The Most Critical Question!

[Qfwfq]

I have not defined time! I have defined world views as "prediction mechanisms".

By using the word predict you assume the concept of before and hence implicitly of now and after. The meaning of predict is to say before.

[modest]

...you think it is an error to define what we mean by a world view...

 

It is not an error to define it. It is an error to attribute those definitions to every life form usefully interpreting every possible reality. I can't be more clear in this distinction which you continually fail to recognize.

 

I hope you realize that you should have raised that same objection the moment I said "What some information means to you, must be a function of your world view." Since you think it is an error to define what we mean by a world view, then you should say "Maybe there are world views that don't have anything to do with establishing what some information means to you".

 

But, Anssi, that's exactly why the first thing I did was to restate it in the first person!...

 

restating the propositions in the first person:

 

• What some information means to me, must be a function of my worldview.
  
  
• My worldview must be a function of what some information means to me.
  
  

 

That is all the cogito allows you and all you are really saying is "my worldview is my worldview" which is agreeable.

 

The same objection easily applies to anything I or anyone could ever say about world views, or about ANYTHING.

 

Exactly. You want to say that attributes of your worldview are applicable to any conceivable worldview of anything, and you just can't know that.

 

So your answer to the poll should be "no, as it cannot be answered", on the grounds that we can't even define what is it that we want to discuss. I.e. your stance is that it is not possible to communicate because we can't reach the same language!

 

I think it is possible to find a useful worldview. Mine obviously is because I know it exists.

 

I do not think it is possible to deductively derive an equation which any explanation of anything *must* obey.

 

EDIT: Just so you realize this completely, you have said that it is only "human world views" whose validity is judged by the validity of their predictions

 

Did I say "only human worldviews"? Is that what I said?

 

~modest

[AnssiH]

So are you guys now both disagreeing with the assertion;

 

"The ONLY measure of validity of a world view, is its ability to produce valid predictions"

 

?

 

If so, let me hear you explain clearly in your words, why that is.

 

-Anssi

[LaurieAG]

Hi Anssi,

 

I.e I want to be explicitly clear we have not in any way yet came across what sorts of definitions a world view itself may or may not make.

 

Thats a good start, lets consider things mathematical from the position of someone who has a negligible worldview, as in a savant. The worldview itself is irrelevant, individual survival is irrelevant and all we get is a pure biological/electric calculation engine. This is what the purist aims for.

 

Cicero said 'Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.'

[AnssiH]

It is not an error to define it. It is an error to attribute those definitions to every life form usefully interpreting every possible reality. I can't be more clear in this distinction which you continually fail to recognize.

 

Why did you just attribute "interpreting reality" as a feature of a world view. You are not allowed to define "world view" as a construct that interprets reality just because yours is like that. Maybe alien world views don't do such a thing, and you just can't comprehend the possibility because you are only human.

 

Get it? This kind of argumentation just makes all communication impossible.

 

Just in case you don't see through the sarcasm, yes, I do in fact understand what you are trying to say, but you are clearly not making an effort in understanding what I'm getting at. Because understanding what I'm getting at actually requires that we speak the same language.

 

-Anssi

[modest]

So are you guys now both disagreeing with the assertion;

 

"The ONLY measure of validity of a world view, is its ability to produce valid predictions"

 

?

 

If so, let me hear you explain clearly in your words, why that is.

 

-Anssi

 

You cannot know what measure a foreign worldview uses to establish its own validity.

 

~modest

[AnssiH]

You cannot know what measure a foreign worldview uses to establish its own validity.

 

Hahaha, excellent! :D

 

Just because the definition of a duck is that it's a bird, there's no telling whether we'd come across a duck that's not a bird!

 

This is the funniest thread I've participated in a long time.

 

I sort of wanted to discuss something serious though, so if people are interested to hear something about those constructs that we normally refer to as "world views", I could continue from the perspective that they are constructs that generate valid predictions... People still interested?

 

-Anssi

[AnssiH]

Hi Anssi,

 

Thats a good start, lets consider things mathematical from the position of someone who has a negligible worldview, as in a savant. The worldview itself is irrelevant, individual survival is irrelevant and all we get is a pure biological/electric calculation engine. This is what the purist aims for.

 

Alright so does that read, that you find it sensible that we continue discussions about this from the perspective I'm presenting?

 

I.e, because those constructs that we normally call "world views", are constructs whose validity can only be judged by the predictions they make about some information, we focus our attention to the requirements of generating valid predictions. I.e. we explicitly drop the idea that these constructs generate correct understanding about the explicit meaning of the information.

 

Are you interested to consider what implications this issue has on our world views?

 

-Anssi

[LaurieAG]

Hi Modest,

 

You cannot know what measure a foreign worldview uses to establish its own validity.

 

34 years ago I walked out of a calculus (imaginary i) tute after 5 mins or so. I had done the 3 exercises, rechecked them, had the tutor check the answers, showed my mates how to do them and left. I thought there was nothing else in pure maths that could not be derived so I gave Uni up and discontinued my maths/science education for 11 years.

 

21 years ago I returned to uni and could walk out of maths/discrete math final exams half way through with 100% correct answers. I would spend 8 hours on the weekly maths of finance tutorial and still only get 60-80% max to scrape in with a credit. It took me a while longer to work out what had to be done to guarantee maximum accuracy in complex maths of finance calculations.

 

The most critical question isn't about you or me or I or the math conventions being discussed. The answer to the most critical question lies within the savants mind and how the structural differences between standard and modified calculus and financial maths are handled, regardless of any particular worldview. Cogito Ergo Sum.

[modest]

Hahaha, excellent! :D

 

Just because the definition of a duck is that it's a bird, there's no telling whether we'd come across a duck that's not a bird!

 

This is the funniest thread I've participated in a long time.

 

I sort of wanted to discuss something serious though, so if people are interested to hear something about those constructs that we normally refer to as "world views", I could continue from the perspective that they are constructs that generate valid predictions... People still interested?

 

-Anssi

 

Yes, I think you've finally caught that tiger by the tail.

 

So, I'm going to go ahead and define "reality" as a set of changing information that is time-symmetric, deterministic, conserved (that is to say: information is conserved), etc.

 

Now I know what reality is. All of your statements about not being able to know reality are meaningless. I've just defined it and I can easily assume that my definition is universally valid.

 

You agree. Yes?

 

~modest

[modest]

The most critical question isn't about you or me or I or the math conventions being discussed. The answer to the most critical question lies within the savants mind and how the structural differences between standard and modified calculus and financial maths are handled, regardless of any particular worldview. Cogito Ergo Sum.

 

Compare Godel's second incompleteness theorem to the indented quote/claim of Doctordick in post #60.

 

~modest

[AnssiH]

Yes, I think you've finally caught that tiger by the tail.

 

So, I'm going to go ahead and define "reality" as a set of changing information that is time-symmetric, deterministic, conserved (that is to say: information is conserved), etc.

 

Now I know what reality is. All of your statements about not being able to know reality are meaningless. I've just defined it and I can easily assume that my definition is universally valid.

 

You agree. Yes?

 

I don't think you realize at all what I'm saying, let me give it one more stab. Open your mind to the possibility that I actually understand what you are saying, and that you may have misunderstood what I am saying.

 

You know it's pretty common perspective to view world views as prediction systems (exactly for the reason that that's the only thing we can measure about our world views), and me choosing to use that definition, it just means I want to analyze "the constructions that generate predictions about some information". I.e I want to analyze the logical consequences of those kinds of constructs, regardless of what you call them, and how you categorize them.

 

You should realize that, if it makes you feel better, you can choose to call those systems "human world views" or "human like world views" or whatever. Maybe call them "predictive world views" if you want. I'm just afraid that would get laughed at because world view commonly is taken to refer to a "prediction system", it would be like saying I want to discuss "female women", but not "any other kind of women".

 

So I think its simplest if I just say "world view" and explicitly point out focus to the prediction part. Essentially, I'm asking whether people are interested to discuss the properties of these kinds of constructions, regardless of what they personally call them. (The problems in the communication of this thing have arose from hidden disagreements about the terminology, you see)

 

You should also realize that, adding the possibility that "there may exist some different kinds of systems" does not allow us to analyze them, if we don't specify the first bit about what is it that we want to analyze!

 

In effect, your argument is analogous to someone wanting to discuss vertebrates, who specifies that "by vertebrates I mean those animals that have a spinal column", to which you would respond "non-sense, there may well exist vertebrates that don't have a spinal column!".

 

Try to realize that then they are not what that person means by vertebrates! He only specified WHAT he wants to discuss. The poor man never even meant to say that vertebrate is ontologically correct definition in any sense, maybe he just wanted to discuss the consequences of some structures having the spinal column!

 

Likewise, the constructs that are not generating predictions about some information, are simply not what I'd call "world view constructs"; they are not things that I wish to discuss!

 

Note that this is not the end of the road of what I'm about to say; I have not even begun to discuss the consequences of the fact that our world views can only be validated by their predictions. None of what I'm about to say amounts to any arguments about what specific definitions those world views supposedly "need to make", or anything like that.

 

All in all, if you act as if you don't understand this and still have a problem with it, it is hard to take that as anything else than trolling.

 

-Anssi

[Qfwfq]

You know it's pretty common perspective to view world views as prediction systems

The term worldview does not incorporate this aspect in its very definition. It means literally a view of the world and, by trivial generalization, an understanding of reality. No doubt time is so fundamental to the very nature of our way of analysing things that we automatically reason in terms of before and after; it is hard for us to do without it.

 

The reason I recently stressed the inclusion of fitting with what is already known is because it could well suffice. No doubt an understanding is more impressive when it enables a good guess about what is not yet known, because this helps to dispell doubts about bias toward what is already known, against less obvious alternatives.

 

In effect, your argument is analogous to someone wanting to discuss vertebrates, who specifies that "by vertebrates I mean those animals that have a spinal column", to which you would respond "non-sense, there may well exist vertebrates that don't have a spinal column!".

The word vertebrate derives directly from the name of each element of the spinal chord, this makes "vertebrate without a spinal chord" a direct contradiction in terms. If hypothetically there were found species with true bones but not vertebrae, taxonomists would think up some other name.

[AnssiH]

The term worldview does not incorporate this aspect in its very definition. It means literally a view of the world and, by trivial generalization, an understanding of reality.

 

Sweet lord this can't be so difficult. That is exactly what I'm trying to point out, that WE DON'T ACTUALLY MEASURE OUR UNDERSTANDING. I'm trying to point out the problem about exactly that attitude that you express; That we often tacitly think about the issue as if world views are literally about understanding the meaning of some information, even when we actually only measure its prediction abilities.

 

And as I said, that is why world views are often viewed as prediction mechanisms (in AI and other analyses). As long as that is how we measure the validity of some set of constructs, then all such constructs have that characteristic! It is kind of unbelievable how quickly you guys lose track of what I'm saying. You also produced a perfect example of the complaint that DD has in the OP.

 

Okay, so let's do this. I'll call these constructs of interest "those world views that generate predictions". Is that going to make you guys happy? Would you agree that all world views that you know of, are constructs that generate predictions? Would you agree that yours is like that?

 

Tell you what, the first moment you come across "a world view" that does not generate predictions in any sense of the word, please let me know! Then, I'm afraid, I will call it something else than a world view, because it doesn't have the central characteristic by which we judge that something is a valid world view... Think a little.

 

How on earth this can be taken as an argument about what time is or isn't, is completely beyond me.

 

And btw;

 

If hypothetically there were found species with true bones but not vertebrae, taxonomists would think up some other name.

 

...eh.

 

-Anssi

[AnssiH]

I don't really trust you guys to be able to pick up the thread anymore so here's a re-cap of the conversation this far. The bold ones are pretty much direct quotes from couple pages back.

 

Step 1:

- What some information means to you, must be a function of your world view.

- Your world view must be a function of what some information means to you.

 

Yup.

 

Step 2:

The ONLY measure we have for the validity of our understanding, is our ability to produce valid expectations about the future?

 

Yup.

 

Step 3:

Would you then agree that it is a sensible definition of a world view, that it is any self-coherent set of definitions, that can produce valid expectations for information whose meaning is explicitly unknown?

 

Wait what, no! What about those world views that don't generate predictions, but understand the world in other ways?

 

Review step #2

 

--

Let me know if you manage to interpret this in a manner that allows you to pass the infinite loop, I'll have more comments then.

 

-Anssi

[Qfwfq]

Sweet lord this can't be so difficult. That is exactly what I'm trying to point out, that WE DON'T ACTUALLY MEASURE OUR UNDERSTANDING.

Sweet lord maybe this is exactly why you keep failing to understand what I say!

 

I suspect you are understanding the word understand in a manner which is not necessarily understood.

[LaurieAG]

Hi Modest,

 

Compare Godel's second incompleteness theorem to the indented quote/claim of Doctordick in post #60.

 

Doctordick's proof and most of his claims are more deliberately obfuscated than incomplete. Godels incompleteness also masks the fact that there are certain equations that will always be false because they are from a different mathematical universe than the axioms being tested, so to speak, so these types of proofs are only relevant arse about. If the iterations in the base system G or G* etc involve a perpetual cycle of integration/differentiation, or 4 core integral/differential steps (with imaginary units) being repeated ad infinitum, the natural structure of the calculus of the axioms is the thing being iterated.

 

I've posted the Godelian disproof of global unregulated leverage on Hypography before. This is the inverse of incompleteness where the only real incomplete thing is a thought process that would entertain faulty logic and pea and cup chicanery while also passing it off as something worth basing your whole universe around. Software code can have 2 types of errors but compilers flag only syntax errors, logic errors can only be identified when you can also understand why the answer given is actually wrong. If you don't think it's wrong you can never fix the logic so nobody can be really blamed for thinking this way, unless they knew better.

 

Looking at the inverse in the cold light of natural logic involves a certain type of procedural/structural symetry where, if the maths is pure integration/differentiation, processing backwards or forwards is irrelevant to the end result (not the universe but the process). Modified calculus involving imaginary units has that procedural symetry but is a representation of a field or a cycle, once it has that pure symetry it cannot do more than represent the forces present during a discrete time period. Measuring these forces and recording their values over time is the standard (valid) accounting model that has no bearing on the correctness of the logic or methodology used to generate the results.

 

When something doesn't work both ways its incompleteness is inherrent by design and should not be mistaken for anything natural or universal. Complex maths of finance is different because it will only work correctly either backwards or forwards but never both ways at the same time (only when the inflation/interest = 0, i.e. no expansion)

 

The intricate relationship between incompleteness and the human brain can only be found in a place where nobody would ever want to voluntarily go, something that Kurt Godel experienced as a mental reaction to an unfortunate combination of intense thought and a set of bad data.

 

Start a complex iterative development process based on data sets, run through each new data set to fix the problems from the last data set in a continuous cycle only limited by your brainpower, and when things were nearing completion receive a final corrupted data set. After your brain shuts down for 3 days in a state of fuge you experience a week or two of backspinning when you try to go to sleep. If you are strong you can recover quickly and correct the horrendous logic errors you made in the 15 mins before your brain shut down, in the next 3 months. I went through this process in 2000.

 

Its interesting to note that the Dali Lama says that understanding the difference between perception and reality is the first step on the road to good mental health as, when you really think about it(B), reality is what happens when you don't think and nature takes its course.