Being Logical – A guide to good thinking

Sorry for the infrequent updates.

On goodreads I gave the book a 2 – corresponding to ‘it was ok’. It wasn’t a bad book, and it was closer to 3 (‘liked it’) than 1 (‘did not like it’). Do recall this as you read the post. The average rating on goodreads is 3.59, and the average amazon rating is 4.3, so a lot of people seem to have liked the book better than I did. Perhaps it has to do with the horrid quality of the alternatives out there? It may also have to do with the format of the book:

“I do [...] place a good deal of stress on the obvious in this book, and that is quite deliberate. In logic, as in life, it is the obvious that most often bears emphasizing, because it so easily escapes our notice. [...] This is neither a treatise in logical theory nor a textbook in logic [...] My governing purpose was to write a practical guidebook, presenting the basic principles of logic in a way that is accessible to those who are encountering the subject for the first time. Being Logical seeks to produce practitioners, not theoreticians — people for whom knowing the principles of logic is in the service of being logical.”

Much of the stuff covered I’d seen before in other contexts, but there was some new stuff and some stuff I’d long forgotten; it wasn’t my first book on logic, but it was the first semi-decent book on the subject I’ve read in a while. I got somewhat annoyed along the line by the fact that many of the (evolutionary, biological, etc.) reasons why we behave illogically are not addressed in the book at all – he mentions once or twice in passing that being logical has a cost associated with it because it takes effort, but that’s it. A little bit about that stuff seems very important to me to include in a book like this, because otherwise the advice given can easily become disconnected from peoples’ experiences; telling someone not to be emotional when making arguments is fine, but when are you likely to be emotional, how can you tell, and how can you increase the costs associated with behaving emotionally and disregard logic in situations where it is particularly important to not do that? No stuff like that is included in the book. On the other hand this is probably just the format taking its toll; he intended it to be short and readable and he succeeded, although the format has some limitations. I immediately jumped to ‘what about quantum mechanics? – should the state of QM theory not make us reject that principle ‘on principle’?’ when reading about the law of excluded middle – and although it later turned out I’m not the only one thinking that way, this is probably not an important counterpoint to include in a book with a scope like this one. But on the other hand when the author includes stuff like this, you get annoyed if you’re me:

“Another trait of first principles—it follows from their being self-evident—is that they cannot be proven. This means that they are not conclusions that follow from premises; they are not truths dependent upon antecedent truths. This is because first principles represent truths that are absolutely fundamental. They are “first” in the strongest sense of the word.”

If we know that the world has some randomness in it that we can’t get rid of, if truth is in some fundamental sense best thought of as (irreducibly) probabilistic to some extent, then what does that tell you about the previously mentioned supposedly ‘absolutely fundamental first principle’? Metaphysicians are always one step ahead, but physicians tend to be right behind them and sometimes they will catch up with the metaphysicians (or religious leaders, or…). Language like this will make some people tend to think of the author as an ignorant and arrogant/self-important philosopher with a fundamentally simplistic worldview that doesn’t correctly map how the world works. ‘Something is either true or false’ was an ‘established fact’ before QM – but science marched on. There are other, more decision-relevant contexts where a (to me) similar implicit rejection of probabilistic reasoning takes place, and this is by far the biggest problem I have with this book. I’ll discuss these aspects in more details in a few of the comments below.

Anyway, some more quotes and comments:

“Being logical presupposes our having a sensitivity to language and a knack for its effective use, for logic and language are inseparable. It also presupposes our having a healthy respect for the firm factualness of the world in which we live, for logic is about reality. Finally, being logical presupposes a lively awareness of how the facts that are our ideas relate to the facts that are the objects in the world, for logic is about truth. [...]

Our ideas are clear, and our understanding of them is clear, only to the extent that we keep constant tabs on the things to which they refer. The focus must always be on the originating sources of our ideas in the objective world. [...] The more we focus on our ideas in a way that systematically ignores their objective origins, the more unreliable those ideas become. [...] Bad ideas can be informative, not about the objective world—for they have ceased faithfully to reflect that world—but about the subjective state of the persons who nourish those ideas. Bad ideas do not just happen. We are responsible for them. They result from carelessness on our part, when we cease to pay sufficient attention to the relational quality of ideas, or, worse, are a product of the willful rejection of objective facts.” [...]

“To be in a state of uncertainty concerning the truth is neither a pleasant nor a desirable state to be in, and we should always be striving to get out of such states as soon as possible.” (Note added in the margin: “Here I violently disagree. Probabilistic reasoning is much more useful than ‘categorical’ reasoning in terms of estimating the true state of the world – categorical reasoning is limited in a way probabilistic reasoning is not, and the added flexibility needn’t be a cost and will often prove beneficial. Admitting to uncertainties about the true state of the world should be considered a virtue. Adding probabilities to estimates increases accuracy and decreases (implicit) measurement error. Applied probabilistic reasoning also makes us more likely to update our beliefs over time.”)

“The principle of sufficient reason tells us that things don’t just happen. They are caused to happen. We do not know the causes of everything, but we know that everything has a cause. A good part of our energies as rational creatures is devoted to the search for causes. We want to know why things happen. The knowledge of causes, simply from a theoretical point of view, can be very satisfying, since to know the causes of things is to have a truly profound understanding of them.” (As has been noted elsewhere (the book was bad, but that point stands) applying causal models is not without costs – but the costs are not addressed in this book, only the benefits. As I bluntly put it in the margin: “The hunt for causes isn’t always a good thing; we tend to apply causal thinking to areas where they do us no good. Often the causes we come up with are wrong – often ‘shit happens’ is a truer statement than ‘X caused Y’. We should be aware of this.”)

“Everything I have said thus far has been said with argument in mind. Argument is the activity of logic, and any particular argument is a concrete manifestation of the reasoning process. The next step in the process will be to look more closely at the statement, more specifically, at the “categorical statement.” The most effective argument is one whose conclusion is a categorical statement. A categorical statement tells us that something definitely is the case. [...] A categorical argument (one made up of categorical statements) is the most effective of arguments, then, because it provides us with certain knowledge.” (Note in the margin: “No it doesn’t. It just gives us the illusion of certain knowledge. Which is bad. Arguments involving categorical statements may be the “most effective” – but they are not necessarily the most true. Often statements involving likelihoods have much higher truth-correspondence. The application of categorical statements will often lead to faulty reasoning because uncertainty (which contains valuable information) is neglected.”)

“[The agnostic] claims ignorance as to the truth of a certain matter. Just as there is a place for skepticism in sound reasoning, so is there also a place for an honest agnosticism. We are being honestly agnostic when we simply admit to an ignorance that is really ours, here and now. If our knowledge of a particular thing is so limited that it does not allow us to take a confident position regarding it, we should refrain from committing ourselves. To do otherwise would be intellectually irresponsible. Evasive agnosticism is the attitude that attempts to pass off vincible ignorance as if it were invincible. It is one thing to say “I don’t know” after long and assiduous research into a subject. It is quite another to say “I don’t know” when you haven’t even bothered to look into the matter. The person who succumbs to evasive agnosticism uses ignorance as an excuse rather than a reason. Such ignorance is the result of indifference or laziness.” (Margin note: “But again it is necessary to ‘pick your battles’ because logical thinking is hard work – we can’t apply it all the time because it is costly. And we can’t do research on everything. Agnosticism will often, at least for utility function specifications implicitly argued for here where people care mainly about the truth of statements, be much preferable to a poorly reasoned position.)

“The more intense our emotional state, the more difficult it is to think clearly and behave temperately. [...] we need to be constantly aware of the fact that if emotion gains the ascendancy in any situation, clear thinking is going to suffer. [...] There is a simple rule of thumb to be followed here: Never appeal directly to people’s emotions.”

“In the ideal debate, the primary purpose of the debaters is not to triumph over each other, but rather by their combined efforts to ferret out the truth as it pertains to the issues being debated.” (not new, but nice that stuff like this is included in the book.)

This one was fun, as it was from the last part of the last chapter: “If we are tempted to call black white, or white black, it is because the complexities of life sometimes overwhelm us. But it is not a rational response to a complex reality to simplify it in such a way that grossly distorts it. The result of simplistic reasoning is always distortion.” (…fun considering how he feels about categorical reasoning. Categorical reasoning is just a simplified version of the more general form of probabilistic reasoning, admitting only a binary probability variable that will often grossly distort the truth by adding measurement errors to our estimates.)

Leviathan

“Very boring writing style”

“To call his writing plodding is a gross understatement”

“This book is impossible to read; Hobbes’ style of writing is ridiculously long winded and very difficult to comprehend.”

“learned once again that I, unfortunately, just do not have the patience or attention span for the minutiae of philosophy.”

“The main idea is nice, but who cares about it if the whole book is inedible? The first part of the book is just bullshit which has nothing to do with the society. Read a summary, don’t waste your time.”

…

From the google reviews here. They really make you want to read the book, right? Of course I could have picked some other review quotes; there are significantly more 5 star reviews (42) than 1- (14) and 2 star reviews (14) combined. Anyway, I was first introduced to Hobbes’ thinking about 10 years ago in high school, and so I have already read ‘a summary’. I’m currently reading an abbreviated version of the book.

Sometimes half the fun of reading books like these is to spot assumptions and value judgments which were considered par for the course at the time the books were written, or at the very least not particularly controversial, yet today make the reader do a double take and think ‘what the f*#%$?’ Here’s an, interesting, example:

“as for witches, I think not that their witchcraft is any real power; but yet that they are justly punished, for the false belief they have, that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can: their trade being nearer to a new religion than to a craft or science.” (Chapter 2, ‘Of imagination’).

Incidentally I do urge you here to remember that ideas like witchcraft are not in all parts of the world considered just a thing of the past; there are still people living today who are punished for witchcraft. Some other quotes from the book below:

…

“whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calls good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that uses them: thee being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the man (where there is no commonwealth); or (in a commonwealth) from the person that represents it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up, and make his sentence the rule thereof.” (Chapter 6, ‘Of the interior beginnings of voluntary motions; commonly called the passsions; and the speeches by which they are expressed’)

…

“The greatest of human powers, is that which is compounded of the powers of most men, united by consent, in one person, natural, or civil, that has the use of all their powers depending on his will; such as is the power of a common-wealth: or depending on the will of each particular; such as is the power of a faction or of divers factions leagued. Therefore to have servants, is power; to have friends, is power: for they are strengths united.” [...]

“The value, or WORTH of a man, is as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power: and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependant on the need and judgment of another. [...] as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the price. For let a man (as most men do) rate themselves at the highest value they can; yet their true value is no more than it is esteemed by others.” (Chapter 10, ‘Of power, worth, dignity, honour, and worthiness’)

…

“the felicity of this life, consists not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such (utmost aim) nor summum bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live, whose desires are at an end, than he, whose sense and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the latter. [...]

I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceases only in death. And the cause of this, is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power; but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. And from hence it is, that kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavors to the assuring it at home by laws, or abroad by wars: and when that is done, there succeeds a new desire; in some, of fame from new conquest; in others, ease and sensual pleasure; in others, of admiration, or being flattered for excellence in some art, or other ability of the mind.

Competition of riches, honour, command, or other power, inclines to contention, enmity, and war: because the way of one competitor, to the attaining of his desire, is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other. [...]

Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdom in matter of government, are disposed to ambition. Because without public employment in council or magistracy, the honour of their wisdom is lost. And therefore eloquent speakers are inclined to ambition; for eloquence seems wisdom, both to themselves and others. [...]

Want of science, that is, ignorance of causes, disposes, or rather constrains a man to rely on the advice and authority of others. For all men whom the truth concerns, if they rely not on their own, must rely on the opinion of some other, whom they think wiser than themselves, and see not why he should deceive them.” (Chapther 11, ‘Of the difference of manners’)

…

“Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there be found one man sometimes manifestly quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he. For as to the strength of body, the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himself. [...]

For prudence is but experience; which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto. That which may perhaps make such equality incredible, is but a vain conceit of one’s own wisdom, which almost all men think they have in a greater degree, than the vulgar; that is, all men but themselves, and a few others, whom by fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve. For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves” [...]

“From this equality of ability, arises equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only), endeavor to destroy, or subdue one another. And from hence it comes pass, that where an invader hath no more to fear, than another man’s single power; if one plant, sow, build, or possess a convenient seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united, to dispossess, and deprive him, not only of the fruit of his labour, but also of his life, or liberty. [...] there is no way for any man to secure himself, so reasonable, as anticipation; that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no other power great enough to endanger him: and this is no more than his own conservation requires, and is generally allowed. Also because there be some, that taking pleasure in comtemplating their own power in the acts of conquest, which they pursue farther than their security requires; if others, that otherwise would be glad to be at ease within modest bounds, should not by invasion increase their power, they would not be able, long time, by standing only on their own defence, to subsist. And by consequence, such augmentation of dominion over men, being necessary to a man’s conservation, it ought to be allowed him.” [...]

“in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.

The first, maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety, and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men’s persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second to defend them, the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons, or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.

Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man. [...]

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time; wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, ther is no place for industry; because the fruits thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. [...]

“The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions, that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them: which till laws be made they cannot know: nor can any law be made, till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it.

It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small families, the concord whereof depends on natural lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before. [...] To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. [...] It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no propriety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to every man’s, that he can get: and for so long, as he can keep it. [...]

The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggests convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreement. These articles, are they, which otherwise are called the Laws of Nature” (Chapter 13, ‘The natural condition of mankind as concerning their felicity, and misery’)

…

As for South American ‘savages’, Darwin’s visit to Tierra Del Fuego was much later but if you want a description of how their social arrangements differed from those of the visiting Europeans it’s probably not a bad place to start; Europeans still had not interacted much with the Fuegians at that point. I wrote a post about that stuff not long ago. This book also has a few chapters devoted to related topics. Another previous post of mine related to topics covered in Hobbes that you may want to consider (re)reading is this. Hobbes was to a significant extent a product of his time, but it’s easy to forget that so are we – the people who read him today.

I’ve read the first half of the abbreviated version today and I’m not sure I’ll read any more of it today. I may give the book another post later on, I haven’t decided yet.

Zach Weiner does it again

Link.

A few notes on (meta)rationality

So, let’s say you think policy X is optimal and policy Y is not. Or perhaps religion X is true and religion Y is not. Or you know something about subject X and you think you’re right, even though other people disagree. Now, if you’re like most people, you haven’t taken a closer look at the data.

Not necessarily, mind you, the policy data or the data supporting or questioning the religious ideas. Most people use some form of this type of data in their arguments, perhaps not as much because they find the data convincing but rather because they think they need to justify their beliefs somehow, and if you say that ‘policy X will result in more poor people’, or some kind of stuff like that, odds are that added information makes your position look more convincing to the opponent than if you chose not to say it. But the ‘unemployment will go up 2,4 % if policy Y is implemented’ is not the kind of data I was thinking about here. I was thinking about the data on who thinks what. Background variables. Do people who think X have stuff in common which might explain why they think the way they do? It’s an important part of understanding the subject – if your age or gender affects your opinion on the subject matter, disregarding those factors when explaining why you think the way you do leads to a potentially huge omitted variables bias. In short, it can cause you to deceive yourself about which factors have been important in the formation and development of your views. You think that you think X because of A and B (‘unemployment will go up 2,4 %’); but really it’s more a mixture of A, B, C and D.

People make arguments constructed like this: I think/like/prefer X because Y, where Y is some variable that pertains somewhat to the validity of the arguments under evaluation. Like, say, unemployment. Maybe I think the other guy’s argument is faulty or incomplete. Perhaps A (‘taxes’) is more important to me than B (‘environmental safety measure Q’). On net, the amount of supporting arguments in favor of X is higher than the amount of arguments in favor of Y. Things like that.

Here are some other things you might say in an argument – I don’t think most people bring up stuff like this very often, and when they do it’s mostly the characteristics of the opponent in the argument that gets the attention. To bring up this kind of stuff in an argument can go from being considered irrelevant to the matter in question to being considered an unjustifiable attempt to smear the opponent. The funny thing is that variables and related inferences like the ones below sometimes have extremely high explanatory power when you want to estimate what individual A thinks about subject X. We know this stuff matters a lot, but people really like to pretend it doesn’t and it’s often considered cynical or perhaps downright rude to bring it up in conversation. Here are some of them. Of course no one of these will have 100 percent explanatory power either, so I urge you not to reject arguments like these out of hand because they only explain part of the variation in the data – think of them as variables you might decide to estimate in an econometric model while trying to explain, say, the distribution of the opinion variable Z:

‘I think X because my mother and father had an academic education.’ ‘My parents (priest/teacher/big brother) told me X and I’ve been taught by them not to question their authority.’ ‘Because I was born in country C instead of country D.’ (related – articles like this one is part of why I keep coming back to tvtropes even though I tell myself not to) ‘Because I was born in the year XXX instead of the year XXY.’ ‘Because I have a girlfriend and a child.’ ‘Because I’m XX years old instead of XY years old’ – or a more specific example: ‘Because I’m 55 and policy X will benefit me personally.’ ‘Most of my friends think X is better/true.’ ‘If I support policy X I will obtain a higher status among my peers, even though at a cursory glance it might look like policy X will hurt me personally.’ ‘Supporting (/cause) X makes me feel special and I like to feel special.’ ‘Because I’m (fe)male.’ ‘Because I like my job and have an optimistic frame of mind.’ ‘I spent a lot of time thinking about these things because I derive status from winning arguments because I think it makes me look smart. If the other guy is perceived to be right and win the argument I won’t look smart.’ ‘I haven’t really thought about this at all and I don’t know what to think, but I’m supposed to participate in arguments like these and provide an opinion so I’ll just say X because it’s the first thing that popped into my mind when they asked me. Also, most people I care about seem to support X.’ ‘I have to support Y because A supported X and I don’t like/trust A’s.’ ‘People with a high education and income tend to believe/support X so if I support/believe X my status will increase.’ ‘I heard argument X before I heard argument Y.’ ‘A supports Y. If I support X then A will become offended and an unpleasant situation might arise. I will therefore support Y.’

Part of why people don’t look at data like this is that it’s often impossible to come by in specific cases and it’s usually very difficult to quantify effects like these. There’s a lot of impact heterogeneity as well when it comes to the impact of specific variables on individuals and you easily risk committing the ecological fallacy without thinking about it if you try to include variables like these in your model of the opinion forming mechanism of your opponent in a debate. Maybe the inclusion of such variables do not really make matters more clear, perhaps the opposite, perhaps some of the included variables are irrelevant. Do I think X because the cute girl in the lab thinks X, because my parents disagrees, because my friends who introduced me to the subject all think X or because of the latest employment figures? Who knows? But we like to pretend that we do know, and that our motives are pure – only the employment figures matter. If somebody cedes the point that that stuff also matters, then even though there’s an effect it still isn’t something important that should merit our attention; quite the opposite, we ought to focus on the employment figures. An interesting thing is also that in some cases it’s very easy to come by the numbers, and even when it is this stuff tends to be ignored. For example, 90 % of all Egyptians are identified as Muslim, so if you grow up in Egypt, there’s a very high likelihood that you’ll be born and raised by people who think the Muslim religion is the ‘true one’ – whereas if you’re on the other hand born in the US there’s something like a less than 1 % chance that you’ll be born and raised by Muslim parents, and there’s a much, much higher chance that you’ll be born and raised by people who consider themselves christians. There’s a very high correlation between the religious views of children and that of their parents.

I tend to think that people who spend time thinking about this kind of stuff are usually not much harder to deceive than people who do not. We’re all rational when it suits us, but when that’s the case is most often not something we spend much time thinking consciously about. Most people pretend to be rational when you question their rationality by bringing up ‘the other stuff’; some are just better pretenders than others.

No pressure!

Link – and if you haven’t yet read through the archives of abstrusegoose, don’t waste another second, go do it right now! This one was just too wonderful not to blog:

“My life matters!” yelled the moskito

(Click to watch in a higher resolution. Link.)

(again, click to watch in a higher resolution. Link. Most of it is speculation and you can always quibble about the details, but the main point stands.)

(-ll-, link)

It is estimated that there are more than three times as many neurons in an adult human cerebral cortex alone than there are humans on Earth. The total number of neurons in the human brain is estimated at appr. 14 times the number of humans.

Between 50 and 70 billion cells die each day due to apoptosis in the average human adult (link). There are approximately ten times as many bacterial cells in the human flora of bacteria as there are human cells in the body (link). One might say ‘humans are complex creatures’ or one might say ‘humans are nothing special’. One might also be tempted to say something about the importance of any given individual alive here. Now combine the above with this (click to view in a higher res. – warning, it’s a very big file but you should open it anyway):

Stuff like this (once you start to think about it, you can come up with a lot of similar arguments) is part of the reason why I have great difficulty taking seriously any religious concept ‘explaining the universe’ that even mentions humans. Hell, it’s very hard to take seriously a God(TM) that’d even care about the Milky Way – there are more than 100 billion galaxies out there to choose from, and the Milky Way alone contains 400 billion stars. We don’t matter, a God that would care about what we do is too improbable for us to care about and a God like that raises way more questions than he/she/it answers. To use a God(TM) like that to answer any of the ‘fundamental questions’ is intellectually dishonest, because it’s the same thing as evading the questions entirely and just make up stuff that make us feel important. One of the first thoughts that crosses my mind when thinking about a God that actually cares about humans is ‘stamp collector’. One of the others is, as I’m sure you know, ‘evil bastard’.

Zombies

From Yudkowsky’s latest post:

…

COLONEL TODD: It’s worse than I imagined.

CAPTAIN MUDD: How can you tell, exactly?

COLONEL TODD: I’ve never seen anything so brutally ordinary.

A lab-coated SCIENTIST stands up at the foot of the table.

SCIENTIST: The zombie disease eliminates consciousness without changing the brain in any way. We’ve been trying to understand how the disease is transmitted. Our conclusion is that, since the disease attacks dual properties of ordinary matter, it must, itself, operate outside our universe. We’re dealing with an epiphenomenal virus.

GENERAL FRED: Are you sure?

SCIENTIST: As sure as we can be in the total absence of evidence.

GENERAL FRED: All right. Compile a report on every epiphenomenon ever observed. What, where, and who. I want a list of everything that hasn’t happened in the last fifty years.

CAPTAIN MUDD: If the virus is epiphenomenal, how do we know it exists?

SCIENTIST: The same way we know we’re conscious.

CAPTAIN MUDD: Oh, okay.

GENERAL FRED: Have the doctors made any progress on finding an epiphenomenal cure?

SCIENTIST: They’ve tried every placebo in the book. No dice. Everything they do has an effect.

…

A lot more here. It’s probably a good idea to read some of his earlier posts on the subject if you haven’t already, that way you get the full blast of the post.

Brian Jaress, in the comments section, puts it this way: I say Eliezer has finally dealt with the zombie issue as it deserves. It’s a silly idea that invites convoluted discussion, which makes it look sophisticated and hard to refute. I feel the same way. However this is not a problem I find is limited to this particular subject matter: Is this not in fact a big general problem when it comes to the subject of philosophy; that it is riddled with silly ideas that invite convoluted discussions, making the ideas look sophisticated and hard to refute?

The Open Society and Its Enemies

I have just finished volume two, save the addenda (perhaps worth a post of their own, what do I know?). It took a little longer than I had estimated, as I found it necessary to read up on the first part of vol. II again – I had read this once, but some time ago – in order to refresh the points made there.

It’s a good book. As it says on the back (a quote from The Economist): “A brilliant polemic … It remains the best intellectual defence of liberal democracy against know-it-all totalitarianism.” I haven’t exactly read all the books that defends liberal democracy against totalitarianism, so I don’t feel comfortable passing such a judgment, but it is probably one of the best. I highly recommend it. You do need to read volume one first though, in order to get the full blast of Popper’s genius.

It was written more than sixty years ago. Don’t let this scare you away. Most of the analysis is still very much relevant, indeed perhaps just as important today as it was when Popper wrote it.

A few quotes from the book follows below (they are not meant to “encapsulate the meaning” of the book or “be representative” or anything like that, they are merely to be considered “appetizers”).

Objectivity: [It] is not only impossible to avoid a selective point of view, but also wholly undesirable to attempt to do so; for if we could do so, we should get not a more ‘objective’ description, but only a mere heap of entirely unconnected statements. But, of course, a point of view is inevitable; and the naïve attempt to avoid it can only lead to self-deception, and to the uncritical application of an unconscious point of view. {p. 289}

Rationality: ‘The world’ is not rational, but it is the task of science to rationalize it. ‘Society’ is not rational, but it is the task of the social engineer to rationalize it. [...] Ordinary language is not rational, but it is our task to rationalize it, or at least to keep up its standards of clarity. {note 19 to chapter 24, p. 406. Popper calls this attitude ‘pragmatic rationalism’, and if it is to be so called, then I am a pragmatic rationalist}

The aims of politics (I have brought a shorter version of the quote previously): of all political ideals, that of making the people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of ‘higher’ values upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls. It leads to Utopianism and Romanticism. We all feel certain that everybody would be happy in the beautiful, the perfect community of our dreams. [...] But, as I have said before, [...] the attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. {p261-262. In a note elsewhere, p.377, where he discusses Marx position on this issue, in coining ‘the second principle of sane politics’ he quotes a Viennese poet, K. Kraut, according to whom all politics consists of choosing the lesser evil}

Another quote relevant to both the aims of politics part and the rationality-part, is part of the conclusion: although history has no meaning, we can give it a meaning. [Popper's emphasis, not mine] [...] Neither nature nor history can tell us what we ought to do. Facts, whether those of nature or those of history, cannot make the decision for us, they cannot determine the ends we are going to choose. It is we who introduce purpose and meaning into nature and into history. Men are not equal; but we can decide to fight for equal rights. Human institutions such as the state are not rational, but we can decide to fight to make them more rational. [...] We can make it our fight for the open society and against its enemies (who, when in a corner, always protest their humanitarian sentiments, in accordance with Pareto’s advice); and we can interpret it accordingly. {p.307}

“Overcoming bias“: If scientific objectivity were founded, as the sociologistic theory of knowledge naïvely assumes, upon the individual scientist’s impartiality or objectivity, then we should have to say goodbye to it. [...] science and scientific objectivity do not (and cannot) result from the attempts of an individual scientist to be ‘objective’, but from the friendly-hostile co-operation of many scientists [Popper's emphasis]. {p.241}