Comment by chromoblob | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chromoblob | Hacker News Reader

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> The things you can think are limited by the language delivered to you by society.

To even begin to decide whether this claim is scientific (testable), thoughts and their content need to be defined physically here.

And why care about pre-given thoughts? I care about my emotions more. Thinking is just an utility guided by them. "What you think is good" is certainly more about emotion than ideas. One can walk back from their emotion, starting from a clean sheet, gradually reconstructing the desired idea by bit - most languages have the necessary primitives available.

> The idea of purely independent thought is an illusion.

There's no need for one's thinking to be dependent on anything more or less than reality relevant to one. No culture other than one's private own needs to be included as dependency. No need to copy or almost copy another culture as well.

> It follows that independent action is also an illusion (your idea of what to do next, as well, tends to be borrowed!)

My idea of what to do next comes from my rationality. Rationality can be rebuilt independently, at least in part that covers a big part of everyday life, when a minimal amount of education consisting of self-evident truths is given. So my behavior is only dependent on me having acquired a number of ideas useful to me individually that I have also sanitized.

> 1. All thought is fantasy

"All even integers are divisible by 2." What are you trying to imply? Fantasy can be made to conform to rules and to be useful directly as functional data.

> 3. Most thought is borrowed

"Most" by what metric?

> 5. Society is the manager of thought, not the individual

I think that an individual can become the "manager" of their own thinking as well by degree such as allowed by their cultural environment plus that of their capability.

> 6. Thought advances as a whole

What?

> 7. Without collective thought as a substrate, the individual won't function

Please explain in more detail why and what is 'collective thought'.

> To even begin to decide whether this claim is scientific (testable), thoughts and their content need to be defined physically here.

Where did you get the idea of "scientific"? Where did you get the idea of "begin"? Where did you get the idea of "definition"? Where did you get the idea of "physical"? Etc. You didn't create any of those ideas. Are you seeing how many ideas you are borrowing from society in a single sentence? I see society dancing through your mind!

And if I keep going through your entire answer, "most" of the ideas are borrowed. Your "value-addition" is re-arrangement. In this case, the way you've arranged the ideas is full of holes (and eventually not enough to 'pass the test of reality') :)

When I tried to refute you, I remembered about basic concept of computing, the way the technological progress is generally made and technologies of security in general. These things are totally both essential and hardly rebuildable from scratch, and latter two may also need to be continuously developed. So there is a vital dependency on these.

But outside of security concerns, if you have developed in a culture that contains the concepts of abstraction, general encoding and a basic set of abstract thinking primitives, have enough of abstract thinking skill and an inclination to think autonomously, you can rebuild any concept that you should care about practically. I posit that only the more "basic", primitive ideas are vital for effective thinking. If you lack them, you are screwed, but if you just lack higher-level ones, you can work around that easily if you care. And I think that the abstract thinking skills needed to build ideas are in large part not acquired directly from culture; they consist of some elementary abstract thinking ideas together with higher-level methods and other private mental tools which are rarely shown to you and which you typically develop on your own.

I can see that one can be (un)privileged to develop in rich/poor enough culture. But one can audit their understanding of a culture - at least always in a most basic way, and again by a degree dependent on the amount of "hints" from cultural environment and personal capability.

"The idea of audit" consists of 3 concepts available virtually to all, so if it isn't available, which it almost always is, it can be rebuilt if you care enough.

Culture feeds you, but it can control you only by omission of essential general ideas of various levels. There aren't many of them, and they are self-evident, useful strictly for the user and can be used to rebuild any ideas missing from your environment that are needed to conduct a lot of stuff.

> Are you seeing how many ideas you are borrowing from society in a single sentence?

At least, when I borrow stuff, I analyse it, sometimes modify and then subscribe under the result. If I am sure that it is good for me, it can become mine.

I have emotionally audited all of my thoughts.

> Your "value-addition" is re-arrangement.

On which level, though? You probably know how big is the myriad of electronic circuits that can be made from simple elements such as wires, resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors and diodes and seldom other. And more complex circuits are made from simpler ones with ease (I don't mean effort, I mean viability of a decent result) using composition and interfacing, given decent skill. About "rearrangement", same applies, skill here being abstract thinking - although thinking is far more complicated than circuit design, I believe thought is compositional. Of course, there is no way around the dictionary of basic primitives, but it is available almost everywhere where there is relevance.

Creation of data is "rearrangement" of a tiny set of digits.

> the way you've arranged the ideas is full of holes (and eventually not enough to 'pass the test of reality')

Either substantiate or don't write this. This is not helpful without an explanation.

I would be interested to hear you address my point about construction of ideas.

I apologize for not addressing your concerns point by point, but here are some general thoughts:

The kind of reasoning you are engaging in now was done by Descartes long ago, during Newton's time. It involves building up knowledge from the bottom up, starting with first principles. Descartes had some genuinely interesting ideas about how perfect concepts could be constructed. You can read his book on methods; they are remarkable, but they do not tell the whole story. Descartes himself made many scientific errors, despite his "perfect" and "rational" system for arriving at "true and sound conclusions." Popper's falsifiability is not the end-all-be-all of scientific thought either. Both Descartes and Popper do not represent the final word on what science is or should be.

Unlike Descartes, we observe real scientists supplementing rational ideas with empiricism—how actual people learn and think in their daily lives. How they go about life matters. Especially with Large Language Models, we see how essential a large knowledge corpus is for generating new variations. Marvin Minsky referred to it as "common sense," etc. It's important to remember that the concepts of "Expert systems" and "heuristics" did not work on their own back in the day (though they are not without utility in enhancing new methods).

Progress typically requires a societal-level effort in any field. It involves communication, challenges, numerous guesses, trial and error, and so forth. Therefore, the development of new ideas and the exploration of new frontiers are deeply interdependent at the civilization level.

In summary, I believe that "individualism" is incompatible with reality; the true nature of reality is "interdependence." Dependency is a fact of life. However, due to certain surface-level cultural ideas and the significance people attach to their self-importance, the unrealistic concept of "individualism" often prevails at the linguistic level over the more realistic idea of "interdependence."

> Especially with Large Language Models, we see how essential a large knowledge corpus is for generating new variations.

I don't see it, sufficiency doesn't entail necessity.

> It's important to remember that the concepts of "Expert systems" and "heuristics" did not work on their own back in the day

Expert systems are about automation of decision. I talk not about automation, but just a minimal, basic dependency on culture as opposed to complete dependency and no hope of novel thinking outside of it.

> Progress typically requires a societal-level effort in any field.

I want to know how this requirement would be quantified. Which society do you need for a given amount of progress?

> "individualism" is incompatible with reality

Why can't one, in principle, recreate some design on their own that they lack, of less complexity than rocket science or AGI?

> complete dependency and no hope of novel thinking outside of it.

Where have I said "there is no hope of novel thinking out of it"? (Re: Most thought is borrowed) I am simply saying not a single thought is entirely yours. There's always something external mixed in, stuff from society. Thought is always dependent. That means, you can be the co-author of an idea, but not the sole author. Having sole author is merely a simplification device, not a realistic description of the situation.

By the way, I still have not made the ultimate challenge here (since this is HN, filled with no-nonsense, individualistic hackers): what is referred to as "I", is also an idea delivered by society. Therefore, this whole conversation is thought talking to thought, and not chromoblob vs atomicnature.

Okay, since to develop the thinking skill, one needs to exercise a lot in a man-made environment, I agree that thinking is dependent on it and the basic vocabulary.

However, the dependency ends here. If you just want, you can analyze, deconstruct, modify or synthesize any memes at any level beyond the level of your primitives (given enough time).

About the definition of boundary of mind, I agree that it should be arbitrary and minds are compositional in space.

> However, the dependency ends here. If you just want, you can analyze, deconstruct, modify or synthesize any memes at any level beyond the level of your primitives (given enough time).

Thought Experiment: Say an isolated child was given the primitives of your choice, and nothing more. What's the likelihood that it'll invent calculus on its own during its lifetime? Or any other significant human discoveries/inventions. Will it figure out human flight on its own?

Leave that. Say there are no teachers/industry, except just all the textbooks. Still what is the likelihood of it teaching itself calculus or how to build a flying machine based on mere reading material?

> Thought Experiment: ...

Those may be too complex to invent from scratch in a few decades.

Long intellectual collaborations are a common good. You don't need to consider them estranged from their users, though. By virtue of emotional audit, knowledge I accept is assimilated by me, becomes mine. It was made by my allies, essentially by past instances of myself - nothing external here. (More like allies if it is precursor that I had to non-trivially modify for my needs, and more like self if it is a product that I accepted verbatim.) This situation doesn't contradict my sense of individualism. (In my view, personal identity is defined by preferences. So if we have same preferences, we are one. And it seems obvious that people with similar preferences will create functionally similar designs.)

So even if a child would in principle want calculus but wouldn't create it in a lifetime, they would take the steps they can in the direction that they're interested in. The distance would be dependent on capability, but more than "just a few ideas", as you say, wouldn't be improbable. Then the child may try and appoint those that the child seems worthy of receiving child's work, or child may publish it for everyone. That someone may deceive the child about self is an unsolvable flaw here. This may change in future when people solve old age mortality.

> Say there are no teachers/industry, except just all the textbooks.

To use books, one needs the ability to read. Without somebody to teach one to read, there is a small chance of success if a book that teaches written language and supposes no knowledge of written language (in usual meaning) is created. It would rely on a way to read the book and learn that would be figured out by the person, and this would work only if the person were very curious. Extent to which written language would be learned would depend on how well the interaction with the book works and how smart the person is; probability of the whole thing working seems very low, but depends on those too. Speechless video game tutorial theory would be mainly applicable here, only the medium here is also much more limited.

When you can read, I believe that text is sufficient to transfer knowledge. Quality subject books together with some books about effective learning may be sufficient, however, even if one finds a big library with all the knowledge early in life, they may simply not know what they want in terms of the index of the library, a guide book in front of everything may solve that. I don't know if a lifetime is enough to actually build a flying machine given only raw materials.

> Those may be too complex to invent from scratch in a few decades. Long intellectual collaborations are a common good.

Yes, that is the source for my assertion that culture/collective thought/pre-computed results is of primary importance ("essential"). You need way more than mere primitives to get upto any useful level of knowledge in a given lifetime.

> By virtue of emotional audit, knowledge I accept is assimilated by me, becomes mine. It was made by my allies, essentially by past instances of myself - nothing external here.

In other words, you are "sampling" something from the common culture based on an "emotional audit", and then tweaking the sample to suit your "preferences"? In other words:

P = Bundle of preferences (sampling biases that an emotional audit will check for)

I_1 = State of Identity

T = Transformation function that converts a sample of common good to suit the bundle of preferences

I_2 = State of Identity after integrating the result of transformation

I_1 + T(P(CG)) => I_2 (your formula)

i.e previous_identity_state + transform(select(common_good)) = new_identity_state

You argue that if, transform(select1(common_good)) = select2(common_good), then select1 = select2 i.e preference1 = preference2 [1]

The problem with this model is that it is dualistic; you envision immutable (?) preferences and mutable identity states (and obviously mutable common good which is a super set of identity states and 'other stuff'). The common good is getting manipulated in a distributed and concurrent way all the time, so even if the preferences remain immutable, the common good keeps changing, and therefore [1] wouldn't work out (the actual equation will have common_good1 and common_good2)... I think all dualistic ideas of defining the mind tend to get into this sort of trap.

That is, the following will not remain true ("create functionally similar designs") due to changes/updates in the common good (especially across time):

> So if we have same preferences, we are one. And it seems obvious that people with similar preferences will create functionally similar designs.)

I think a better model is to consider all localized preferences as part of the larger common good. There is just one common good (due to "dependency" of thoughts), across time and space, out of which everything emerges ("collective thought"). Such a model wouldn't admit any sort of immutable identity within the realm of thought.

> You need way more than mere primitives to get upto any useful level of knowledge in a given lifetime.

That is just because "useful level of knowledge" is required to participate in society as I want to - most low-hanging fruit has already been collected. If you're at the frontier, you're immediately productive.

> In other words:

Sorry, I phrased a little incorrectly. It's more like Filter(Mutate(AmbientCulture)), that is, I selectively copy or mutate everything I see into stuff that gets accepted by the audit, after which it is my knowledge. (Mutate creates some modifications of memes as I am able, and Filter removes unsuitable ones; but computationally it is probably a one-stage directed process.) I would call it knowledge state, not "identity state", my identity is immutable too. Yes, preferences are immutable; preferences = identity.

> You argue that if ...

If I understand you well, your criticism is that I use momentary artifacts created in dependency on a given environment to establish identity independent of environment.

> the following will not remain true ("create functionally similar designs") due to changes/updates in the common good

Culture changes continuously. A given distributed identity would create a needed design over time, at each moment relying only on the current state of its own work. (It follows that identities can be nested: an identity may create a meme that will be owned by any identities that contain that identity.) If the work is not synchronized across space, work may fork and diverge, but the differences would not be functionally significant in the end.

If something suppresses your work, you should defend against this, or you will be screwed too.

> If I understand you well, your criticism is that I use momentary artifacts created in dependency on a given environment to establish identity independent of environment.

Yes. Also, from a philosophical angle, consider this:

It is possible to get an "immutable-looking" entity out of mutable substance; the reverse is not possible - getting mutable stuff out of immutable stuff. Therefore, I still think it is more sensible to avoid the idea of "immutable" preferences. What looks "immutable" (identity) may just be a short-lived illusion (or maybe a long-lived illusion - depending on the perspective; either way an illusion).

The sense of self could be seen as a temporary, mutable "clustering" of pieces of thought within the larger system of thought. I like the idea of "nesting" you mentioned though. However, I'd still bet on "mutable preferences" over "immutable preferences" -- that "I" is a temporary illusion. Accepting this would remove the problematic dualism...

The buddhist texts present the idea of a solid-looking rainbow; go inspect it, and poof, it really wasn't there in the first place.

I as a physical agent may very well be short-lived myself. Identity is simply a preferences code that is implemented by every one of a set of possible physical agents, one of which is my body. An executable identity is maintained as the code of the physical system as long as it can as that. This seems to me only a matter of engineering or biology (based on physics) and the minimal influx of free energy to store the code without errors, as well as resource expenditure for my actions that you need to see if you want to register / keep registering me. (That is, if you disregard the astronomically unlikely quantum events.) The preceding applies to any kind of identity, human or otherwise.

> get an "immutable-looking" entity out of mutable substance

That substance, though having a changing state, is governed by immutable (as we notice so far) laws of physics (more directly, emergence of life, evolution, human biology and any natural laws that technology depends on). That's how I feel that this immutability is valid.

If you want, you can regard my identity as a little "physical/natural law" generated around my body. So the law will be there as long as the body works. And, I think, in principle any body housing any identity can be maintained indefinitely given minimal free energy and mass influx (this requires technologies not yet available today) if you again set a target probability of random quantum changes. This applies to "distributed" identities equally.

> the reverse is not possible - getting mutable stuff out of immutable stuff

If one depends on arbitrary data from environment and there is not enough experimentation done by either one or the producers of the data, one becomes mutable. Mutate or be mutated.

> I as a physical agent may very well be short-lived myself...

You are explaining potential implementation methods, but I think implementation method is a secondary consideration. The more interesting question is what is the simpler and more likely explanation. I think envisoning thought as a sprawling system (through space/time), creating temporary localized identities, through clustering & evolving preferences is simpler than the one with non-mutating preferences. It is non-dualistic, doesn't require multiple layers, etc.

> That substance, though having a changing state, is governed by immutable (as we notice so far) laws of physics

You are mixing layers - substance & laws it seems to be governed by (law is a "meta" substance if you will, or properties derived from a given set of observations). To create immutability out of mutability, you need to build sophisticated layers... That makes it a more complex explanation (and less likely explanation).

Moreover, having a mutable/evolving identity doesn't preclude it from being governed by immutable laws.

Just a matter of applying occam's razor.

Am I right that you want to apply certain apriori ideas, like preference of simpler models, in order to build semantic interpretation of reality? I don't believe that any set of such apriori ideas should be universal for all minds. As for me, I built my framework because I seek to define meaning of activity. This framework is the result of my preconception of meaning together with some other relevant philosophy. I want to tell about it to any people who have same objectives and prelimimaries and anyone else interested and learn criticism.

My model requires immutable identities: without them, there is no temporally consistent individual meaning. As I know that time is always passing, temporal consistency is required. Although my body may disappear without a trace of its contents, my identity is recorded in history/spacetime.

I also know that people can disagree on politics, from which follows that there can be multiple different non-nested identities. If you want, you may still combine conflicting identities into a "conflicting superidentity" to achieve an algebraic style. At the boundary of conflict, though, communication is unlike that inside the volume of agreeing or orthogonal agents. Cooperation is replaced by either trade or fight.

> less likely explanation

It is less likely for you only because you prefer simpler ones. My evaluation of ideas, for example, is not so straightforward.

> Am I right that you want to apply certain apriori ideas, like preference of simpler models, in order to build semantic interpretation of reality? I don't believe that any set of such apriori ideas should be universal for all minds.

Your first question about my views was - whether it could be scientific or not. If you subscribe to the scientific method in any serious manner, then you must by necessity subscribe to preferring simpler models in describing phenomena. If two models can produce identical results given a particular purpose, the one with lesser number of components, lesser relations among components, the one easier to comprehend must be considered superior/preferred. Preference for the simpler explanation is a cardinal doctrine within the scientific method.

Rest of your comments - I have further thoughts/comments about them but this thread has already gone too deep, and HN is not the right forum for it. So I let it be. Thanks :)

But "semantic interpretation of reality", or meaning, is in the domain of philosophy. In this case, models are used not to just predict independent real events, but to generate opinion on meaning and create a framework on which the whole of understanding will be built and whole of activity will depend. Two models not only don't have similar results, but your model is unusable for me at all. My framework is not an empirical science to which scientific method could apply. This part of philosophy consists of definitions and opinion, what the content of the system of concepts in question should be, backed at most by non-rigorous arguments and considerations. Doesn't look like science for me. Scientificness does not apply to one's philosophical base; even to use logic, you first have to decide to accept it.

> HN is not the right forum for it

why :o HN is literally a website for intellectual curiosities... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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