Leaving aside the funny but flippant conclusion, I think this is still a bit harsh on the causal channel capacity argument of the paper discussed. The under-emphasised part is that our brains and bodies do have an artificially imposed uniform distribution over microstates, and that is why macro-level causation is so useful (and often wrong) for us. Of course that might seem obvious, and doesn't mean reductionism is false, and it's not something a reductionist would disagree with, but I think it formalises and makes explicit an assumption that often conceals the root of the disagreement.
The channel capacity thing provides an explanation (an excuse) for having to settle for macrostates.
The 'normalization trick' is another important reminder that our brains are scale-invariant. https://xkcd.com/915/
I don't see why "having to settle for macrostates" is anything more than the observation that we use heuristics. Maybe because I don't understand your statement "our brains and bodies do have an artificially imposed uniform distribution over microstates"? The issue seems more due to the number of states than anything about their initial distribution.
Caveat that I have read the post but not the paper.
>Maybe, as the physicist Yakir Aharonov has advocated, our universe has not only a special, low-entropy initial state at the Big Bang, but also a "postselected final state," toward which the outcomes of quantum measurements get mysteriously "pulled"
This sounds a lot like Terence McKenna's "Transcendental Object at the End of Time".
But on the whole... wow, you ever get so upset about a presidential election that you invent a new theory of metaphysics?
The remark on the Aharonov post-selection is weird coming from Aaronson's usual hard adherence to known physics - postselection is relevant in the quantum world only. For Aaronson to twist it into an argument of cosmology seems markedly out of character.
An interesting technicality from the post and paper is that the measure of causal information (mutual information between the initial and final state) bears some resemblence to the Lyapunov exponent as it is used to measure whether a system is on the edge of chaos. When the exponent is 1 (IIRC) the system does not diverge exponentially when the initial conditions are changed slightly and the system is said to be on the edge of chaos and to have good generalization ability. Anywhere else and the system is either damped or chaotic and you don't expect "interesting" stuff to happen there, such as higher-order "causal" effects. (seriously though, why are people so obsessed with causality when it's clear that there is almost never one "causal" description. let it go!)
> Reverse Hollywoodism: The forces of good have every possible advantage, from money to expertise to knowledge to overwhelming numerical superiority. Yet somehow good still fumbles. Somehow a string of improbable coincidences, or a black swan or an orange Hitler, show up at the last moment to let horribleness eke out a last-minute victory, as if the universe itself had been rooting for horribleness all along. That’s our world.
> So-called laws like Murphy's law and Sod's law are nonsense because they require inanimate objects to have desires of their own, or else to react according to one's own desires. Dawkins points out that a certain class of events may occur all the time, but are only noticed when they become a nuisance. He gives as an example aircraft noise interfering with filming. Aircraft are in the sky all the time, but are only taken note of when they cause a problem. This is a form of confirmation bias whereby the investigator seeks out evidence to confirm his already formed ideas, but does not look for evidence that contradicts them.
> The law of truly large numbers should lead one to expect the kind of events predicted by Murphy's law to occur occasionally. Selection bias will ensure that those ones are remembered and the many times Murphy's law was not true are forgotten.
So reverse hollywoodism is really a theory on the limitations of humans in their ability to be scientific: when humans go from the data to the trends (stories), they ignore/distort some of the information to fit the narrative. (See e.g. Trump's election; really not that unpredictable, given data like https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/23/tr..., but easy to miss when reading the headlines)
That took a sudden turn! Normally I just go to Slate Star Codex when I want a mixture of sparkling insight and teleological fiction -- though at least there the fiction is clearly labelled.
Back in 2010 I made the prediction that (regardless of the truth) climate change would look increasingly like religion by 2020. Looks like my prediction is right on track.
I strongly doubt that, even if we get a paper claiming the detection of god tomorrow, for some reasonable definition of god. Then it would take time to plan follow up experiments, include that into theory, work out the theological implications, nail down parameters, etc. You know, all the stuff that climate science did in the 80ies.
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From what I understand, the blogger says he agrees that scientific reductionism is false, or specifically that details abt microstates of a system (like say, states of quantum objects in countless atoms in a system) don't really have a say in the system's macrostates.
The blogger also argues against an experimentation (to prove reductionism false) introduced by the paper he is discussing in the article quite convincingly, I must say.
Here's a couple of extracts from the article that should clear the premise up for you:
"For here is the argument from the Entropy paper, for the existence of macroscopic causality that’s not reducible to causality in the underlying components." <the argument follows>
"...scientific reductionism is false. There is higher-level causation in our universe, and it’s 100% genuine, not just a verbal sleight-of-hand. In particular, there are causal forces that can only be understood in terms of human desires and goals, and not in terms of subatomic particles blindly bouncing around."
[+] [-] ppod|8 years ago|reply
The channel capacity thing provides an explanation (an excuse) for having to settle for macrostates.
The 'normalization trick' is another important reminder that our brains are scale-invariant. https://xkcd.com/915/
[+] [-] hcs|8 years ago|reply
Caveat that I have read the post but not the paper.
[+] [-] nemo1618|8 years ago|reply
This sounds a lot like Terence McKenna's "Transcendental Object at the End of Time".
But on the whole... wow, you ever get so upset about a presidential election that you invent a new theory of metaphysics?
[+] [-] mileszim|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] latently|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yakult|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mathnerd314|8 years ago|reply
This is kind of like Murphy's Law. Let's quote Richard Dawkins and Richard Hand from the Wikipedia article: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy%27s_law)
> So-called laws like Murphy's law and Sod's law are nonsense because they require inanimate objects to have desires of their own, or else to react according to one's own desires. Dawkins points out that a certain class of events may occur all the time, but are only noticed when they become a nuisance. He gives as an example aircraft noise interfering with filming. Aircraft are in the sky all the time, but are only taken note of when they cause a problem. This is a form of confirmation bias whereby the investigator seeks out evidence to confirm his already formed ideas, but does not look for evidence that contradicts them.
> The law of truly large numbers should lead one to expect the kind of events predicted by Murphy's law to occur occasionally. Selection bias will ensure that those ones are remembered and the many times Murphy's law was not true are forgotten.
So reverse hollywoodism is really a theory on the limitations of humans in their ability to be scientific: when humans go from the data to the trends (stories), they ignore/distort some of the information to fit the narrative. (See e.g. Trump's election; really not that unpredictable, given data like https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/23/tr..., but easy to miss when reading the headlines)
[+] [-] tominous|8 years ago|reply
Back in 2010 I made the prediction that (regardless of the truth) climate change would look increasingly like religion by 2020. Looks like my prediction is right on track.
[+] [-] yk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwaltrip|8 years ago|reply
I feel like things kind went off the deep end in the last section there.
[+] [-] albertTJames|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mathnerd314|8 years ago|reply
> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link. If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top. (Not all users see flag links; there's a small karma threshold.)
[+] [-] zepto|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkarapetyan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianai|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianai|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ignoramous|8 years ago|reply
The blogger also argues against an experimentation (to prove reductionism false) introduced by the paper he is discussing in the article quite convincingly, I must say.
Here's a couple of extracts from the article that should clear the premise up for you:
"For here is the argument from the Entropy paper, for the existence of macroscopic causality that’s not reducible to causality in the underlying components." <the argument follows>
"...scientific reductionism is false. There is higher-level causation in our universe, and it’s 100% genuine, not just a verbal sleight-of-hand. In particular, there are causal forces that can only be understood in terms of human desires and goals, and not in terms of subatomic particles blindly bouncing around."