What’s alpha all about, Alfie? Why are you boring us with this?
The great biologist E.O. Wilson wrote a little book called Consilience, in which he argued that it was past time to apply the methods of science — notably quantification — to fields traditionally considered outside its purview, like ethics, politics, and aesthetics. Any blog reader can see that arguments on these subjects invariably devolve into pointless squabbling because no base of knowledge and no shared premises exist. Alpha theory is a stab at Wilson’s program.
What kind of science could possibly apply to human behavior?
Thermodynamics. Living systems can sustain themselves only by generating negative entropy. Statistical thermodynamics is a vast and complex topic in which you can’t very well give a course on a blog, but here’s a good introduction. (Requires RealAudio.)
Don’t we have enough ethical philosophies?
Too many. The very existence of competing “schools” is the best evidence of failure. Of course science has competing theories as well, but it also has a large body of established theory that has achieved consensus. No astronomer quarrels with Kepler’s laws of planetary orbits. No biologist quarrels with natural selection. Philosophers and aestheticians quarrel over everything. Leibniz, who tried to develop a universal truth machine, wrote someplace that his main purpose in doing so was to shut people up. I see his point.
Not a chance. Anyway, what’s alpha got that we don’t have already?
A universal maximization function derived openly from physical laws, for openers. Two of them. The first is for the way all living system ought to behave. The second is for the way they do behave. To put the matter non-mathematically, every living system maximizes its sustainability by following the first equation. But in practice, it is impossible to follow directly. Living beings aren’t mathematical demons and can’t calculate at the molecular level. They act instead on a model, a simplification. That’s the second equation. If the model is accurate, the living being does well for itself. If not, not.
Sounds kinda like utilitarianism.
Not really. But there are similarities. Like utilitarianism, alpha theory is consequentialist, maintaining that actions are to be evaluated by their results. (Motive, to answer a question in the previous comment thread, counts for nothing; but then why should it?) But utilitarianism foundered on the problem of commensurable units. There are no “utiles” by which one can calculate “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” This is why John Stuart Mill, in desperation, resorted to “higher pleasures” and “lower pleasures,” neatly circumscribing his own philosophy. Alpha theory provides the unit.
Alpha also accounts for the recursive nature of making decisions, which classical ethical theories ignore altogether. (For example, short circuiting the recursive process through organ harvesting actually reduces the fitness of a group.) Most supposed ethical “dilemmas” are arid idealizations, because they have only two horns: the problem has been isolated from its context and thus simplified. But action in the real world is not like that; success, from a thermodynamic perspective, requires a continuous weighing of the alternatives and a continuous adjustment of one’s path. Alpha accounts for this with the concept of strong and weak solutions and filtrations. Utilitarianism doesn’t. Neither does any other moral philosophy.
That said, Jeremy Bentham, would, I am sure, sympathize with alpha theory, were he alive today.
You keep talking about alpha critical. Could you give an example?
Take a live frog. If we amputate its arm, what can we say about the two separate systems? Our intuition says that if the frog recovers (repairs and heals itself) from the amputation, it is still alive. The severed arm will not be able to fully repair damage and heal. Much of the machinery necessary to coordinate processes and manage the requirements of the complicated arrangement of cells depends on other systems in the body of the frog. The system defined by the arm will rapidly decay below alpha critical. Now take a single cell from the arm and place it in a nutrient bath. Draw a volume around this cell and calculate alpha again. This entity, freed from the positive entropy of the decaying complexity of the severed arm, will live.
What about frogs that can be frozen solid and thawed? Are they alive while frozen? Clearly there is a difference between freezing these frogs and freezing a human. It turns out that cells in these frogs release a sugar that prevents the formation of ice crystals. Human cells, lacking this sugar, shear and die. We can use LHopitals Rule to calculate alpha as the numerator and denominator both approach some limiting value. As we chart alpha in our two subjects, there will come a point where the shearing caused by ice crystal formation will cause the positive entropy (denominator) in the human subject to spike through alpha critical. He will die. The frog, on the other hand, will approach a state of suspended animation. Of course, such a state severely reduces the frogs ability to adapt.
Or take a gas cloud. “You know, consider those gas clouds in the universe that are doing a lot of complicated stuff. What’s the difference [computationally] between what they’re doing and what we’re doing? It’s not easy to see.” (Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science.)
Draw a three-dimensional mesh around the gas cloud and vary the grid spacing to calculate alpha. Do the same for a living system. No matter how the grid is varied, the alpha of the random particles of the gas cloud will not remotely match the alpha of a living system.
Enough with the frogs and gas clouds. Talk about human beings.
Ah yes. Some of my commenters are heckling me for “cash value.” I am reminded of a blessedly former business associate who interrupted a class in abstruse financial math to ask the professor, “Yeah. But how does this get me closer to my Porsche?”
The first thing to recognize is that just about everything that you now believe is wrong, probably is wrong, in alpha terms. Murder, robbery, and the like are obviously radically alphadystropic, because alpha states that the inputs always have to be considered. (So does thermodynamics.) If this weren’t true you would have prima facie grounds for rejecting the theory. Evolution necessarily proceeds toward alpha maximization. Human beings have won many, many rounds in the alpha casino. Such universal rules as they have conceived are likely to be pretty sound by alpha standards.
These rules, however, are always prohibitions, never imperatives. This too jibes with alpha theory. Actions exist that are always alphadystropic; but no single action is always alphatropic. Here most traditional and theological thinking goes wrong. If such an action existed, we probably would have evolved to do it — constantly, and at the expense of all other actions. If alpha theory had a motto, it would be there are no universal strong solutions. You have to use that big, expensive glucose sink sitting in that thickly armored hemisphere between your ears. Isaiah Berlin’s concept of “negative liberty” fumbles toward this, and you “cash value” types ought to be able to derive a theory of the proper scope of law without too much trouble.
Still more “cash value” lies in information theory, which is an application of thermodynamics. Some say thermodynamics is an application of information theory; but this chicken-egg argument does not matter for our purposes. We care only that they are homologous. We can treat bits the same way we treat energy.
Now the fundamental problem of human action is incomplete information. The economists recognized this over a century ago but the philosophers, as usual, have lagged. To put it in alpha terms, they stopped incorporating new data into their filtration around 1850.
The alpha equation captures the nature of this problem. Its numerator is new information plus the negative entropy you generate from it; its denominator is positive entropy, what you dissipate. Numerator-oriented people are always busy with the next new thing; they consume newspapers and magazines in bulk and seem always to have forgotten what they knew the day before yesterday. This strategy can work — sometimes. Denominator-oriented people tend to stick with what has succeeded for them and rarely, if ever, modify their principles in light of new information. This strategy can also work — sometimes. The great trick is to be an alpha-oriented person. The Greeks, as so often, intuited all of this, lacking only the tools to formalize it. It’s what Empedocles is getting at when he says that life is strife, and what Aristotle is getting at when he says that right action lies in moderation.
Look around. Ask yourself why human beings go off the rails. Is it because we are perishing in an orgy of self-sacrifice, as the Objectivists would have it? Is it because we fail to love our neighbor as ourselves, as the Christians would have it? Or is it because we do our best to advance our interests and simply botch the job?
(Update: Marvin of New Sophists — a Spinal Tap joke lurks in that title — comments at length. At the risk of seeming churlish, I want to correct one small point of his generally accurate interpretation. He writes that “alpha is the negative entropy generated by a system’s behavioral strategy.” Not exactly. Alpha is the ratio between enthalpy plus negative entropy, in the numerator, and positive entropy, in the denominator. It is not measured in units of energy: it is dimensionless. That’s why I say life is a number, rather than a quantity of energy.)
Oh yeah, Bourbaki, I think you got the uncertainty formula wrong. If memory serves, there is uncertainty about 1/2 of h, not h.
Mr. Valliant,
The classic question: why should I be moral?
What’s a few million here and there? Money only has value in an economy. An economy requires participants. If participants stop participating, the economy collapses. See Part 3.
Mr. Kaplan,
Apologies. I’ve heard credentialism used in place of evidence too many times. The string of comments appeared to be heading in that direction. Mr. Haspel is an excellent writer and, more importantly, is one of the few people that will call bullshit when he sees it. He’s honest enough to use that standard on his own positions as well as other’s.
The inability to keep a job, Bourbaki, is no badge of honor.
Nor is keeping one if opporunity knocks. But we have wisdom for that.
You got the burden of proof wrong: I don’t have to prove alpha theory wrong, Aaron has to prove it right.
An occasion for an epigram? Your buddy thought otherwise.
"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
–Albert Einstein
I think it works the same way in law, no?
Oh yeah, Bourbaki, I think you got the uncertainty formula wrong. If memory serves, there is uncertainty about 1/2 of h, not h.
Your other buddy, Bohr, published an alternative relationship in his Como lecture (1928). I don’t remember a 1/2 but, like I said, I get tripped up calculating a tip. If you want to look it up and throw a constant or another variable in the derivation, we’ll all benefit.
Tommy,
At this point is it neccessary to begin testing this theory in a lab? Not testing the pieces to the theory, that has been done. Testing if it supports the assumptions we have presented.
I can’t stand the smell of nutrient broth nor the texture of bovine serum albumin. I think we’ll first have to see how well the principles explain data that has already been collected. But anyone else is free to take these ideas into the lab.
Alpha theory addresses the cannibalism and happy criminal problems in three words: consider the inputs. We are open, not closed, thermodynamic systems. Cannibals eat someone. Thieves steal from someone. These others are inputs to your system. To put the matter in terms with which Objectivists will sympathize, stealing ten million dollars and redistributing wealth via the state are alphadystropic for exactly the same reason, albeit on vastly different scales.
Bourbaki,
Most unpersuasive. The economy will continue just fine despite my theft–only I get the money in the meantime. How does one theft, even of millions, ever cause the economy to collapse, when history shows that even lots and lots of private thefts (amounting to billions) have so far never managed to do that. Are you saying that ANY and EVERY theft runs the risk of total economy-destruction? Now, once more, why should I avoid stealing this money this one time? You’ll need to do lots better than that to convince anyone outside of a classroom.
No, Aaron, most thieves get away with it entirely, especially if they commit only one offense. Assume that I know with some degree of certainty that I will, as is OFTEN the case. No one theft is going to shatter the economy, even of a hundred millions. Why should I not steal this money right now. Please be slightly persuasive to the dude contemplating the decision, now.
Mr. Valliant,
VH1 has an excellent Behind the Music episode on MC Hammer. It might clear up the underlying principles for you. When you watch it, pretend Hammer is the US economy and his friends are the criminals.
Bourbaki,
I suck.
I used to just think it, now I know it.
I started my graduate studies in developmental immunobiology after four semesters of college. Heeding the advice of my advisor, I applied to medical school at the same time, then graduated early, and at 20, started medical school.
I chose a neurology residency and completed fellowships in neurophysiology and surgical epilepsy.
I have done epilepsy and stroke research, created stroke prevention and treatment programs in different communities, and founded an interdisciplinary pain treatment center.
I travel regularly and deliver about 40 lectures per year, teaching physicians the principles and methods of pain management and the nervous system.
And now, after reading your bio, I know I gotta do something with my life! 😉
And Leah,
Here: Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
By Antonio Damasio, M.D.
You might find it interesting.
And this:
Freud’s 1895 project. From mind to brain and back again.
Z. Lothane, Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1998 May 15;843:43-65.
And Tommy,
I had the very great pleasure of speaking with Aaron about testing alpha.
(BTW, Aaron, I hope you had a good time. If not, hell, you got free dirnks!)
Anyway, I suggested using nanobots to measure alpha as a precursor to testing alpha in say, viruses.
The time will come when alpha is measured in some system. Whether or not the time is now is debatable.
Vetting the formulation is of prime importance.
As I cannot do that, I must allow for others to do so.
In the meantime, I agree with Bourbaki (or shall I say, Bourbaki the Magnificent!), spend some time with core material. It helps me. I am reading Asimov’s Understanding Phsysics. It is a long way from what I did in college, but it’s serving as a warm-up for additional studies in thermodynamics n’stuff.
Just sayin’.
D’oh!
Physics.
Physysicsysics.
Must.Spell.Check.
See.
I am a dope.
Bourbaki,
Here it is:
dp x dx > h / (2 x pi)
I really am stupid and lazy. I forgot the pi bit, which makes perfect sense in retrospect.
When Einstein said that, he was the toast of modern civilization. I think Aaron is at a somewhat different stage with alpha theory. I also believe Einstein was kinda wrong (accuse me of credentialism now will ya?). While no amount of experimentation could prove him right, and one experiment could prove him wrong, not every incompatible experimental finding would serve to disprove. Theories can have exclusions, modifications and amendments with additional experiments. As Feynman said, "It used to be thought that the movements of the planets could be explained by invisible angels beating their wings behind them. As you will see, this theory has since been modified."
Bourbaki,
"Clear it up"…for ME?! Why not try to clear it up, period. Alpha gives the prospective thief no good reason not to steal, "just this once," or not one that I can yet detect. Why on earth should he even care about abstract or collective alpha implications when the money would so improve his life and, all other things being equal, this one act won’t destroy the world? So, give it a whirl. If you think I will be tough to persuade, just imagine trying to persuade the average Joe, your real challenge. That is, if this is "ethics."
Words won’t bite, Bourbaki. Give it shot. Aaron is free to chime in, too.
MeTooThen,
And now, after reading your bio, I know I gotta do something with my life! 😉
My recipe doesn’t cook very evenly. I only posted that puff piece because I (mistakenly) thought that Mr. Kaplan was trashing a state school. It turns out I was wrong.
Aaron passed along your endorsement for Kandel. I ordered a copy–although at 1400 pages, it may take some time to finish. I’m reading Sacks right now.
Mr. Kaplan,
Your formula is still wrong. Isn’t it 4Pi? But, hey, we’re talking Planck scales. Physicists use optical combs to cheat it but it still trips up bad philosophy.
And, yes, experiments can cause a theory to modified rather than thrown out altogether.
Feynman was a brilliant man and a great teacher. He was also a wise-ass. Some of his quotes are really stupid.
Jim,
Get over it, no matter what Aaron says it ain’t ethics. Ethics analyses what is right and wrong. Alpha theory ASSUMES what is good (it makes a pretty good assumption)then has quite a few formulae that no one on earth can figure out the imputs for. NO ONE CAN FIGURE OUT CORRECT ACTION FROM ALPHA THEORY. So it ain’t ethics, it ain’t math, it ain’t science. I think the most interesting application for alpha theory, as I have said before, is to do historical analysis, including legal analysis. Alpha theory will lead you to think like Jared Diamond in history (Diamond has been torn to shreds in my book by Victor Davis Hanson), Richard Posner in jurisprudence, and Hayek in economics. All around, that’s an a-minus. Not too shabby.
It’s swell that we live a world where most folks aren’t thieves. So what? Thieves even depend on this fact. Again, so what? Why can’t or shouldn’t I try to be one of the pampered exceptions. There are lots of REPEAT offenders livin’ high on the hog in the south of France. I just want to pull off one really good job.
Waiting has commenced.
Bill,
I still think that we can get a bit more out of alpha than just a historical analysis.
Bourbaki,
Haven’t seen the 4pi formula. I think it is "> or =" rather than the ">", but besides that, what is wrong?
I like that Feynmann was a wise-ass. What I don’t like is how self-satisfied he was about being a wise-ass.
BTW, the greatest wise-ass in the world was my son when he was 3.5 years old. He likes to go to gas stations. We get into the Saab and he says, "Dad, we need gas."
"Max, this gauge says we can go 354 miles before we need gas. How far do you think it is to school (1/2 mile)"
"355 miles Dad."
Upon further reflection, if the economy is actually in danger of imminent collapse, all the more reason to start stealing…and NOW. Besides, my uses of the money would be far more alphatropic, anyway…
Mr. Kaplan,
NO ONE CAN FIGURE OUT CORRECT ACTION FROM ALPHA THEORY
You have a kindred soul in Ernst Mach. He said the same about tracking the individual paths of atoms when criticizing the kinetic theory of gases.
Mr. Valliant,
No dynamic system, including an economy, is 2 legit 2 quit. If it collapses, the money you steal becomes worthless.
Bourbaki,
Oliver Sacks is a fine place to start.
"Street Neurology" is something Sacks does well.
Spend one or two days with a neurologist in their office or on rounds in a hospital, and you’ll likely see enough clinical material to fill several books, ala Sacks.
And yes, Principles of Neural Science is the book (I read the 2nd edition).
It only took me one year to read it (during my residency) and that’s because I had to!
It is a superbly well written book. I know of no other book of such magnitude that is it’s equal (in any subject).
The best way to experience a book like this is to study it while seeing patients, but alone it still delivers the goods.
BTW, I read the reviews of it at Amazon. The criticisms are fair, I think. But nowhere else is there one source to understand the nervous system from neuron to behavior.
Just sayin’.
Enjoy!
Again, Mr. Bourbaki, so what? Are you actually saying that MY feeble efforts can get it to collapse? Geesh, I’m not even the Hunt brothers gobbling-up silver, either… The question is still actively pending.
Mr. Valliant,
Here:
"A thief has an opportunity to steal ten million dollars under circumstances that almost assure that he will not get caught (no, better still, under circumstances of certainty, he’s got the muscles of any law enforcement under control) With this one, he can retire from theft. Now, the advantages to him of the money are clear. What exactly, according to alpha, (should/will/can) motivate him NOT to do it?"
Your hypothetical, I think, raises interesting questions about F.
Take the information that, "…under circumstances of certainty, he’s got the muscles of any law enforcement under control."
Your presume that stealing the money is alphatropic. I am not so sure.
The relationship of the thief to the law enforcement officials needs to be understood in terms of its alpha*.
Whatever its basis, this type of relationship most likely has its own risks, and that given the nature of illegal relationships, it is alphadystropic, no matter whether or not the thief steals the money.
And "retiring from stealing" sounds alphatropic enough, but what about that $10 million dollars. My guess (and it is, of course, a guess) is that the thief may be wrong as to the "advantages" of the money.
Look at the fate of many lottery winners. Many suffer serious negative consequences from the ill use or misuse of their winnings.
As for the government officials who steal, they too do so at some risk that may yet prove to collapse their system. I guess it all depends on F. Even if you are a French Senator (who are immune from prosecution), the answer, on its face is that there are no consequencses. Or are there any?
The relationship to F and alpha* is usually one (at least in crime stories) where F is either ignored or the failure to follow it leads to alphadystropic consequences.
As far as the French go (or other despotic types) measurements of alpha* are needed.
MeTooThen,
No, you don’t get my point yet at all. I do NOT assume that theft is alphatropic. I wonder why any given individual should care about the alpha effect of any particular decision. Even assuming that theft is alphadystrophic, why not do it under circumstances where I can get away with it? Why should an individual under a specific set of circumstances not steal?
The rest is also beside the point. My future decisions, I promise, will all be alphatropic. I just want to know why I can’t get away with a couple of instances of theft. (I only need to pull off one really good one.) Also, early retirement doesn’t strike me as very alphatropic.
And, by the way, I want some alpha-guidance for this calculation of my own F. And how do we evaluate the merits of one F over another. (That’s a question that’s been pending for some time now.)
The tidal wave in Asia was alphadystropic in no different sense than Hitler was, right? But the two are ethically identical, right? The two were "evil" in the same way? Good weather conditions are virtuous in no different way than humans? Obliterate this distinction and you have obliterated ethics.
Jim,
Let me repeat: Aaron is wrong, it is not a theory of ethics. Don’t sweat it. What it is is a theory of evaluation. When Sartre says somewhere in "Being and Nothingness" (a funny book a book, I recall) that we decide that wreckage is bad and order is good and that is just a preference, alpha theory is an answer to that madness. It is not in and of itself a theory of ethics, but it does tell us why certain states are preferable.
Bourbaki,
I’ll take a comparison to Mach any day of the week, but I think your analogy was a stretch.
Bill,
Thank you, and well put: it does help with certain evaluations, and that’s exactly why I thought better of alpha than mere "history." The description of the alpha wake itself may provide a powerful yardstick for certain evaluations. But it does not enter the domain of ethics, yet.
Mr. Kaplan,
Ethics analyses what is right and wrong. Alpha theory ASSUMES what is good
You have it backwards. Ethics "analyses"? I’d like to see how far you can stretch that term.
I’ll take a comparison to Mach any day of the week, but I think your analogy was a stretch.
Boltzmann revealed him a fool.
Mr. Valliant,
What is your question? How to convince this "Average Joe" not to steal? Or what stealing does to an economy?
Alpha theory and the Tao Teh Ching have a lot in common ground as far as their opinions of action. Especially where Lao Tan (Tzu) talks of the Tao.
By the way: seems to me filtration is not only picking the right action but the right moment to act. Was that said? I can’t remember.
"What is your question? How to convince this "Average Joe" not to steal? Or what stealing does to an economy?"
why not both?
"Boltzmann revealed him a fool."
Not really Bourbaki. Calling him a fool is like calling you one for your stupid sports analogy about winning strategy and other coaches all using it, even though that would mean that one of them would have to lose. You were wrong, not a fool.
Mr. Valliant,
Here:
"No, you don’t get my point yet at all. I do NOT assume that theft is alphatropic."
Um, it sure did sound like you presumed stealing was alphatropic.
You wrote above, "Now, the advantages to him of the money are clear."
Did I miss something?
Further: "I wonder why any given individual should care about the alpha effect of any particular decision."
Isn’t that the whole point? That for every decision, we should care about its effect on alpha, and when we do, we act ethically.
More: "Even assuming that theft is alphadystrophic, why not do it under circumstances where I can get away with it? Why should an individual under a specific set of circumstances not steal?"
As I tried to point out, stealing and getting away with it still involves consequences. And often, those consequences, or at least the circumstances of the thief and his theft, are alphadystropic. Not stealing is ethical, usually, and illegal, almost certainly. Whether or not to steal depends on alpha*.
It is simple, this. Measuring alpha* is not. It may turn out that stealing under any circumstances is alphadystropic by virtue of its illegality alone.
End of story.
Or not.
Not all ethical behavior is legal.
And not all legal behavior is alphatropic.
What problem is there with that?
And this:
"The tidal wave in Asia was alphadystropic in no different sense than Hitler was, right? "
Huh?
In all fairness, I can’t understand how you could ask this question, even if it was rhetorical.
With all due respect, the rest of your comments that follow in the same post are equally hollow.
MeeTooThen,
You did miss something, I think. We are left saying that theft, in careful moderation, and avoiding strong universal solutions, is ethical. Obviously, too many heists become alphadystrophic, but, under the appropriate circumstances, a robbery or two is the moral thing to do, even if usually it is not. Certainly we could say the same of murder, no? Bad habit, sure, but now and again… surely alphatropic in some cases, no doubt? I mean, being a total hypocrite might be the way to go, don’t you think? I would be best served by ADVOCATING peaceful and property-respecting behavior, but privately violating such rules myself when the occasion arouse? (Rights are a myth, anyway, and no one has any "natural" claim to their property.) This actually HELPS keep the whole economy intact and maximizes the effect of the scheme. Why not? This sound like alpha-max! Just trying to be ethical.
Any objections?
Jim: Robin Hood. In a candy cane revisionist way he works as an ideal. In real life, I don’t see it. Either way, how does stealing require of alpha theory anything different than not stealing?
"Isn’t that the whole point? That for every decision, we should care about its effect on alpha, and when we do, we act ethically."
You are saying that my caring about the way my actions effect the transference of energy from complex forms on towards disorder is the point of alpha theory?
Are you saying that understanding alpha theory helps me to increase my alpha star (or more broad universal manifestation)? I thought a consequence of alpha theory was that I was always trying to do that anyways, and that the only restraint was the pattern in which my cells interact with the available free energy.
Seems to me that knowledge of alpha doesn’t help make my decisions better. Tell me how it does? Tell me what it did for you.
I have been criticized, with justification, for being disorganized and spouting indecipherable gibberish. I have been informed that a lack of response to my writing is a direct response to this. Everyone of you who understand alpha will understand why this occurred. It is a fun little example, and that is why I mention it (besides the fact that I have taken the suggestion and exerted more forethought).
A filtration represents all information available to Eustace when he chooses a course of action.
Therefore, it is of value to note that to a human the amount of information available to him is never equal to his conscious awareness. I will never be aware of all that I know nor all the weak solutions I formulated nor their effectiveness in moment (T). Does this suggest that my creation of an optimal choice is being made somewhere outside the realm of my conscious consideration? If so/if not, this suggests a schism between the application of many of our theories because of the agency of their explanation. A being lacking sentience could not use strategies in the same sense as a human could in regards to alpha UNLESS THE GOVERNING MECHANISMS OF US ALL ARE THE SAME, and our consciousness is just a fun complication that we use to notice pattern and therefore live. How well a life can notice a pattern and respond to it, shows how well it can live. In fact, it seems alpha suggests that humans and plants are always attempting the same thing. It is just that we might choose more responses than a plant, though not verifiably (yet) more complex.
all encountering continuous changes in pH, salinity and temperature. Some will end up in conformations that mediate the disruptive effects of these Gaussian fluctuations
How are pH salinity and temperate Gaussian fluctuations? Is it because they suggest a definite and continuous (optimal) response? Where can I read about non-anticipatory strategies (that book by Waldrop?)
A strong solution is any specified trajectory for a random process.
Then a strong solution is the embodiment of specific and continuos universal occurrences right?
This distribution is a weak solution, which is defined, not by its path, which is unknown, but only by the moments of a probability distribution. If Eustace knows a random process is stationary, he has confidence that the moments of the process will converge to the same values every time.
This means all moments converge to the same values every time all moments are calculated, but it also means that a single moment, calculated again and again, will remain the same no matter how many times it is calculated, and that therefore the only effect a single moment might generate must come LATER.
Also: sooner rather than later (this is semantic and obsolete language, saying, essentially, he will do it before he HAS DONE IT)…must risk a strong solution. He must risk HAVING FAITH in his strong solution. He must risk ACTING out on his strong solution. But that assumes he might make one. And that assumption, despite your indication otherwise, is false. You see, you said earlier of course Eustace can’t know such a path in advance and that therefore Eustace can never make a strong solution, rather, he is limited to convincing himself that his weak solution is THE strong solution. Eustace could never, regardless of the (your word here) risk know the path and therefore make a solution to it, as the reality is Gaussian and Poisson. Or is that false?
The more of the available filtration Eustace uses, the better he does in the casino.
What? This means the more accumulated information Eustace uses to base his course of action on the more complex and stable he will be. But wouldnt that only be the case if the information available to Eustace suggested to him both non-anticipatory strategies (constantly adjusting) and strategies that might generate the most alpha in the face of Poisson occurrences. His strategies might be wrong, as with the wildebeest: even smelling the lion might be too late if the lion is particularly fast (how could he know) or the wildebeest is particularly slow (if it is his first time running from any random lion, L).
calculate first-order consequences pretty well, second-order consequences notoriously badly, and the third order is like the third bottle of wine:
What does that mean? Third order? Huh.
"Isn’t that the whole point? That for every decision, we should care about its effect on alpha, and when we do, we act ethically."
Actually, that is not the kind of ethics Jim or Bill will accept, since alpha in that case is stated in regard to all life, but not to their (or any theoretically specified) specific human life or collection of indivdual lives. Thinking in terms of how your action will effect the entirety of life (being) and not simply inorganic compositions, which to life are simply patterns of energy, will not, for them, be ethics.
Tommy,
Boltzmann and Mach had a classic debate in the 19th century. Boltzmann used math and science to justify his position. Mach used philosophy.
Mach lost.
The debates are interesting to read. Mach offers up a lot of sophistry and snap judgements that sound very familiar.
Math recently entered its modern phase with Descarte in 1637 and science followed with Newton in the 18th century. In my opinion, both fields have become a little too arrogant and dismissive of outsiders.
As a subject of study, some students even end up hating math.
Those analogies I made were for anyone who didn’t happen to know the underlying math and science. You don’t need to read the analogies–you can simply learn the science. Have you picked up Waldrop yet?
Mr. Valliant,
Obviously, too many heists become alphadystrophic, but, under the appropriate circumstances, a robbery or two is the moral thing to do, even if usually it is not. Certainly we could say the same of murder, no? Bad habit, sure, but now and again…
Nope.
Life is not a series of binary choices. Seeing it that way will lead to a lot of false dilemmas. The smallest action can still be considered in alpha terms. A path that avoids alphadystropic consequences is always the better one.
I explained the consequences for an economy. You’re predicting the future outcome for an individual. That’s impossible. Instead, you need to weigh all the possible consequences of stealing against not stealing. They’re rather dire. You’re jeopardizing your freedom, your mental and physical health, and all of your social relationships.
You can be alphatropic without stealing. That’s a better path.
Numbers don’t need to be crunched for every situation. Many scenarios have already been worked out just fine without alpha theory. In ethics, alpha theory allows us to take an unresolved debate to a higher and more rigorous level of abstraction. If you were to get a mobile phone with GPS, you wouldn’t need it to find your bathroom.
And, no, I wasn’t drinking. But I can be too impulsive with the ‘post’ button.
Asking if a given action is alphatropic independent of any other context is meaningless. You need to consider the context. That’s what your brain is for. You wouldn’t need such a hungry organ if you could distill your course of action to a list of recipes.
"Is breathing alphatropic?"
Not if you’ve just been thrown to the bottom of a swimming pool.
O.k., so some theft is moral under alpha. Got it.
Nor can we predict outcomes from any of our behavior, got it.
My odds of personal success in a heist are never any better than in doing the traditionally moral thing, Got that, too.
Thanks, all clear.
Mr. Valliant,
O.k., so some theft is moral under alpha. Got it.
I think I once played a video game where I stole Nazi gold to stop the funding of a super-weapon. I was a hero. Well, at least that’s what the video game called me.
I think I understand the source of your confusion. Mr. Haspel didn’t say that rights aren’t a good idea. He only said that they are nothing more than a concept. They don’t exist outside an idea in the material world. Or are you now a dualist?
You have the right to come and go as you please in your own home, no?
But what if, while you’re at work, a neighbor hears a gunshot from your house and calls the police. They arrive to find a body in your living room and seal off the entire area to collect evidence.
Do you still have rights to come and go into your own private home as you please? What if you snuck out during lunch to commit the crime?
Are your rights to your house absolute?
Consider the mutual fund timing scandal. Let’s say you honorably stick with one job your whole life so it’s the only thing you can do to support yourself. You steal a little now and then by timing your trades.
Somebody somewhere figures it out and you end up arrested and barred from doing the only job you know.
Consider a life of honest work and a rich social network compared to life of risk, paranoia and alienation over an unsolved crime that you committed.
You can’t fast forward the tape to see how it all ends up.
"What if I bought the winning lottery ticket? Wouldn’t being lucky be better than working?"
You need to consider all possible outcomes and normalize them based on their likelihood.
If you do something illegal, someone may eventually figure it out and your life may be ruined. And to do this so you can "retire"? To do what?
In an economy, money corresponds to free energy not alpha. The game isn’t to acquire the most money any more than it is to eat the most food. After you have enough to be secure and comfortable, acquiring more isn’t going to make you happier (or more alphatropic). Maslow was onto this.
Tommy,
Don’t just copy and past passages and type "Huh?" afterwards. You’ve already shown that you’re too sharp for that. Quit being so lazy. Hit the books.
Oh, and that was not serious, for those in doubt.
Mr. Valliant,
Sorry. We overlapped. It looks like you got it before I posted the follow up.
Ok. Maybe not.
Bourbaki,
I will patiently wait as you try to rework the absurd dismissal of the concept of rights that you find yourself in. But that was a small slice of the pie.
I will wait, I think, even longer for a reason NEVER to steal from you. I am told nothing but it is usually not a good idea. O.k., so what?
I’m not advocating a life of crime–though many successful crooks sure seem content to me–just one good one with high odds of success. As an advocate of alpha, I assure you such primitive, religious things like guilt about moral absolutes won’t be factor.
Happiness, psychology!?!? Where does that factor in, again? And what if I just thrived on the excitement of crime? What kind of subjective, religious, generalizations are you making here?
One ALPHA reason to be moral, please.
One ALPHA reason to be moral, please.
I think you’re afraid that alpha is somehow going to force you ditch Objectivism. It won’t anymore than your GPS phone will force you to ditch your normal senses.
But Objectivism ain’t science.
I will patiently wait as you try to rework the absurd dismissal of the concept of rights that you find yourself in.
Hey–if you can show them to me, I’ll check ’em out. Is there someplace I can order a few samples? I’m even willing to pay extra for next-day delivery.
just one good one with high odds of success.
Translation: I am not advocating spending all of my money LOTTO. Just on the numbers that win
Happiness, psychology!?!? Where does that factor in, again
Are you a dualist? Or do you not recognized the phsysiological cost of mental health?
Bringing up Objectivism always shows your psychological insecurity off so well. No, really, insecurity looks good on you, dude.
Back to the problem you still face. Please tell me why it is always and necessarily a bad thing, an alphadystropic thing, to steal from you. Now this sounds to me like a universal strong solution precluded by the theory itself. But of course that is what is required unless we end up saying SOME theft is good.
I am one who believes in consciousness and that the answer to your situation here lies in the nature of consciousness. But such slippery concepts are to be avoided. Besides, MY F, let us say, really likes criminal activities as much as you like science.
What am I missing?
I’ve learned my lesson well here, about ethics. Only do thefts where you have high odds success.
Mr. Valliant,
Bringing up Objectivism always shows your psychological insecurity off so well. No, really, insecurity looks good on you, dude.
I bring up Objectivism because it’s the only thing you ever cite. You appear to be religiously devoted to it. And you’re offended by slights against. I can’t imagine being offended by anyone ridiculing math.
Objectivism doesn’t work well in translation. Without an empirical reference, there’s not "rational-meter" to use between two people. That’s why I called it solipsism. It doesn’t seem to encourage you to dig any deeper than ideas that suit you. You can justify anything to yourself but it’s a different game when you’re dealing with others.
Now where’s the material evidence for the physical existence of "rights"? I think they’re a grand idea. I think they’re necessary for a good social system. But I haven’t seen evidence of their independent existence.
Introspection doesn’t work so well alone. You sometimes need to jump outside the system to see what’s going on.
No Objectivist or intospection or philosophy would have revealed that you spend much of your life physically blind.
Or that for much of it, you’re just filling in pieces.
Please tell me why it is always and necessarily a bad thing, an alphadystropic thing, to steal from you.
It’s not. You’re talking about all conceivable situations. It depends on the specific situation. You have to use your brain. Any recipe is going to break down.
If you discover a neighbor building a nuclear bomb in his basement and you find out out that he’s going to detonate it, it’s alphatropic for you to steal the timer. In other words, to dispossess him of property.
You’re going to have to weigh the risks against calling the police and factor in the time it will take them to arrive. It’s an extreme response but one that can be justified if there is evidence to back it up.
Aaron,
Do I get the blame for repeating myself (see below)?
Bourbaki,
Have you been drinking?
How hard do I have to work at being alphatropic?
Example: I understand all of the virtues of alpha and, I promise, cross-my-heart, to do my very best, to be alphatropic. Well, except now and then, when it serves my selfish interests. If I can get away with, say, a single good heist, a cool ten or twenty million, I promise never to do an alphadystropic thing like stealing again. Since I won’t be making a career of this, and since under these circumstances, let’s say, I’m almost certain to get away with it… whaddya say? Good to go under the ethics of alpha?
When math is assailed, you should be angry. Sad, really, if you are not–and just another opening for the mystics. Those mystics at the gate would love to see it go down along with everything else resembling alpha. Trust me.
But just exactly WHY you keep bringing up Objectivism, especially when the sweat beads become most discernable on your forehead, is, of course, not at all clear. I did not bring it up, so what’s your point in still more embarrassingly inaccurate accounts of Objectivism? (You–and Aaron–haven’t yet said ONE accurate thing about Objectivism, so none of your tirades even helps to do whatever you think you are doing by bringing it up. Ah, well…)
Well, back to your sticky situation. Rights are a "necessity" now? !! ….. Excuse me, uncontrollable laughter has seized me…..!!!
O.k., but don’t be turning those non-physical entities (or whatever) into "strong solutions"–there are none, remember? I would have thought universal human "necessities," if not "solutions," like you now admit rights to be, might be a bit more common than just rights. Give it some thought.
Thus, at least we have gotten this far: it is openly conceded that some theft, murder and rape is quite moral, so long as my odds of success are really good. All cleared up. It comes down to things like whether the police will become aware of it (many crimes do avoid that), whether I happen to be the nervous type or the guilty type, etc. "Proper" theft should, of course, not be limited to imminently blasting nukes. Indeed, theft only in self-defense sounds like another "universal strong solution" to me. Sometimes I can do it just for greed, right? Or are you being universal/strong again?
Since you find yourself in an uncomfortable spot, let’s add another kind of problem. An unconscious woman is raped. She never finds out, the man was infertile and free of disease and his penis so small she would have hardly felt it anyway (all things he knew in advance.) Since I can only calculate odds and not outcomes, this was a totally safe bet. Unless and until she finds out, nothing immoral has occurred, right? Intentions do not matter, only consequences, and since there was no down side for her, all was highly ethical, right? A morally superior situation, right? His F was appeased and without impacting on hers at all. ALPHA-double-plus-good, right?
Mr. Valliant,
When math is assailed, you should be angry. Sad, really, if you are not–and just another opening for the mystics.Yes. Because you think very clearly when you’re angry.
There is plenty in Rand to make a modern reader queasy, though you would not know so from Mr. Britting’s worshipful text. For example, there is something to the claim that like so many of the intellectuals, left or right, of her time she succumbed to the cruder forms of social Darwinism. For a woman who worshiped man, Rand did not always seem that fond of mankind.
…
Rand lived in an era of stark ideological choices; to argue in muted, reasonable tones was to lose the debate. As a graduate of Lenin’s Russia, she knew that the stakes were high, and how effective good propaganda could be.
It sounds like religious ideology to me. Another "unauthorized" source, I’m sure. You seem to be the only person in the world who understands her philosophy. Again, that’s solipsism.
I’m mentioning it because it seems to be the source of your positions. It’s helpful to see how your respond to other’s take on it. So far, you’ve dismissed everyone except Rand herself (she’s dead) and that Peikoff guy. Two people.
Since I can only calculate odds and not outcomes, this was a totally safe bet.
This is where you are wrong. Probability doesn’t work that way. You are stuck in the 19th century–back when the lure of the left brain was a strong one and strong Newtonian determinism was a tempting illusion. You’re shifting F@t with any index you please. That’s not possible unless you’ve got a time machine.
There was a belief that some set of closed logical rules could capture all situations and not lead to undecidability. Hilbert tried to accomplish this for the laws of natural numbers.
Didn’t work. For mere natural numbers. Godel proved it would never work for general logical relationships. Of course, this was early 20th century.
It’s not going to work for Rand’s logical Utopia either.
However, Gerhard Gentzen proved that arithmetic was self-consistent. In thermdynamics, we have a conservation law. We can derive a relationship, alpha, that corresponds to physical health of living systems. It still doesn’t allow us to float around F@t with an arbitrary index but it does give us a theoretical absolute direction–irrespective of the engineering issues involved in its calculation.
You can either blindly follow a universal strong solution or you can take into account all available information at F@t-d to yield a path that maximizes alpha for the systems involved.
Mr. Valliant,
Our legal process has trouble with absolutes as well. Are they all "irrational"?
The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be further from the truth.
…
If a precedent is applicable, when do I refuse to follow it? If no precedent is applicable, how do I reach the rule that will make a precedent for the future? If I am seeking logical consistency, the symmetry of legal structure, how far shall I seek it? At what point shall the quest be halted by some discrepant custom, by some consideration of social welfare, by my own or the common standards of justice and morals?
…
I take judge-made law as one of the existing realities of life.
–Benjamin N. Cardozo
The Nature of the Judicial Process
201 posts and counting.