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If you’re into probability, statistics and/or ML, Judea Pearl‘s The Book Of Why enlighted me kind of.

While reading and applying, the suspicion had grown in me that probability is embedded in causality. Specifically when using Bayes theorem I had tweaked notation for me, so P[X|Y] would mean that X depends causally on Y. Then

P(Y|X)=P[X|Y]P(Y)/P(X)

would clearly show the reverse problem character, and how evidential reasoning is built on causal reasoning.

Thus what Pearl and a lot of contributors built fell on fertile ground with me. I think it is an amazing addition to reasoning tools.

Yes! I hate this so much. The only search engine that respects what I type in seems startpage these days.

Other search engines give me results that are useless most of the time, because they do not contain all my carefully chosen search terms.

Well, people do not always jump to simplistic conclusions and forget all the nuances involved.

I think that makes this part of your reply an example of exactly what it’s criticizing.

> People always jump to simplistic conclusions and forget all the nuances involved.

That looks like a classic Matthew 7:3 - Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

This. In the language popularized by Kahnemann et al. I tell myself: wow, he really got my system 1. And then system 2 needs to work on on undoing the belief created, get back to sober doubt and weigh the probabilities.

But this is an interpretation after the fact, it feels exactly like you describe it. Stupor.

Edit: typo

That looks like something to work with. Now the thesis becomes somewhat testable.

I would argue that power should be constructed so it does not matter what the personality of the person in power is. Clear rules and checks and balances.

And the rules should be made by the ones seen as loving and wise.

And that is what in fact is happening to some degree in democracies.

Thanks for your clarification. I really enjoy your arguments.

I reply that I find the idea of from first principles proving the existence of something, e.g. an apple a weird notion. What is the justification of asking for it? That is a rationalistic-philosophic concept I can only chuckle at. What about the human information-processing tract is so special that this would help anything? I completely agree that the trilemma helps against these attempts.

I do not agree that it is a useful or meaningful practice.

I’m not setting out to prove something this way.

I’m saying: you have projects and plans that you want to be successful. Truth found by the scientific method has in general a track record of being repeatably found again, and thus will help you. Religion, philosophy, astrology ideology does not have that track record. That’s what makes science unique and points to that it has found some truths. Otherwise it’s track record would be miraculous.

I’m also saying this is as good as it gets, precisely because of the trilemma.

To try to make myself clear: I’m thinking that this practice of proving from first principles would need to be shown to do anything useful, before I‘ll look into it. I think it’s a failed idea, though I believed it long. It’s often taken for granted, but it’s highly questionable.

I think we are talking past each other.

> Truth in pure mathematics doesn’t really have any meaning, because you simply invent the rules

Yes, I was saying that you can view mathematics like that. Not everyone does though, so I question that it necessarily is as you say.

I’m further saying that science is not simply belief or faith based, because otherwise all its achievement would look like one big miracle. And that seems contrary to the claim that it would be faith based. Without first philosophy and a logico-metaphysical “foundation”, whatever that could be, to whoch the trilemma could be applied. I think the very idea of something epistemically stronger than practical success that will prove science right is a flawed idea from the outset - what will prove it right? But please try to apply the trilemma - I would be interested. I often learn surprising new things here.

If you read my reply above you will find that I said that primitives are not axioms. These are the things axioms talk about, sometimes also referred to as atoms. But you may refer to them by no matter which word you like if you make it clear. Important is only that we understand reach other, though we will likely not agree. It’s a complex topic, and this medium is not necessarily made for that.

And lastly, my point about the presentation of the trilemma still stands. I did not quote the full sentence to not make this too long, not to make a cheap point against a straw man.

The trilemma is a practical hammer that can be used against first philosophy that tries to prove how everything is from the armchair. But make it a first philosophy itself, and it becomes self defeating.

That was not my main point, but primitives are not axioms. They are objects talked about in axioms. I give you they are close.

My point was that

1. numbers are simpler primitives than wisdom

2. You can treat mathematics purely syntactically, as meaningless games played by rules

3. You can then give them neaning in the elaborate practice of scientific research, technical implementation and prediction, on the background of human language and practice. Mind you, we went to the moon and have mobile phones and penicillin.

4. Since this can other than science grasping something about reality only explained by a big miracle, it does not matter where you started the proof of your worldview. It’s not grounded in rationalistic first philosophy, against which the trilemma argues. It is simple, practical, ongoing and repeatable success - power over nature if you will. That is a basis outside of logic. Ignore at your own peril, but true - I cannot logically prove it so you must believe. That’s all talk and never found a useful truth, like Kant already noticed in his preface to KdrV [1]. It has not changed a bit since then.

Lastly, from what you say I understand that the trilemma „undermines all truths“. Is it itself true? And then what? Is it thus faith based? Or does it undermine itself? You see that this logico-rationalistic approach leads nowhere?

[1] http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Kant,+Immanuel/Kritik+der+...

I give you the Münchhausen or Agrippa“s trilemma. But in math we start with natural numbers or sets. Starting with „wise“ and „loving“ as primitives is a different thing.

You can even treat mathematics as syntax, that only gets meaning when applied to the world. Then your primitives get meaning by what you can technically construct with it and by what you can predict with it. That together with the no miracles argument let‘s science circumvent the trilemma in my opinion. All that’s needed is a pragmatic semantic, or better practice as a quite weak fundament.

„One of the most fundamental lessons I learned from my training at the Monastic Academy was that wise and loving people should have power. Power is morally neutral—used by people who lack wisdom and love, it causes tremendous harm. Used by those who are wise and loving, it can be of tremendous benefit.“ This is one of these assertions that seem to make complete sense, until you realize that there is no agreed upon definition of “wise” and “loving“, and thus we cannot even start to assess if it is wrong or right. Any assessment not starting with sorting this out will likely end up in circular reasoning („that guy is wise and loving, because he implements policies I like“, „He implements policies I like, because he is wise and loving“). I do not intend to hate, and I do not know the author (seems respected judging by the comments), still if someone says a thing like this is the most fundamental lesson he learned, I fail to understand what he could mean. How could you learn this? It also seems a very simplistic model.

I actually meant „Have you realized how the scales do NOT match up between the plots?“, but somehow I can’t edit the comment.

What is the point of hand wavy overlaying two time series, as if the interpretation was obvious (cumulative excess deaths vs. Covid deaths). Have you realized how the scales do match up between the plots? Same for excess deaths against vaccination. I still wonder what I should „see“ there, and why there are no statistical calculations to back up the „obvious“…

I understood the thread roughly this way: „philosophy makes progress. The evidence is that the modern world has adopted the more progressed rules of enlightement and scientific rules.“ And my reply was that this is highly questionable.

I’m saying that the enlightenment ideas happened because the uprising middle class needed justifications in their power struggle. Not that the ideas formed a middle class that then acted upon them.

I agree with you that humans need ideas to tell a story of themselves. And that story better paint them as good! But that story is usually not the driving force.

So I fail to see progress as I don’t see a criterion to measure progress (in general. Aristoteles‘ logic is a tool. Here I see how to compare it to FOL and judge which is better or worse for specific use cases).

As for human rights: do I agree with them? Yes! Can I justify them? No! Do I know where to exactly draw the lines when two rights collide? No! Is it important to justify them in a philosophical way? I doubt.

Good point, I agree that it did not. Were those ideas however progress, or a tool that the Committee of Public Safety used because it fit their agenda?

Was this philosophy finding truth that guided policy, or was it making up rhetorical arguments in a power struggle on behalf of the rising middle class and its policy?

In absence of criteria of non empirical truth that are independent of the very non empirical truths they are criteria for I tend to believe the latter.

In addition to this inherent weakness philosophical arguments are not for the masses anyways. Not even philosophers usually agree what they mean or entail. How could those idea(l)s have guided the revolution as more than just superficial self justification?

Remember that the enemies of the French Revolution had their philosophers too, they just lost.

Historical events usually have very mundane reasons, class struggles, geopolitics etc. Ideas may play a part too. But I believe not in the sense that they are the horses in front of the cart.

The measure of success is different from school to school, if any exists at all in a given school. And there is no lack of schools.

The causality here is hard to prove, even untangle. I think the French Revolution was largely more influential for the state of governments today. I also think that science was not influenced so much by Popper, but much more by Fisher and Neyman. People tend to use what is a successful tool, and be influenced by power and theatre, not so much by fragile logical constructs without empirical value found sitting in the armchair.

I was making a formal point, not arguing about facts…

A: you spent it

B: it’s a currency

Here is how the thread went (too lazy for quantifiers and variables).

1. not A => not B

2. So Peso not A => Peso not B

3. You: But Peso A => Peso B

This is a non sequitur. „Not A => Not B“ does not entail „A => B“. That’s what I mean by you can’t conclude it (from the thread). You are however clearly free to make up new things and change the topic. But it looked like you were drawing a conclusion there.

Edit: formatting

> If you don't spend it, it's not a currency

> You didn't, others did though, therefore it's a currency

From the first statement you can only conclude that if it’s a currency, then you spend it (by modus tollens). You can’t conclude that if you spend it, then it is a currency.

That would be enough if the two named other explanations and bumblebees having rudimentary feelings would make up all of the explanation space. I have doubts about that.

I agree with you. You already named some explanations with the same likelihood of the data, but a far higher prior probability. Bumblebees having feelings is a good way down the explanatory chain, and would warrant a lot more additional pieces of evidence.

That are interesting possibilities. I just wish some Jean Perrin would design and perform a great experiment to exclude some possibilities from the explanation space.

I fail to see the helpfulness of describing or defining something we do not understand in terms of something related we equally do not understand, „understand“ here in the sense of „have a clear theory that gives meaning to the words we use“. In relation to the problem of how qualitative self-aware experiences can arise in a biological information system this article does not seem to help at all. Is the statement really „consciousness“ in the sense just vaguely described is just „memories“? Then what are memories? How can they have qualities and where does the self awareness come from? How to model it mathematically? I feel we’re still in the age of the humoral theory of consciousness.

This. However if I do not hit space in between words every time, an autocorrect function replaces at random times the word I’m typing/sliding now plus the word I typed before by some utter nonsense combination. I hate this so much, but I have not found a way to turn it off. Autocorrect is off.

This. Except for Eagle Flight for some reason.

That was also my first thought. I see only cost and no benefit. Except maybe when you have a cargo cult mindset and think that returning these measures will return Britain‘s glory. Can anyone name one benefit?

There is a nice popular science movie called Everything And Nothing, „starring“ Jim Al-Khalili that tells a similar story (without involving string theory). My kids loved it.

I got mich out of it, but only on the meta level also. Afair she never goes into technical detail of e.g. Neyman Pearson, but covers things like how to overcome the Quine-Duhem-problem with statistics, or how to stengthen Popper’s theory. But on that level I learned a lot, and it trickles down to what is important in actual experimental design and why.

You mean this as an example for randomization?