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9 | Follower
Overcoming Bias
12.02.2023
The following may well be the most controversial dilemma in the history of decision theory: …
06.02.2023
Followup to: Decoherence, Where Philosophy Meets Science …
I'm a bit tired today, having stayed up until 3AM writing yesterday's >6000-word post on zombies, so today I'll just reply to Richard, and tie up a loose end I spotted the next day. …
The reductionist thesis (as I formulate it) is that human minds, for reasons of efficiency, use a multi-level map in which we separately think about things like "atoms" and "quarks", "hands" and "fin…
This post is part of the Quantum Physics Sequence. Followup to: Where Philosophy Meets Science, Joint Configurations …
Continuation of: Where Physics Meets Experience …
One generalized lesson not to learn from the Anti-Zombie Argument is, "Anything you can't see doesn't exist." …
In "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies", Daniel Dennett says: …
Previously in series: Decoherence • As touched upon earlier, Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle" is horribly misnamed. …
Previously in series: The So-Called Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle …
04.02.2023
> "Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems." > —Rene Descartes, Discours de la Methode …
Fundamental physics—quarks 'n stuff—is far removed from the levels we can see, like hands and fingers. At best, you can know how to replicate the experiments which show that your hand (like everythi…
02.02.2023
Homo sapiens’s environment of evolutionary adaptedness (a.k.a. EEA or “ancestral environment”) consisted of hunter-gatherer bands of at most 200 people, with no writing. All inherited knowledge was p…
The Robbers Cave Experiment had as its subject 22 twelve-year-old boys, selected from 22 different schools in Oklahoma City, all doing well in school, all from stable middle-class Protestant families…
The Intrade prediction market is giving Hillary a 53% chance and Obama a 47% chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Hillary is down 7.5 percentage points in just the last day. (N…
Previously, I defined evidence as “an event entangled, by links of cause and effect, with whatever you want to know about,” and entangled as “happening differently for different possible states of th…
Previously in series: Entangled Photons …
01.02.2023
Consider (yet again) the Aristotelian idea of categories. Let's say that there's some object with properties A, B, C, D, and E, or at least it looks E-ish. …
Suppose you have a system X that's equally likely to be in any of 8 possible states: • {X1, X2, X3, X4, X5, X6, X7, X8.} …
"This plucked chicken has two legs and no feathers—therefore, by definition, it is a human!" …
I've never been a fan of the notion that we should (normatively) have a discount rate in our pure preferences - as opposed to a pseudo-discount rate arising from monetary inflation, or from opportuni…
"If we let ethical considerations get in the way of scientific hubris, then the feminists have won!" -- Helarxe …
The first law of thermodynamics, better known as Conservation of Energy, says that you can't create energy from nothing: it prohibits perpetual motion machines of the first type, which run and run in…
Suppose you have a system X that can be in any of 8 states, which are all equally probable (relative to your current state of knowledge), and a system Y that can be in any of 4 states, all equally pr…
Previously in series: Distinct Configurations …
The one comes to you and says: • Long have I pondered the meaning of the word "Art", and at last I've found what seems to me a satisfactory definition: "Art is that which is designed for the purpose…
...Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. —John Kea…
Followup to: An Alien God, The Wonder of Evolution, Evolutions Are Stupid • Yesterday, I wrote: …
Suppose there’s a heavily armed sociopath, a kidnapper with hostages, who has just rejected all requests for negotiation and announced his intent to start killing. In real life, the good guys don’t u…
Followup to: Rational vs. Scientific Ev-Psych, The Tragedy of Group Selectionism, Evolving to Extinction …
31.01.2023
The key to understanding configurations, and hence the key to understanding quantum mechanics, is realizing on a truly gut level that configurations are about more than one particle. …
29.01.2023
Not that I’m claiming I could have done better, if I’d been born into that time, instead of this one… …
Previously in series: Classical Configuration Spaces …
Previously in series: The Quantum Arena • At this point I would like to introduce another key idea in quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, this idea was introduced so well in chapter 2 of QED: The Stran…
Looking back on early quantum physics—not for purposes of admonishing the major figures, or to claim that we could have done better if we’d been born into that era, but in order to try and learn a mo…
FYI: The Oxford Future of Humanity Institute is holding a conference on global catastrophic risks on July 17-20, 2008, at Oxford (in the UK). …
There’s a widespread belief that quantum mechanics is supposed to be confusing. This is not a good frame of mind for either a teacher or a student. …
28.01.2023
Previously in series: Bell's Theorem: No EPR "Reality" …
"Does the moon exist when no one is looking at it?"—Albert Einstein, asked of Niels Bohr Suppose you were just starting to work out a theory of quantum mechanics. …
27.01.2023
FADE IN around a serious-looking group of uniformed military officers. At the head of the table, a senior, heavy-set man, GENERAL FRED, speaks. …