Matt McAlister's List: Less Wrong 4 - Reductionism

• Phosphorus is thus also well-suited to its role in adenosine triphosphate, ATP, your body's chief method of storing chemical energy.  ATP is sometimes called the "molecular currency".  It invigorates your muscles and charges up your neurons.  Almost every metabolic reaction in biology relies on ATP, and therefore on the chemical properties of phosphorus.
• If a match stops working, so do you.  You can't change just one thing.
• The surface-level rules, "Matches catch fire when struck," and "Humans need air to breathe," are not obviously connected.  It took centuries to discover the connection, and even then, it still seems like some distant fact learned in school, relevant only to a few specialists.  It is all too easy to imagine a world where one surface rule holds, and the other doesn't; to suppress our credence in one belief, but not the other.  But that is imagination, not reality.  If your map breaks into four pieces for easy storage, it doesn't mean the territory is also broken into disconnected parts.  Our minds store different surface-level rules in different compartments, but this does not reflect any division in the laws that govern Nature.

• We can take the lesson further.  Phosphorus derives its behavior from even deeper laws, electrodynamics and chromodynamics.  "Phosphorus" is merely our word for electrons and quarks arranged a certain way.  You cannot change the chemical properties of phosphorus without changing the laws governing electrons and quarks.

   

  If you stepped into a world where matches failed to strike, you would cease to exist as organized matter.

   

  Reality is laced together a lot more tightly than humans might like to believe.
• a consilient monistic world

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• Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier discovered that breathing (respiration) and fire (combustion) operated on the same principle.  It was one of the most startling unifications in the history of science, for it brought together the mundane realm of matter and the sacred realm of life, which humans had divided into separate magisteria.
• Human beings live in a world of surface phenomena, and surface phenomena are divided into leaky categories with plenty of exceptions.

• The idea of a rule with literally no exceptions seems insanely rigid, the product of closed-minded thinking by fanatics so in the grip of their one big idea that they can't see the richness and complexity of the real universe.

   

  This is the customary accusation made against scientists - the professional students of the richness and complexity of the real universe.  Because when you actually look at the universe, it turns out to be, by human standards, insanely rigid in applying its rules.  As far as we know, there has been not one single violation of conservation of momentum from the uttermost dawn of time up until now.
• One of the reasons the ancient Greeks didn't discover science is that they didn't realize you could generalize from experiments.  The Greek philosophers were interested in "normal" phenomena.  If you set up a contrived experiment, you would probably get a "monstrous" result, one that had no implications for how things really worked.
• what of the universe's own quiet dreams that it dreamed to itself before ever it dreamed of humans?
• Since the beginning
  not one unusual thing
  has ever happened.

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• Many philosophers - particularly amateur philosophers, and ancient philosophers - share a dangerous instinct:  If you give them a question, they try to answer it.
• It is a fact about human psychology that people think they have free will.  Finding a more defensible philosophical position doesn't change, or explain, that psychological fact.  Philosophy may lead you to reject the concept, but rejecting a concept is not the same as understanding the cognitive algorithms behind it.
• The cognitive algorithms we use, are the way the world feels.  And these cognitive algorithms may not have a one-to-one correspondence with reality - not even macroscopic reality, to say nothing of the true quarks. 
• But once you understand in detail how your brain generates the feeling of the question - once you realize that your feeling of an unanswered question, corresponds to an illusory central unit wanting to know whether it should fire, even after all the edge units are clamped at known values - or better yet, you understand the technical workings of Naive Bayes - then you're done.  Then there's no lingering feeling of confusion, no vague sense of dissatisfaction.

• ou do not have a full and satisfactory descriptive explanation of how each intuitive sensation arises, point by point.

   

  You may not even want to admit your ignorance, of this point of cognitive science, because that would feel like a score against Your Team.  In the midst of smashing all foolish beliefs of free will, it would seem like a concession to the opposing side to concede that you've left anything unexplained.

   

  And so, perhaps, you'll come up with a just-so evolutionary-psychological argument that hunter-gatherers who believed in free will, were more likely to take a positive outlook on life, and so outreproduce other hunter-gatherers - to give one example of a completely bogus explanation.  If you say this, you are arguing that the brain generates an illusion of free will - but you are not explaining how.  You are trying to dismiss the opposition by deconstructing its motives - but in the story you tell, the illusion of free will is a brute fact.  You have not taken the illusion apart to see the wheels and gears.

• That's arguing that or explaining why a confusion exists.  Now look at the neural network structure in Feel the Meaning.  That's explaining how, disassembling the confusion into smaller pieces which are not themselves confusing.  See the difference?

   

  Coming up with good hypotheses about cognitive algorithms (or even hypotheses that hold together for half a second) is a good deal harder than just refuting a philosophical confusion.  Indeed, it is an entirely different art.  Bear this in mind, and you should feel less embarrassed to say, "I know that what you say can't possibly be true, and I can prove it.  But I cannot write out a flowchart which shows how your brain makes the mistake, so I'm not done yet, and will continue investigating."
• If you keep asking questions, you'll get to your destination eventually.  If you decide too early that you've found an answer, you won't.
• You are not asked to invent an evolutionary explanation of how people who believed in free will would have reproduced; nor an account of how the concept of free will seems suspiciously congruent with bias X.  Such are mere attempts to explain why people believe in "free will", not explain how.

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• If we cannot take joy in things that are merely real, our lives will always be empty.
• nothing is inherently mysterious - nothing that actually exists, that is.  If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon; to worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance; a blank map does not correspond to a blank territory, it is just somewhere we haven't visited yet
• everything - everything that actually exists - is liable to end up in "the dull catalogue of common things", sooner or later.

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• Why should a discovery be worth less, just because someone else already knows the answer?

   

  The most charitable interpretation I can put on the psychology, is that you don't struggle with a single problem for months or years if it's something you can just look up in the library.  And that the tremendous high comes from having hit the problem from every angle you can manage, and having bounced; and then having analyzed the problem again, using every idea you can think of, and all the data you can get your hands on - making progress a little at a time - so that when, finally, you crack through the problem, all the dangling pieces and unresolved questions fall into place at once, like solving a dozen locked-room murder mysteries with a single clue.
• I strongly suspect that a major part of science's PR problem in the population at large is people who instinctively believe that if knowledge is given away for free, it cannot be important.  If you had to undergo a fearsome initiation ritual to be told the truth about evolution, maybe people would be more satisfied with the answer.
• The consistent solution which maintains the possibility of fun, is to stop worrying about what other people know.  If you don't know the answer, it's a mystery to you.  If you can raise your hand, and clench your fingers into a fist, and you've got no idea of how your brain is doing it - or even what exact muscles lay beneath your skin - you've got to consider yourself just as ignorant as a hunter-gatherer.  Sure, someone else knows the answer - but back in the hunter-gatherer days, someone else in an alternate Earth, or for that matter, someone else in the future, knew what the answer was.  Mystery, and the joy of finding out, is either a personal thing, or it doesn't exist at all - and I prefer to say it's personal.

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• In one of Frank Herbert's Dune books, IIRC, it is said that a Truthsayer gains their ability to detect lies in others by always speaking truth themselves, so that they form a relationship with the truth whose violation they can feel.  It wouldn't work, but I still think it's one of the more beautiful thoughts in fiction.  At the very least, to get close to the truth, you have to be willing to press yourself up against reality as tightly as possible, without flinching away, or sneering down.
• taking emotional energy that is flowing off to nowhere, and binding it into the realms of reality.

• Born into a world of science, they did not become scientists.  What makes them think that, in a world of magic, they would act any differently?

   

  If they don't have the scientific attitude, that nothing is "mere" - the capacity to be interested in merely real things - how will magic help them?  If they actually had magic, it would be merely real, and lose the charm of unattainability.  They might be excited at first, but (like the lottery winners who, six months later, aren't nearly as happy as they expected to be), the excitement would soon wear off.  Probably as soon as they had to actually study spells.
• if you do make it to the Future, what you find, when you get there, will be another Now.  If you don't have the basic capacity to enjoy being in a Now - if your emotional energy can only go into the Future, if you can only hope for a better tomorrow - then no amount of passing time can help you.
• The worst catastrophe you could visit upon the New Age community would be for their rituals to start working reliably, and for UFOs to actually appear in the skies.  What would be the point of believing in aliens, if they were just there, and everyone else could see them too?  In a world where psychic powers were merely real, New Agers wouldn't believe in psychic powers, any more than anyone cares enough about gravity to believe in it.  (Except for scientists, of course.)

• So remember the Litany Against Being Transported Into An Alternate Universe:

   

  If I'm going to be happy anywhere,
  Or achieve greatness anywhere,
  Or learn true secrets anywhere,
  Or save the world anywhere,
  Or feel strongly anywhere,
  Or help people anywhere,
  I may as well do it in reality.

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• why not make a list of abilities you have that would be amazingly cool if they were magic, or if only a few chosen individuals had them?

   

  For example, suppose that instead of one eye, you possessed a magical second eye embedded in your forehead.  And this second eye enabled you to see into the third dimension - so that you could somehow tell how far away things were - where an ordinary eye would see only a two-dimensional shadow of the true world.  Only the possessors of this ability can accurately aim the legendary distance-weapons that kill at ranges far beyond a sword, or use to their fullest potential the shells of ultrafast machinery called "cars".

   

  "Binocular vision" would be too light a term for this ability.  We'll only appreciate it once it has a properly impressive name, like Mystic Eyes of Depth Perception.
• Vibratory Telepathy.  By transmitting invisible vibrations through the very air itself, two users of this ability can share thoughts.  As a result, Vibratory Telepaths can form emotional bonds much deeper than those possible to other primates.
• Psychometric Tracery.  By tracing small fine lines on a surface, the Psychometric Tracer can leave impressions of emotions, history, knowledge, even the structure of other spells.  This is a higher level than Vibratory Telepathy as a Psychometric Tracer can share the thoughts of long-dead Tracers who lived thousands of years earlier.  By reading one Tracery and inscribing another simultaneously, Tracers can duplicate Tracings; and these replicated Tracings can even contain the detailed pattern of other spells and magics.  Thus, the Tracers wield almost unimaginable power as magicians; but Tracers can get in trouble trying to use complicated Traceries that they could not have Traced themselves.
• Multidimensional Kinesis.  With simple, almost unthinking acts of will, the Kinetics can cause extraordinarily complex forces to flow through small tentacles and into any physical object within touching range - not just pushes, but combinations of pushes at many points that can effectively apply torques and twists.  The Kinetic ability is far subtler than it first appears: they use it not only to wield existing objects with martial precision, but also to apply forces that sculpt objects into forms more suitable for Kinetic wielding.  They even create tools that extend the power of their Kinesis and enable them to sculpt ever-finer and ever-more-complicated tools, a positive feedback loop fully as impressive as it sounds.
• The Eye.  The user of this ability can perceive infinitesimal traveling twists in the Force that binds matter - tiny vibrations, akin to the life-giving power of the Sun that falls on leaves, but far more subtle.  A bearer of the Eye can sense objects far beyond the range of touch using the tiny disturbances they make in the Force.  Mountains many days travel away can be known to them as if within arm's reach.  According to the bearers of the Eye, when night falls and sunlight fails, they can sense huge fusion fires burning at unthinkable distances - though no one else has any way of verifying this.  Possession of a single Eye is said to make the bearer equivalent to royalty.

• The Ultimate Power.  The user of this ability contains a smaller, imperfect echo of the entire universe, enabling them to search out paths through probability to any desired future.  If this sounds like a ridiculously powerful ability, you're right - game balance goes right out the window with this one.  Extremely rare among life forms, it is the sekai no ougi or "hidden technique of the world".

   

  Nothing can oppose the Ultimate Power except the Ultimate Power.  Any less-than-ultimate Power will simply be "comprehended" by the Ultimate and disrupted in some inconceivable fashion, or even absorbed into the Ultimates' own power base.  For this reason the Ultimate Power is sometimes called the "master technique of techniques" or the "trump card that trumps all other trumps".  The more powerful Ultimates can stretch their "comprehension" across galactic distances and aeons of time, and even perceive the bizarre laws of the hidden "world beneath the world".

   

  Ultimates have been killed by immense natural catastrophes, or by extremely swift surprise attacks that give them no chance to use their power.  But all such victories are ultimately a matter of luck - it does not confront the Ultimates on their own probability-bending level, and if they survive they will begin to bend Time to avoid future attacks.

   

  But the Ultimate Power itself is also dangerous, and many Ultimates have been destroyed by their own powers - falling into one of the flaws in their imperfect inner echo of the world.

   

  Stripped of weapons and armor and locked in a cell, an Ultimate is still one of the most dangerous life-forms on the planet.  A sword can be broken and a limb can be cut off, but the Ultimate Power is "the power that cannot be removed without removing you".

   

  Perhaps because this connection is so intimate, the Ultimates regard one who loses their Ultimate Power permanently - without hope of regaining it - as schiavo, or "dead while breathing".  The Ultimates argue that the Ultimate Power is so important as to be a necessary part of what makes a creature an end in itself, rather than a means.  The Ultimates even insist that anyone who lacks the Ultimate Power cannot begin to truly comprehend the Ultimate Power, and hence, cannot understand why the Ultimate Power is morally important - a suspiciously self-serving argument.

   

  The users of this ability form an absolute aristocracy and treat all other life forms as their pawns.

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• The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science is worth reporting on.  How often do you see headlines like "General Relativity still governing planetary orbits" or "Phlogiston theory remains false"?
• Modern science is built on discoveries, built on discoveries, built on discoveries, and so on, all the way back to people like Archimedes, who discovered facts like why boats float, that can make sense even if you don't know about other discoveries.  A good place to start traveling that road is at the beginning.
• Don't be embarrassed to read elementary science textbooks, either.  If you want to pretend to be sophisticated, go find a play to sneer at.  If you just want to have fun, remember that simplicity is at the core of scientific beauty.
• A steady diet of science news is bad for you

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• Reporting science only as breaking news is like wandering into a movie 3/4ths of the way through, writing a story about "Bloody-handed man kisses girl holding gun!" and wandering back out again.

• theomorphism - the viewpoint from gloating religionists who assume that everyone who isn't religious has a hole in their mind that wants filling.
• If humanity had never made the original mistake, there would be no hymns to the nonexistence of God.  But there would still be marriages, so the notion of an atheistic marriage ceremony makes perfect sense - as long as you don't suddenly launch into a lecture on how God doesn't exist.  Because, in a world where religion never had existed, nobody would interrupt a wedding to talk about the implausibility of a distant hypothetical concept.  They'd talk about love, children, commitment, honesty, devotion, but who the heck would mention God?
• A good "atheistic hymn" is simply a song about anything worth singing about that doesn't happen to be religious.
• If humanity had never made the original mistake, no one would be trying to avoid things that vaguely resembled religion.  Believe accurately, then feel accordingly
• If God did speak plainly, and answer prayers reliably, God would just become one more boringly real thing, no more worth believing in than the postman.  If God were real, it would destroy the inner uncertainty that brings forth outward fervor in compensation.  And if everyone else believed God were real, it would destroy the specialness of being one of the elect.

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• • If you put a two-year-old boy in a room with two toys, one toy in the open and the other behind a Plexiglas wall, the two-year-old will ignore the easily accessible toy and go after the apparently forbidden one.  If the wall is low enough to be easily climbable, the toddler is no more likely to go after one toy than the other.  (Brehm and Weintraub 1977.)
      
   
  • When Dade County forbade use or possession of phosphate detergents, many Dade residents drove to nearby counties and bought huge amounts of phosphate laundry detergents.  Compared to Tampa residents not affected by the regulation, Dade residents rated phosphate detergents as gentler, more effective, more powerful on stains, and even believed that phosphate detergents poured more easily.  (Mazis 1975, Mazis et. al. 1973.)
     

  Similarly, information that appears forbidden or secret, seems more important and trustworthy:

   
  • When University of North Carolina students learned that a speech opposing coed dorms had been banned, they became more opposed to coed dorms (without even hearing the speech).  (Probably in Ashmore et. al. 1971.)
      
   
  • When a driver said he had liability insurance, experimental jurors awarded his victim an average of four thousand dollars more than if the driver said he had no insurance.  If the judge afterward informed the jurors that information about insurance was inadmissible and must be ignored, jurors awarded an average of thirteen thousand dollars more than if the driver had no insurance.  (Broeder 1959.)
      
   
  • Buyers for supermarkets, told by a supplier that beef was in scarce supply, gave orders for twice as much beef as buyers told it was readily available.  Buyers told that beef was in scarce supply, and furthermore, that the information about scarcity was itself scarce - that the shortage was not general knowledge - ordered six times as much beef.  (Since the study was conducted in a real-world context, the information provided was in fact correct.)  (Knishinsky 1982.)
• The conventional theory for explaining this is "psychological reactance", social-psychology-speak for "When you tell people they can't do something, they'll just try even harder."  The fundamental instincts involved appear to be preservation of status and preservation of options.  We resist dominance, when any human agency tries to restrict our freedom.  And when options seem to be in danger of disappearing, even from natural causes, we try to leap on the option before it's gone.
• As Cialdini remarks, a chief sign of this malfunction is that you dream of possessing something, rather than using it.  (Timothy Ferriss offers similar advice on planning your life: ask which ongoing experiences would make you happy, rather than which possessions or status-changes.)
• But the really fundamental problem with desiring the unattainable is that as soon as you actually get it, it stops being unattainable.  If we cannot take joy in the merely available, our lives will always be frustrated...

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• In another vision, the knowledge we now call "science" is taken out of the public domain - the books and journals hidden away, guarded by mystic cults of gurus wearing robes, requiring fearsome initiation rituals for access - so that more people will actually study it.
• What appears to be in limited supply, is more highly valued.  And this effect is especially strong with information - we're much more likely to try to obtain information that we believe is secret, and to value it more when we do obtain it.
• no one treats the lightbulb as a sacred mystery, so neither do you.

• If humanity had never made the mistake - never gone down the religious path, and never learned to fear anything that smacks of religion - then maybe the Ph.D. granting ceremony would involve litanies and chanting, because, hey, that's what people like.  Why take the fun out of everything?

   

  Maybe we're just doing it wrong.
• don't undervalue scientific truth when you learn it, just because it doesn't seem to be protected appropriately to its value.  Imagine the robes and masks.  Visualize yourself creeping into the vaults and stealing the Lost Knowledge of Newton.  And don't be fooled by any organization that does use robes and masks, unless they also show you the data.
• We've just gotten into the habit of presenting the Hidden Truth in a very unsatisfying way, wrapped up in false mundanity.

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