free decisions of particles and humans, but the free will of neither of these is accounted for by mere randomness.
    [...] determinism may formally be shown to be consistent, there is no longer any evidence that supports it, in view of the fact that classical physics has been superseded by quantum mechanics, a non-deterministic theory. The import of the free will theorem is that it is not only current quantum theory, but the world itself that is non-deterministic, so that no future theory can return us to a clockwork universe.

    http://www.ams.org/notices/200902/rtx090200226p.pdf

    Cf. http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Math_Trek__Do_subatomic_particles_have_free_will%3F

     

  • mazsa 11:56 on December 6, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Philosophy, ,   

    “And yet, even though useful quantum computers might still be decades away, many of their payoffs are already arriving. For example, the mere possibility of quantum computers has all but overthrown a conception of the universe that scientists like Stephen Wolfram have championed. That conception holds that, as in the “Matrix” movies, the universe itself is basically a giant computer, twiddling an array of 1’s and 0’s in essentially the same way any desktop PC does.

    Quantum computing has challenged that vision by showing that if “the universe is a computer,” then even at a hard-nosed theoretical level, it’s a vastly more powerful kind of computer than any yet constructed by humankind. Indeed, the only ways to evade that conclusion seem even crazier than quantum computing itself: One would have to overturn quantum mechanics, or else find a fast way to simulate quantum mechanics using today’s computers.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/scott-aaronson-quantum-computing-promises-new-insights.html?_r=1&ref=science&pagewanted=all

    “Carson Chow Says:
    Comment #2 December 5th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
    Nice article but I am confused about this paragraph:

    “For example, the mere possibility of quantum computers has all but overthrown a conception of the universe that scientists like Stephen Wolfram have championed. That conception holds that, as in the “Matrix” movies, the universe itself is basically a giant computer, twiddling an array of 1’s and 0’s in essentially the same way any desktop PC does.”

    A quantum universe or a classical universe are both computable aren’t they? It’s just that the quantum universe is exponentially “bigger”. In principle, you could have a classical computer just chug away painfully slowly and simulate the quantum universe, no? There is nothing in the “Matrix” universe that says the computation must be efficient is there? There are still just a countable number of possible quantum universes right?”

    “Scott Says:
    Comment #5 December 5th, 2011 at 10:59 pm
    Carson #2: Yes, as the tagline of my blog says, quantum computers can be simulated classically but with exponential slowdown.

    What we learn from quantum computing is that, if both quantum mechanics and the prevailing conjectures in complexity theory are valid, then the physical universe can’t be feasibly simulated by a computer that “twiddles an array of 1’s and 0’s in essentially the same way any desktop PC does.”

    (That last clause was meant to indicate that I was talking about efficient simulation by conventional computers — i.e., the Extended Church-Turing Thesis, or what Wikipedia calls the Feasibility Thesis. I wish I knew how to put the point more clearly within the constraints of this article, since you’re right that it might be misinterpreted!)

    For what it’s worth, Stephen Wolfram, Ed Fredkin, and other believers in “digital physics,” have been very explicit in saying that they think the universe is a classical cellular automaton—basically, a three-dimensional array of pixels—and that their view would preclude exponential speedups from quantum computation. (Wolfram believes that quantum mechanics is wrong, whereas Fredkin believes that quantum mechanics can be efficiently simulated classically.) So, these viewpoints would indeed be ruled out under the assumptions I mentioned above.

    A last remark: the Matrix movies aren’t very clear about what type of computer is being used, other than that it’s powered by human bodies! But since they never mention anything about quantum computing, and since the simulation clearly isn’t astronomically slow, it seems reasonable to assume that Keanu Reeves was trapped in some sort of classical simulation. So maybe he could’ve caused the simulation to crash by building a quantum computer and trying to run Shor’s factoring algorithm! For the version where Keanu is trapped in a quantum computation, we might need to wait for the followup trilogy, “The Unitary Matrix” (har, har).”

    “Jiav Says:
    Comment #8 December 6th, 2011 at 12:59 am
    Nice essay Scott, but how could we know our simulation is not astronomically slow?

    I’m curious to see if Greg Egan will comment this one :) ”

    http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=871

    Cf. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/if-the-answer-is-42-what-is-the-question

     

  • mazsa 03:22 on October 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Philosophy, ,   

    “Libertarianism presents itself as a simple, clear, and principled view. It appears to provide a moral basis, in the value of individual liberty, for a specific political program of limited government and low taxes. The moral significance of liberty seems obvious even to those who believe it is not the only thing that matters. But the claim of the libertarian political program to be founded on this value is illusory. Three lines of thought lead to conclusions that might be seen as libertarian. But none of these shows that respect for the value of individual liberty should lead one to support the political program of low taxes and limited government that libertarians are supposed to favor. [...]” http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.5/ndf_t_m_scanlon_libertarianism_liberty.php

     

  • mazsa 20:13 on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Philosophy,   

    Artifacts and Natural Kinds: Children’s Judgments About Whether Objects Are Owned “People’s behavior in relation to objects depends on whether they are owned. But how do people judge whether objects are owned? We propose that people expect human-made objects (artifacts) to be more likely to be owned than naturally occurring objects (natural kinds), and we examine the development of these expectations in young children. Experiment 1 found that when shown pictures of familiar kinds of objects, 3-year-olds expected artifacts to be owned and inanimate natural kinds to be non-owned. In Experiments 2A and 2B, 3– 6-year-olds likewise had different expectations about the ownership of unfamiliar artifacts and natural kinds. Children at all ages viewed unfamiliar natural kinds as non-owned, but children younger than 6 years of age only endorsed artifacts as owned at chance rates. In Experiment 3, children saw the same pictures but were also told whether objects were human-made. With this information provided, even 3-year-olds viewed unfamiliar artifacts as owned. Finally, in Experiment 4, 4- and 5-year-olds chose unfamiliar artifacts over natural kinds when judging which object in a pair belongs to a person, but not when judging which the person prefers. These experiments provide first evidence about how children judge whether objects are owned. In contrast to claims that children think about natural kinds as being similar to artifacts, the current findings reveal that children have differing expectations about whether they are owned.” http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/dev-ofp-neary.pdf doi: 10.1037/a0025661

     

  • mazsa 21:05 on June 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Philosophy   

    Parfit: On What Matters (Volume I) is out! http://www.amazon.com/What-Matters-I-Derek-Parfit/dp/0199572801

    Cf. Derek Parfit, 1984: Reasons and Persons http://www.amazon.com/Reasons-Persons-Oxford-Paperbacks-Parfit/product-reviews/019824908X

     

  • mazsa 10:18 on June 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Philosophy,   

    The Ideological Turing Test “[...] Mill states it well: “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” If someone can correctly explain a position but continue to disagree with it, that position is less likely to be correct. And if ability to correctly explain a position leads almost automatically to agreement with it, that position is more likely to be correct. (See free trade). It’s not a perfect criterion, of course, especially for highly idiosyncratic views. But the ability to pass ideological Turing tests – to state opposing views as clearly and persuasively as their proponents – is a genuine symptom of objectivity and wisdom. [...]” http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html

     

  • mazsa 17:42 on June 20, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Philosophy,   

    Quantum Mysteries Disentangled: “This paper attempts to dispel some of the “essential mystery” of quantum mechanics (QM) by describing some recent (as of 2001) results in quantum
    information theory at a level accessible to the layman. The discussion is motivated by first showing how informal accounts of QM’s mysteries (specifically, entanglement and quantum erasers) lead to a contradiction of relativity. The apparent contradiction is resolved with an elementary mathematical analysis. Finally, I engage in wild philosophical speculation in order to allay fears that a better understanding of QM runs the risk of taking all of the fun out of it.” http://www.flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf

     

  • mazsa 07:42 on May 5, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Philosophy   

    David J. Chalmers: The Singularity – A Philosophical Analysis http://consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf

     

  • mazsa 12:17 on April 30, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Philosophy,   

    3 recent promising papers on the fabric of the universe:

    1. Information Physics: The New Frontier

    At this point in time, two major areas of physics, statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics, rest on the foundations of probability and entropy. The last century saw several significant fundamental advances in our understanding of the process of inference, which make it clear that these are inferential theories. That is, rather than being a description of the behavior of the universe, these theories describe how observers can make optimal predictions about the universe. In such a picture, information plays a critical role. What is more is that little clues, such as the fact that black holes have entropy, continue to suggest that information is fundamental to physics in general. [...] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.5161v1

    Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics +

    [...] it is important to clarify what the problem is not. We are not asking whether the metaphorical interpretation of the universe as a computer is more useful than misleading. We are not even asking whether an informational description of the universe, as we know it, is possible, at least partly and piecemeal. [...] We are asking whether the universe in itself could essentially be made of
    information [...] http://num.math.uni-goettingen.de/schaback/info/mat/floridi_open_problems.pdf

    2. Primordial weirdness: Did the early universe have 1 dimension? http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-primordial-weirdness-early-universe-dimension.html

    3. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/gravity-doesn%E2%80%99t-exist

     

  • mazsa 17:38 on April 16, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Philosophy, ,   

    “The Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom)”: http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html

     

  • mazsa 17:33 on April 16, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Philosophy   

    Conway’s Game of Life Extrusion “I wrote a script that takes the lifetime of the cellular automaton Conway’s Game of Life and extrudes it into a three dimensional object. [...]” http://www.qotile.net/blog/wp/?p=600

    Cf. Instructions for turning Blender files into RepRap instructions http://objects.reprap.org/wiki/Using_Blender_for_making_print-sheets

     

  • mazsa 02:43 on April 15, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Philosophy,   

    “How should libertarians frame government?
    (a) as a criminal enterprise; or
    (b) as a service provider that does a bad job, largely because it is a monopoly, with too many restrictions on entry and exit [...]” http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/04/two_questions_f_1.html

     

  • mazsa 09:13 on April 12, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Philosophy   

    Edmund Gettier, 1963: Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?

    Various attempts have been made in recent years to state necessary and sufficient conditions for someone’s knowing a given proposition. The attempts have often been such that they can be stated in a form similar to the following:1

    a. S knows that P IFF [i.e., if and only if]
    i. P is true,
    ii. S believes that P, and
    iii. S is justified in believing that P.

    For example, Chisholm has held that the following gives the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge:2

    b. S knows that P IFF
    i. S accepts P,
    ii. S has adequate evidence for P, and
    iii. P is true.

    Ayer has stated the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge as follows:3

    c. S knows that P IFF
    i. P is true,
    ii. S is sure that P is true, and
    iii. S has the right to be sure that P is true.

    I shall argue that (a) is false in that the conditions stated therein do not constitute a sufficient condition for the truth of the proposition that S knows that P. The same argument will show that (b) and (c) fail if ‘has adequate evidence for’ or ‘has the right to be sure that’ is substituted for ‘is justified in believing that’ throughout.

    I shall begin by noting two points.
    First, in that sense of ‘justified’ in which S’s being justified in believing P is a necessary condition of S’s knowing that P, it is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false.
    Secondly, for any proposition P, if S is justified in believing P, and P entails Q, and S deduces Q from P and accepts Q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing Q.

    Keeping these two points in mind, I shall now present two cases in which the conditions stated in (a) are true for some proposition, though it is at the same time false that the person in question knows that proposition.

    Case I
    Suppose that Smith and Jones have applied for a certain job. And suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following conjunctive proposition:

    d. Jones is the man who will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket.

    Smith’s evidence for (d) might be that the president of the company assured him that Jones would in the end be selected, and that he, Smith, had counted the coins in Jones’s pocket ten minutes ago. Proposition (d) entails:

    e. The man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket.

    Let us suppose that Smith sees the entailment from (d) to (e), and accepts (e) on the grounds of (d), for which he has strong evidence. In this case, Smith is clearly justified in believing that (e) is true.

    But imagine, further, that unknown to Smith, he himself, not Jones, will get the job. And, also, unknown to Smith, he himself has ten coins in his pocket. Proposition (e) is then true, though proposition (d), from which Smith inferred (e), is false. In our example, then, all of the following are true: (i) (e) is true, (ii) Smith believes that (e) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (e) is true. But it is equally clear that Smith does not know that (e) is true; for (e) is true in virtue of the number of coins in Smith’s pocket, while Smith does not know how many coins are in Smith’s pocket, and bases his belief in (e) on a count of the coins in Jones’s pocket, whom he falsely believes to be the man who will get the job.

    Case II
    Let us suppose that Smith has strong evidence for the following proposition:

    f. Jones owns a Ford.

    Smith’s evidence might be that Jones has at all times in the past within Smith’s memory owned a car, and always a Ford, and that Jones has just offered Smith a ride while driving a Ford. Let us imagine, now, that Smith has another friend, Brown, of whose whereabouts he is totally ignorant. Smith selects three place names quite at random and constructs the following three propositions:

    g. Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston.

    h. Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona.

    i. Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk.

    Each of these propositions is entailed by (f). Imagine that Smith realizes the entailment of each of these propositions he has constructed by (f), and proceeds to accept (g), (h), and (i) on the basis of (f). Smith has correctly inferred (g), (h), and (i) from a proposition for which be has strong evidence. Smith is therefore completely justified in believing each of these three propositions, Smith, of course, has no idea where Brown is.

    But imagine now that two further conditions hold.
    First Jones does not own a Ford, but is at present driving a rented car.
    And secondly, by the sheerest coincidence, and entirely unknown to Smith, the place mentioned in proposition (h) happens really to be the place where Brown is.

    If these two conditions hold, then Smith does not know that (h) is true, even though (i) (h) is true, (ii) Smith does believe that (h) is true, and (iii) Smith is justified in believing that (h) is true.

    These two examples show that definition (a) does not state a sufficient condition for someone’s knowing a given proposition. The same cases, with appropriate changes, will suffice to show that neither definition (b) nor definition (c) do so either.

    Notes
    1. Plato seems to be considering some such definition at Theaetetus 201, and perhaps accepting one at Meno 98.
    2. Roderick M. Chisholm, Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1957), p. 16.
    3. A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1956), p. 34

    http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=203979522511045464

     

  • mazsa 13:02 on April 10, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Philosophy,   

    Tim Minchin’s Storm – the Animated Movie [10']

    Cf. http://www.lyricsmania.com/storm_lyrics_tim_minchin.html

     

  • mazsa 11:49 on April 6, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Philosophy,   

    Databuse: Digital Privacy and the Mosaic http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/0401_databuse_wittes/0401_databuse_wittes.pdf

     

  • mazsa 12:11 on March 27, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Philosophy, , , , ,   

    Taxes & Voting: “[...] Thoreau [...] argues that people should be allowed to decide to not pay their taxes if they decide to withdraw from the political system. He does, however, make a point of saying that people should pay for what they use, such as paying the highway tax if one uses the highway. [...]” http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=2695

     

  • mazsa 12:02 on March 27, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Philosophy,   

    Seven Laws of Noah: “This code is a set of moral imperatives that, according to the Talmud, were given by God as a binding set of laws for the “children of Noah” – that is, all of humankind. According to Judaism, any non-Jew who lives according to these laws is regarded as a Righteous Gentile, and is assured of a place in the world to come (Olam Haba), the final reward of the righteous.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah

     

  • mazsa 11:26 on March 27, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Philosophy,   

    How to use poker to reduce cognitive biases and improve your rationality http://rationalpoker.com/

    Cf. http://lesswrong.com/lw/4yk/verifying_rationality_via_rationalpokercom/

     

  • mazsa 12:01 on March 19, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Philosophy   

    Experimental Philosophy and the Problem of Free Will: “A deterministic universe [is one] in which “Every decision is completely caused by what happened before the decision—given the past, each decision has to happen the way that it does.” … One group of participants was asked whether it is possible for anyone to be morally responsible for their actions in such a universe. These participants tended to say that it is not possible to be morally responsible in that universe. That question about moral responsibility is, of course, pitched at an abstract level.

    Another group of participants was presented instead with a concrete case of a man who killed his family. That provoked a much different response. When presented with a concrete case of man performing a reprehensible action, people tended to say that the man was fully morally responsible for his actions, even when set in a deterministic universe. Indeed, concrete cases of bad behavior lead people to attribute responsibility, even when the action is caused by a neurological disorder. […]

    People are pulled in different directions because different mental mechanisms are implicated in different conditions.” https://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6023/1401.abstract via http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/03/responsibility-is-near.html

     

  • mazsa 21:07 on March 17, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Philosophy, ,   

    A measure for the multiverse: “[...] Everything we need to know about the multiverse might be right here in our own universe.” http://www.sott.net/articles/show/204004-A-measure-for-the-multiverse

     

  • mazsa 10:18 on March 1, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Philosophy,   

    The Utility of Mathematics: “This essay discusses the best current understanding of the relationship between mathematical and empirical knowledge. It focuses on two questions:

    • Does mathematics have some sort of deep metaphysical connection with reality, and
    • if not, why is it that mathematical abstractions seem so often to be so powerfully predictive in the real world?” http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/utility-of-math/
     

  • mazsa 22:24 on February 25, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Philosophy   


    :)

    [...] Envy me not, then,
    O my friends, my readers;
    Though the Prophetic Strain echoes in each line I write,
    Though you covet said Strain for your own,
    Heed me and flee.
    The words I give you now are words of Life, and not Death,
    Though I suppose the Prophet would proclaim that Death and Life are the same,
    And that only the foolish would divide the two,
    The Two which are One.
    But He’d be wrong about that, I’m pretty sure.
    So again I turn and I say to you,
    Pass by the Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran,
    Touch it not nor gaze upon it,
    But go about your ways in peace of heart and with thanksgiving.
    Fly, you fools!

    https://www.firstthings.com/article.php?year=2009&month=03&title_link=003-on-the-recent-publication-of-kahlil-gibrans-icollected-worksi-50

     

  • mazsa 17:13 on February 23, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Philosophy   

    “One plausible scenario for the next few centuries is that we build an AI as smart as we are at designing AI, which means it could improve its own intelligence very quickly, which means it would soon become a superintelligent machine, with almost unlimited power to accomplish whatever it desires.

    So we need to consider carefully how to program its desires, so that it doesn’t kill us all.

    Presumably, this is a matter of ethics. Which ethical theory should we use to program the goal system of a future superintelligence?” Desirism and Friendly AI http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=14505

     

  • mazsa 07:16 on February 12, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , Philosophy, , ,   

    The Trouble With “Balance” Metaphors “[...] Perhaps the most obvious problem with balancing metaphors is that they suggest a relationship that is always, by necessity, zero sum: If one side rises, the other must fall in exact proportion. Also implicit in balancing talk is the idea that equilibrium is the ideal, and anything that upsets that balance is a change for the worse. That’s probably true if you’re walking a tightrope, but it clearly doesn’t hold in other cases. [...]

    the familiar trope of “balancing privacy and security” is a source of constant frustration to privacy advocates, because while there are clearly sometimes tradeoffs between the two, it often seems that the zero-sum rhetoric of “balancing” leads people to view them as always in conflict. This is, I suspect, the source of much of the psychological appeal of “security theater”: If we implicitly think of privacy and security as balanced on a scale, a loss of privacy is ipso facto a gain in security. It sounds silly when stated explicitly, but the power of frames is precisely that they shape our thinking without being stated explicitly.

    There’s a deeper problem, though: Embedded in the idea of the scales is a picture of a process for arriving at sound decisions—which if the metaphor is sufficiently pervasive we may come to think of as the only method for making sound decisions. [...]

    Obviously, we need to use shorthand terms like “privacy” and “security” to keep discussion manageable, but is it really especially illuminating to treat every proposed security measure as though its consequences can be reduced to quantity subtracted from an undifferentiated lump of privacy stuff, and a quantity added to a blob called security? The task of analysis is always aided when we can render heterogeneous interests more easily comparable by reducing them to some uniform measure, of course, but balance metaphors imply that we’ve already achieved this. This may be why so many legal opinions employing “balancing tests” feel so thin, and so many arguments about where to “strike the right balance” between competing values founder. The metaphor assumes a lot of analytic background work that hasn’t actually been done—and conceals the fact that it still needs to be.” http://www.juliansanchez.com/2011/02/04/the-trouble-with-balance-metaphors/

     

  • mazsa 20:21 on January 27, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Philosophy   

    Oxford: Computer Science and Philosophy, a new degree, cf. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2148460

     

  • mazsa 11:32 on January 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , Philosophy, ,   

    Privacy of legal persons: “Does FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] give corporations the same personal privacy rights as natural born people?” http://epic.org/amicus/fccvatt/

     

  • mazsa 16:51 on January 18, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Philosophy   

    “The rise of artilects (artificial intellects, i.e., godlike massively intelligent machines with intellectual capacities trillions of trillions of times above the human level) in this century makes the existence of a deity (a massively intelligent entity capable of creating a universe) seem much more plausible. [...]” http://www.kurzweilai.net/from-cosmism-to-deism

     

  • mazsa 08:06 on December 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , Philosophy, , ,   

    Posts on Personal Ontology 1.0 alpha on BFO-list 

    Posts:

    0. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/pont

    1. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

    2. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/re-dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

    3. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/re-re-dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

    4. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/re-re-re-dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

    5. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/re-re-re-re-dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

    Original:

    https://groups.google.com/group/bfo-discuss/browse_thread/thread/433bfa9718cae15?hl=en

     

  • mazsa 08:04 on December 20, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , Philosophy, , ,   

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Dear BFO Community, let me introduce you POnt – Personal Ontology 1.0 alpha 

    [Cf. the whole sequence: http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/posts-on-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha-on-bfo-list ]

    On 6 December 2010 04:15, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
    >> 2. Alan, in a way it have obtained: I raised this issue as a routine
    >> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment :)
    >
    > I don’t consider thought experiments to be evidence. They are good
    > argument. In this case there are a number of substantive issues that
    > we are far from understanding, so I don’t think the thought experiment
    > is enough.
    > ;-)

    ok

    >> You say that AIs running on the internet would be generically
    >> dependent continuants (not MaterialEntities) and all generically
    >> dependent continuants have material bases, which are presumably
    >> MaterialEntities, specifically, spatially dispersed sets of Objects.
    >
    > Yes.

    ok

    >> You say that I’m an independent continuant while I’m flesh and blood,
    >> “uploading” would change me (still me) into a dependent continuant
    >> with a material basis (presumably a set of Objects), and “downloading”
    >> again would presumably change me back into an independent continuant.
    >
    > I don’t believe I said that.
    > Rather: I don’t really know what constitutes the identity of a person.
    > If it came to be known that this identity could be preserved when
    > uploading, then we would know that it was a kind of generically
    > dependent continuant. When in your body, the body would be the
    > material entity that bears the concretization of that GDC.
    > BFO doesn’t have such an entity (your sense of person/AI) so nothing
    > would need to be changed in BFO should we learn this is possible.
    > However if other ontologies had made a commitment that contradicted
    > this they would need to be changed.

    makes sense and consistent in itself: you say that BFO is independent (and you are agnostic, at least as long as possible) on a lot of issues. The concept of agency/personship is one of them.

    >> But do I have the right to fork
    >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) BFO at all?
    >
    > You do, but it would be considered bad practice to change any of the
    > intended meanings of BFO terms, or to distribute it in any way that it
    > might be confused by someone to be the real BFO.
    >
    > Better to create another ontology and import and use BFO terms where
    > appropriate.
    >
    >> I feel so that the default copyright for ontologies is
    >> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ but I’d appreciate if you
    >> would publish the copyright (e.g.
    >> http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/ ) of BFO.
    >
    > It is so said in the OWL file
    > http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

    Copyright: thank you, I didn’t notice it.
    Disambiguation: I understand your concern. I’ll do it bona fide.

    >> On 29 November 2010 19:56, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
    >>>>[I think it would not be useful to regard
    >>>> her [the AI] as something that has a material basis.
    >>>
    >>> It isn’t a matter of useful. It’s a matter of true.
    >>
    >> I’m sorry I was negligent.
    >>
    >> 1. Clarification: I think it would not be useful to regard an eventual
    >> AI or the uploaded me as a dependent continuant with an independent
    >> continuant material basis which is a scattered set of material
    >> Objects. I think it would be useful to regard an AI and myself to be
    >> independent continuants, invariant to eventual changes in our material
    >> bases.
    >
    > That’s fine. Buy you are not using the terms as BFO intends them.
    > Better to define new additional terms that define things the way think
    > they should be. FWIW, I think it is possible that you don’t understand
    > what it means to be a material basis in BFO.

    ad1. see below

    >> 2. Truth: I think what I say (modified by the Clarification above) is
    >> (ontologically) true = invariant to (ontological) transformations (cf.
    >> the end of my previous letter).
    >
    > Yes, but the truth I was referring to was deeper. There isn’t
    > anything, according to BFO, that doesn’t depend on something material.

    ad2. see below

    >> 3. Usefulness: I think usefulness (and elegance etc.) is not
    >> superfluous in ontological research either. Pragmatic approach to
    >> ontology presupposes usefulness (and at least non-falseness). I think
    >> there are useful ontologies just like there are useful theorems:
    >> “[...]
    >> – useful theorem: theorem that leads to many new ones [...]”
    >
    > It depends on what your definition of ontology is. BFO is trying to be
    > an ontology in the sense of being a catalog of types of things that
    > exist. It is proposed that building ontologies in this sense is
    > already damned useful for it’s targeted purposes.

    I think I understand what material basis means in BFO (but that thought of mine may be a part of the problem:) Let’s check it and see.

    You say that “exists = (matter itself and/or) have material basis”.
    ‘Exists = (matter itself and/or) have material basis’ := ‘X=Mb’

    Case I.

    If you think X=Mb is an axiom of BFO 1.1, it’s ok. Then you can say that

    • either you can slide “information” into the pigeon holes of the BFO 1.1 (e.g. an AI on the internet or the uploaded me or an imaginary magenta unicorn pegasus are generally dependent continuants with material basis),
    • or “information” (which does not have material basis) is nonexistent (it would contradict to the axiom).

    This is the scenario

    • where you say that “BFO is trying to be an ontology in the sense of being a catalog of types of things that exist”, and you reject that meaning of “information” which may or may not have material basis (obviously along with other similar “things”, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether ) presumably as “speculative metaphysics” (à la Kant, Heidegger), and
    • where every continuant with a speculative mind (like me:), be it independent or dependent, using the fact that in BFO 1.1 owl:Thing =/= bfo:Entity, have the legitimate opportunity to reveal other categories under owl:Thing but outside the category bfo:Entity, e.g. a category Nonentity, or a category dolce-lite:Quale.
    • This approach is too “postmodern” to be an ontology in one (the “continental”) meaning (“[Philosophy] the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being” [= owl:Thing, including a rigorous and exhaustive organization of it that is hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations]),
    • but it’s ok in the (“analytic”) other (“[Logic] the set of entities presupposed by a theory” / “[computer science] a rigorous and exhaustive organization of some knowledge domain that is usually hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations”) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ontology

    Case II.

    But if

    • you think that X=Mb is a deep (basic) truth (of ontology in philosophical meaning) mapped into an axiom of BFO, i.e. BFO is a basic ontology in the philosophical meaning above, and
    • tertium non datur,

    then I think X=Mb is simply false.

    (I don’t know whether BFO has this – type II – ambition at all:

    • on one hand, it is so close to it that it would be a sin:) to miss the opportunity,
    • on the other, in BFO 1.1, owl:Thing =/= bfo:Entity as if BFO would not be confident enough to be type II and would ensure place for the diversity of ontologies.)

    Why false? Suppose for a while that I completely accept the solution of BFO 1.1 for AI-s running on the internet (i.e, they are generically dependent continuants, not MaterialEntities, and all generically dependent continuants have material bases, which are MaterialEntities, specifically, spatially dispersed sets of Objects).
    However, this would not solve

    and so would not mean that X=Mb.

    If you say that matter is the nesessary building block for owl:Thing, you make the mistake in logic I made at first (“I may like information to be the “infrastucture” of matter but you are right: for an ontology this would be a superfluous presumption and a logical fallacy of this kind: http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/mary/Default.aspx “).

    So in Case II we do the right thing if we abandon our demand for the preeminence of information and of matter and in general of any specific owl:Thing.

    What the universe (more exactly: owl:Thing) is made of at the “fundamental level” is an open empirical (rather than a speculative / a thought experiment kind of) question yet (cf. e.g. http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/lhc-spots-no-black-holes-eliminates-some-versions-of-string-theory.ars ): I don’t think so that BFO in Case II should decide on it in advance. BFO in Case II should be explicitely independent on all “speculative mathaphysical” answers.

    Solution

    In Case I: There is no problem to solve.

    Your axioms/categories are yours, mine are mine: there is no further need to argue (you don’t argue fiercely e.g. on Dewey numbers:) and no need to change anything on BFO 1.1. The only (absolutely legitimate!) task left is to keep BFO away form revolution and let it evolve into other disciplines.

    In Case II: Back to the future!

    Fortunately, even if I am right in what I am saying above, BFO itself(!) has a solution for the problem of Case II: your internal solution in Case II is BFO 1.0 ( http://www.ifomis.org/bfo/1.0 ) The structure of the previous version of BFO is “agnostic”: independent on what owl:Thing is supposed to made of.

    Of course, BFO 1.1 is an improvement on 1.0: Disposotion, Function and Role are bundled into a category in 1.0, and bundling Object, FiatObjectPart and ObjectAggregate into a new category in 1.1 is a parallel idea. BFO may retain the new structure in the next version of BFO as well.

    The problem is, as the forensic investigations show:), that this stuctural change was accompanied by the silent introduction of X=Mb by calling the new category ‘MaterialEntity’. This is why BFO 1.1 is not just a harmless improvement of 1.0. From the point of view of Case II, 1.1 is 1.0 constrained by the false X=Mb.

    I think (the Platonic idea of) BFO is deeper than 1.1, and 1.0 is closer to it.

    Suggestions

    I’m a just a user of BFO, not even a heavy one, one among many thousands. You should put my suggestions in their right place.

    For me it is very important to clarify: how would look like the BFO I would be happy to work with, without the need to fork it?

    1. It would be modular: a core and auxiliary axioms (or alternative auxiliary axiom systems). BFO is independent on a lot of issues. The concept of agency/personship is one of them. For me, agency/personship is ontologically important, but you are right: this doesn’t imply that the core of BFO should contain personship. However, it implies that BFO should not preclude the ontological concept of personship.
    BFO should be modular: its core

    • should remain indenpendent on theories in ontology (like the ontological construction of the concept of agency and personship) and
    • should become independent on open empirical questions (like the fundamental constitution of owl:Things).

    2. It would have a Type II core.
    The core of BFO seems to me the right place for the philosophical/continental meaning of ontology (Case II above). This is why
    2.1. I would consider removing the the root category bfo:Entity from BFO. In philosophical meaning of ontology bfo:Entity is not different to owl:Thing, it would be an inappropriate postmodern modesty:) not to erease it.
    2.2. I would change the label of the BFO 1.1 category ‘MaterialEntity’ into another label without reference to matter and to any other specific hypothetical constitution of owl:Thing.
    (2.3. I would revisit the examples and the wording of the definitions of BFO 1.1 based on the arguments above.)

    3. It would have different Type I auxiliary axioms.
    3.A. With the BFO core + X=Mb as an auxiliary axiom, we could essentially reconstruct BFO 1.1.
    3.B. With the BFO core + an auxiliary axiom alternative to X=Mb, I would be able to describe what I think to be ontologically important.

    Results

    In this https://groups.google.com/group/bfo-discuss/browse_thread/thread/433bfa9718cae15 conversation BFO 1.0 has revealed itself as more profound than BFO 1.1. Minor changes in BFO 1.0 could result in a future BFO core independent on material or any other specific hypothetical constitution of owl:Thing. BFO core + auxiliary axiom X=Mb would reconstruct BFO 1.1. BFO core + alternative auxiliary axioms would ensure conceptual space for alternative ontologies without the need to change or fork the BFO core, and without any interference with the reconstructed BFO 1.1.

    [Original: https://groups.google.com/group/bfo-discuss/browse_thread/thread/433bfa9718cae15?hl=en ]

     

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