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.)
Aaron,
Where to start?
Utilitarianism "foundered" on much more than the quest for "utiles." It was a misbegotten endeavor in the first place to try to get anyone to act with reference to the happiness or well-being of others, or, further, to promote a purely subjective standard of value, whether happiness, pleasure or any other. Both have resulted only in misery by the attempt.
I’m sure you will hate my own formulation, but what you are really doing is identifying the physical source of values and the ultimate physical end to which all of teleology operates to achieve.
Objectivists, of course, would agree that much of human suffering is simply a botched job at advancing our interests. Much guilt, self-humiliation and mass-murder, however, does rest at the feet of non-egoist ethics and the call for "sacrifice," by Hitler, Commies, Christians, welfare-statists, Mothers, and others. As you observe, there have been very wrong-headed ethics in the past. Ideas are the wellspring of behavior for good or ill.
Also, most ethics do have lots and lots of positive prescriptions of great value beyond "don’t kill" and "don’t steal." Let’s see: "Work hard," "save for a rainy day," "give strangers the benefit of the doubt," "have a little fun every day," "brush your teeth," "do unto others," tell me when to stop. Some have global positive advice: "Love thy neighbor/love God. This is the whole of the Law," "achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number," etc.
There is no "conflict" between the collective good and the individual good. This is something that alpha may also help clarify, much to the benefit of the debate. But, ethics has an unavoidable intellectual/psychological dimension that cannot be evaded. It must, as here, at least be assumed.
When asked if ants have common sense, Edward O. Wilson replied "If common sense means living by a set of rules of thumb that have worked well in the past, but living without examining those rules too closely or in detail, then, yes, ants have common sense."
Interesting things happen when common sense fails. Wilson’s criterion emphasizes the point that what’s involved in understanding is intimately tied up with acting in accordance to a set of rules. When the rules of reality generating the events of daily life part company with the rules of thumb built on common sense, surprise is the outcome. And our rules must be reformulated. But according to what criteria?
Also, most ethics do have lots and lots of positive prescriptions of great value beyond "don’t kill" and "don’t steal."
Great value indeed. Good for fortune cookies, I suppose.
What kind of common sense can be squeezed out of any set of rules? In 1986, British psychologist Karl Teigen conducted an experiment to find out.
Teigen’s experiment involved taking twenty-four well-known proverbs and transforming each into its opposite. So, for example, "Out of sight, out of mind," became "Absense makes the heart grow fonder." Teigen then gave his students lists containing some genuine proverbs intermingled with those he had formulated through logical inversion.
He then asked the students to rate the proverbs based on originality and "truth value". The students could find no recognizable difference between the set of eternal truths and their opposites. In short, almost any "wisdom"–or its opposite–can be taken as a pithy encapsulation of everyday, garden-variety common sense.
The key is knowing how to find new rules and when to ditch old ones. Yet philosophy hasn’t even established where we should be looking.
Aaron, well done.
And Bourbaki, "The key is knowing how to find new rules and when to ditch old ones. Yet philosophy hasn’t even established where we should be looking."
This seems right to me, and please correct me if you think I’m wrong, but herein lies the function of F.
As I wrote earlier, wisdom comes from the understanding of F.
Being human, we don’t always, or want to, follow F.
Does F. give us advice as asked by Mr. Valliant? Well, it does give us direction.
What we do with that direction is what’s at issue here.
Aaron’s points us to this: "If alpha theory had a motto, it would be there are no universal strong solutions."
This seems to me to also be correct, as there is no universal F. There may be other reasons to support Aaron’s assertion, but I am willing to use this one as support.
Here too, "…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."
Precisely. It is the phenomenologic character of F which both allows and mandates this to be true.
Suffering, I believe, arises often from the resistance to what is. The diachronic narrative of the Self, as touched on here, ala Galen Strawson we can begin to see the structure of the human psyche (Self) as it intersects F.
The pursuit of alpha-star is the embrace of what is.
Although I have previously tried to answer Mr. Valliant’s objections, I again would suggest that by pursuing alpha-star, one does have a choice in one’s behavior, and that this choice is free. Moreover, one can, and may very well, have strong emotional or pyschological attachments, or reactions to said behavior.
Pursuing alpha-star makes us ethical.
Whereas it is this constellation of choice, emotions, and psychological reactions to alpha pursuit that makes us human.
Ants do not routinely reconfigure their "rules" during the course of a single ant life-time. They are not required to pick and choose what "rules" they will follow. They really don’t follow "rules" or have "common sense" at all. The "sense" their behavior makes or not is only to us.
Speaking of "cash-value," but still on topic, could you give me an example of anti-intuitive advice that alpha gives us in a particular, practical instance that previous morality has not. Can it tell us, for example, when it’s o.k. to kill in self-defense/tell a white lie/have an affair in a way that does not conform to the previous real-world ethical advice of another school? Please not something from a casino or financial markets. How about a universal bit of fatherly, normative, "rules to live by" kinda stuff that would surprise previous ethical thinkers. One or two will do.
MeTooThen,
Your understanding of the theory is spot on. The only minor quibble is that F is a measurable space defined by the set of thermodynamic events.
Eustace improves chances of survival by adapting to F. But any such adaptation is a strong solution and may prove deleterious as F continually changes.
Eustace is the function.
Mr. Valliant,
I realized that you misused the terms positive and negative prescription.
"Don’t kill" is not a positive prescription. Please check Mr. Haspel’s link about negative liberty.
MeTooThen,
I don’t think that we’re too far off from each other, but, again, I may be wrong. Those emotions are the kickers, the inspiration, the real motivators of behavior. Our ethics, whatever they are, must be tightly integrated with our emotions if they are to be the operative technology that is ethics. Ethics is not a luxury, as Rand observed. It is a requirement for human beings as real as the need to eat.
Bourbaki,
No, I assumed that "Don’t kill." was negative prescription. My phrasing was off. I meant, "Previous ethics do have positive prescriptions, not just negative one like ‘don’t kill.’"
MeTooThen,
The reason why I would say that only humans are "ethical" beings is that while many other beings pursue ends, alpha*, and many follow "strategies" and "rules" (by analogy), only human beings are confronted with the need to determine and select the (real) rules and strategies that we will follow. Only humans need (and are capable) of a SCIENCE of ethics. The fact that a human being is capable of arriving at alpha theory itself, and ideas like it, is the unique power, the special alpha-excellence, of our species–the glory of our species, if I may use "theological" language.
"Speaking of "cash-value," but still on topic, could you give me an example of anti-intuitive advice that alpha gives us in a particular, practical instance that previous morality has not"
Suppose there was no such thing; i.e., that alpha merely confirmed that which has been stated by other theories; what would be the problem with this?
Firstly, I should very much hope that alpha is isomorphic with previous theories of ethics in many (most?) ways; hell I would expect as much as alpha theory itself predicts it.
But more importantly, what we will gain, even if the prescriptions are chestnuts as worn as can be, is an *objective* reason to accept them. We can throw out the divine and all the other bad metaphysics that ethical philosophy to date has relied upon and reach conclusions on prescriptive action by universally agreed upon premises (and yes I outright dismiss as worthy of consideration any argument that does not accept algebra and the LoT) which are openly and transparently derived.
Jebus H. Homer, this is nothing short of mindblowing.
Bourbaki,
Thank you for your comments.
Yes, perhaps you are quibbling with "…This seems right to me, and please correct me if you think I’m wrong, but herein lies the function of F."
No, I didn’t mean that F is a function (although I did ask that previously), but rather it had a function, or played a role in behavior.
Or not.
It is totally possible that I am wrong here.
And yes, Eustace is the function.
Check.
Mr. Valliant,
Here:
…"Those emotions are the kickers, the inspiration, the real motivators of behavior."
With this I disagree. As above, our emotional reactions or attachments to behavior are just that, but they themselves do not ethical behavior or morality make.
It is our actions that count.
MeTooThen,
but rather it had a function, or played a role in behavior.
Correct.
And thanks for the introduction to Strawson:
But if there is a process, there must be something an object or substance in which it goes on. If something happens, there must be something to which it happens, something which is not just the happening itself. This expresses our ordinary understanding of things, but physicists are increasingly content with the view that physical reality is itself a kind of pure process even if it remains hard to know exactly what this idea amounts to. The view that there is some ultimate stuff to which things happen has increasingly ceded to the idea that the existence of anything worthy of the name ultimate stuff consists in the existence of fields of energy consists, in other words, in the existence of a kind of pure process which is not usefully thought of as something which is happening to a thing distinct from it.
MeTooThen,
"Ethics" is the realm of advice. This is something we can only give to human beings. Our rational faculty is why we are "ethical beings." No, emotions do not make us "ethical beings," but they have a real role in human behavior. Really, they do. One can act against one’s emotions, but it is pain and misery to attempt to act consistently and continuously in opposition to one’s emotions. In the long run, I’m not sure if it can be sustained. Ethics needs to work with them, not against them. Indeed, ethics can, must and will "train" our emotions. When ethics is applied to the human animal, we creatures of habit and emotion and character, our natures must be considered. In this sense, ethics must account for not only the ends sought, but the means by which they sought.
C.T.,
Take a chill-pill, I was just inquiring if this new thinking results in any new policy-implications, that’s all. If this is "ethics," then it is really metaethics, not applied ethics, right? (Aaron seems to think that an unconscious Hayekian cultural evolution is sufficient to explain all of this built-up good advice. I do not. Humans have had and stated good reasons for adopting many (consensus) ethical norms. But this is a side-matter.
More of interest, where does alpha come-down on ethical issues about which there is hot debate: abortion, the death-penalty, genetic engineering of humans, etc.? Let’s see this ethics "in action," solving problems, giving advice, etc. Will we need a pocket-calculator?
Jim asks for some normative, "fatherly," yet counter-intuitive advice. OK, here’s some: normative fatherly advice is always wrong, sometimes.
There is only one universally valid rule: maximize alpha. No path, only the Way, as the Buddhists say.
To repeat: there are no universal strong solutions. There is no universally valid heuristic to tell you when to lie, when to kill in self-defense, when to have an affair. All depends on F, as MeTooThen has tirelessly pointed out. This is why people write novels.
I’m reminded of the scene in Life of Brian where Brian is trying to shoo his acolytes away. He tells them "You must all learn to think for yourselves!" and they respond, in unison, "We must all learn to think for ourselves!"
Really, they do. One can act against one’s emotions, but it is pain and misery to attempt to act consistently and continuously in opposition to one’s emotions.
Sounds like every time I’ve dragged my sorry ass to the gym over the years.
In this sense, ethics must account for not only the ends sought, but the means by which they sought.
Absolutely true. Alpha theory is not path independent.
More of interest, where does alpha come-down on ethical issues about which there is hot debate.
This requires its own post. And you won’t need a pocket-calculator. All the pieces have already been posted although, at least for me, the solutions were sometimes counterintuitive.
Jim,
In its weakest form alpha theory is pro-man. What’s the beef?
Old and new:
Aaron,
You response to my unidirectionality point by stating that: "But a few thousand years is an eyeblink for the alpha casino to sort better from worse. I’m reasonably optimistic, but very far from unidirectional." I don’t find this metaphor convincing, as it just seems that you are arguing that not enough _time_ has passed for progress to be made, for your mechanism to sufficiently favor better culture over worse. This still sounds unidirectional to me.
I brought up naturalistic fallacy because I did not find your earlier comments convincing. But if you feel there’s nothing further to say, fair enough. You say that your eventual discussion of aesthetics will not involve anything resembling checklists, which I assume includes checklists with expiration dates (e.g., "best movies of 2004 as voted in 2005") so I am willing to be swayed on this point.
I also find your comment about your theory, that "[You] want people to follow it. Whether they follow it of their own sweet will or because they operate according to some deterministic algorithm that assigns a certain weight to the last thing they read is no concern of mine, or the theory’s." — rather confusing. Either you _want_ people to follow it, suggesting that they need to be convinced of your theory and could, in fact, reject it (and thereby cause it to _fail_) by following another approach, or you are assuming that people are _inevitably, necessarily_ following your theory, because it is based on physical fact, rendering any discussion of "wanting/choosing to follow it" meaningless/moot. This is a point I have not felt to be clarified in the 120 or so comments I have worked through so far.
I place these comments here because, it seems to be, following the Leibniz comments above, that you are following the latter tack, so that once your theory is elucidated in its full glory, there simply will be no more discussion — or rather, that the discussion will be about the details within the theory, not the framework itself. Once again, I find this model more suited to the physical sciences than to the arts. Even among the physical sciences, I would think the model more suited to the theoretical rather than experimental branches. Among the experimentalists I have known, more than few have really only been _convinced_ of theoretical results (beautiful, undisputed 19th century theoretical results on interference effects) after actual physical data had been obtained. They _accepted_ the result before the experiment, but only _believed_ it after the experiment. (The history of the spot or Arago is on point here.) This is why I am curious about how you think your reception by your readers affects the status of your theory.
I also must suggest that I do not see how your discussion of strong and weak solutions in thermodynamics is any closer, at least yet, to a discussion of "action in the real world" than the arid ethical dilemmas approach you dismiss, particularly as the example above concerns only the real world problem of dis-arming a frog. But you have said you wll get to aesthetics — and here I do assume you mean aesthetic judgement, aesthetic _action — in due time, so perhaps I am only being impatient. I am willing to just lurk around until then, progessing through the comments diligently. I am sympathetic to your points concerning imperfect information, and I am curious how you will incorporate then into aesthetic judgement, just as I wonder how strong convergence and weak convergence aesthetic judgements will differ. I just didn’t expect, initially, to have to go through your full moral philosophy to get to them.
Bourbaki,
I honestly admitted that I had read all the posts but not the 250+ dense (you will appreciate the double meaning here) comments on all the posts. I attempted to ask what I thought were reasonable questions, based not only on general theory but specific applications of alpha theory, such as a discussion of good art versus bad.
Perhaps I was rushing Aaron on demonstrating what an alpha theoretical discussion of aesthetics would actually look like, as I note above. My comments about laughter concerned the status of the recipient of such a lecture (I don’t use lecture pejoratively — simply to indicate that one of the conversationalists is conversant in alpha theory, but the other is not), and the ability of the recipient to respond to the lecture within and outside the framework. I certainly don’t feel like I was mocking Aaron, or any of the rest of the discussions. Aaron’s response seemed to suggest that I have misread his theory, though as I state above I haven’t found convincing answers to my questions in the comments I have so far worked through. But if you feel that I should not make any comment until I finish all of the other comments, I would ask that you just please ignore any further posts I make (as it seems like you will anyway), as my catching up progress will be slow, and new posts like this one (with attendant comments) will only make it worse. On the bright side, I’m planning to lurk for a while anyway.
And more generally, could we name Eustace’s counterpart, to person with whom he will eventually interact in your philosophy? May I recommend Hilda?
Best,
Anon
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.
If I’m reading this right, you say that if Alpha Theory didn’t tell us that murder is wrong, it would be incorrect. This has two implications:
1) You have some other standard by which you know murder is wrong.
2) Alpha Theory is properly judged according to whether it conforms to this standard.
The question is, which standard? And doesn’t an open derivation require making it clear first?
Anon,
This still sounds unidirectional to me.
Just because a system is directional does not mean it will progress in one direction. Any system is susceptible to unforseen fluctuations. Ecosystems crash. Markets crash. Civilizations crash. Solar systems crash.
Systems that are better adapted have a higher probability of survival but that greater capability can be turned onto itself. Or the system can be hit by an asteroid.
because it is based on physical fact, rendering any discussion of "wanting/choosing to follow it" meaningless/moot. This is a point I have not felt to be clarified in the 120 or so comments I have worked through so far.
The consequences of the theory must be challenged by challenging the derivation. How alpha is maximized is very much open to debate. Remember, there are no universal strong solutions.
That’s the point I tried to convey in the previous thread with my metaphor of a firm operating in a free market. A firm will go belly up when it can no longer meet its financial obligations. How to make it thrive in a free market is very much open to debate.
Free market theory doesn’t tell us how to succeed. I can imagine how disconcerting that must have been: "How will the peasants figure out the price of bread on their own without us setting it for them?"
Before we can formulate solutions, we first need to figure out what to measure. That’s the "unit" Mr. Haspel referred to in parent post.
The filtration, F, is constantly changing. Alpha theory offers no way of predicting the future. The complete set of options available to us at any given time can not be predicted. Alpha theory does offer a metric to compare the results of what has happened and allow us to weigh these options.
This is why I am curious about how you think your reception by your readers affects the status of your theory.
This theory is quite far from validated. But no fatal flaws has been uncovered so far. My comments weren’t meant to discourage your posting but to illustrate why it would difficult to address the issues you raised at this point in the exposition. Especially since we’re still establishing the foundations of the theory.
I also must suggest that I do not see how your discussion of strong and weak solutions in thermodynamics is any closer, at least yet, to a discussion of "action in the real world" than the arid ethical dilemmas approach you dismiss, particularly as the example above concerns only the real world problem of dis-arming a frog.
This is confusing, Anon. You point out that there are 250+ dense comments yet complain that the initial examples are too simple?
I pointed out in response to Mr. Valliant’s call for cash value that there are proposed solutions to abortion, death penalty and genetic engineering issues that are derivable within the framework but they require their own post (forthcoming). In the meantime, Mr. Haspel directed our attention to Isaiah Berlin’s work.
Aaron’s response seemed to suggest that I have misread his theory, though as I state above I haven’t found convincing answers to my questions in the comments I have so far worked through.
The initial goal in posting the derivation is to see if there are any errors in the derivation itself. It doesn’t make very much sense to push ahead with a theory if its foundations are flawed.
If you’ve found an inconsistency in the derivation, kindly share it.
You are obviously free to speculate where the theory might go–but it may result in an increased proliferation of (tangential?) comments. But the point is to openly challenge the idea so please don’t interpret any of my comments as an attempt to discourage your participation–especiallly since I end up on probation often enough.
Mr. Armitage,
Alpha Theory is properly judged according to whether it conforms to this standard.
Not quite. Mr. Haspel was using existing ethical frameworks as a litmus test, not as a rule, to illustrate that it coincides with many of our intuitions.
Alpha theory is openly derived from fundamental physical laws. There are no other assumptions or principles implied. It provides a working definition of living systems. If validated, alpha theory is the standard by which to measure ethical theories. Mr. Valliant calls this meta-ethics which I can understand but, as we’ll see in forthcoming posts, alpha theory does offer compelling resolutions to some real world problems.
I personally don’t very much care what it’s called. I’d first like to know if it’s valid and, second, its implications. In that sense, its consequences on ethical systems will be hard to deny.
As Anon noted, that can be an unsettling proposition but as Mr. Haspel pointed out some time ago, despite its origins in physics, alpha theory turns out the be a remarkably empathetic and accommodating ethical framework (or dessert topping).
Bourbaki,
Not to be repetitive, but the notion that the theory is not unidirectional because "unforeseen circumstances" may occur is not really a convincing response. It really just begs the question of what circumstances can be foreseen. In particular, a theory built on the thermodynamics should surely be able to predict "solar system crashes" and "being hit by an asteroid". But more importantly, why must I wait for dramatic events out of my individual control (social events like markets or physical events like tsunamis) in order to, well, just change my mind about what sort of aesthetics to pursue?
Recall that my point about unidirectionality stems from the laws of thermodynamics themselves. Yes, there may be occasional setbacks — the surface over which the maximization occurs may be bumpy with many local maxima — but thermodynamic motion is in one direction. And so a theory built on thermodynamic Eustaces should also move in one direction, at least _statistically_, allowing for individual Eustaces to fall by the wayside here and there. It is not a convincing response to say that every so often a flood washes the Eustaces (and the ants) away, and everything has to start over again. This is _not_ a change in the direction of the fundamental motion — it just seems like a deus ex machina to explain why more progress hasn’t occured.
And I agree about free market theory not telling us how to succeed, though I interpret succeed as succeeding to "life the lives we want to lead" rather than "succeeding to make money." I believe this is why _The Wealth of Nations_ is accompanied by _The Theory of Moral Sentiments_. Though my reading of neither of these tracts is complete, it did seem to me that Smith recognized (as many of his acolytes did not) that the question of how to efficiently set the price of bread was _separate_ from the question of what sort of life the baker should live. And though I do not recall at the moment if Smith said why the two were separate, I would suggest here that it is because the tools used to show one were inappropriate for the other.
I would freely stipulate for purposes of argument that there was no error in his derivation of the laws of the free market. But just because his system was clear and correct did not imbue it with any moral force. And maybe this is why I guess I have been impatient for more discussion about applications of the theory — because I do not see why, just because a theory is axiomatically sound, that it must therefore be morally/aesthetically correct. And surely I should judge an aesthetic theory by what it, in the end, says about aesthetics, and not by the rigor of the method by which it derives these conclusions? For example, the complexity and throroughness of Talcott Parsons social systems and Roman Ingarden’s ontologies of art had nothing to with whether those theories were good (or bad) at describing the interactions of real people or the appreciation of real art.
And this is why I am recusing myself of the discussion of how sound alpha theory is as a system, as I have noted before. I just thought I’d take one last stab at making myself clear.
Anon
Anon,
I guess I have been impatient for more discussion about applications of the theory — because I do not see why, just because a theory is axiomatically sound, that it must therefore be morally/aesthetically correct.
If the derivation of alpa theory is not sound, its applications are definitely not correct. Information theory is necessary for discussing the alpha implications on aesthetics. It was only recently mentioned–in this post.
The foundations of alpha are empirical rather than transcendental. There are no freestanding assumptions–there are only the laws of thermodynamics and mathematics. Traditionally, ethical theories fail by passing from the particular to the vague, or the reverse, vagueness into hard cases. They degrade into a force of will.
There is a great deal of evidence that points to a purely material origin of ethics. It is vital that the each of the pieces presented in Parts 2-6 be kept in mind when sifting through the evidence. All efforts so far have gone into assembling and layering those pieces.
The reader’s impatience is both understandable and forgivable. The presenter’s is not.
Anon,
A couple of additional comments.
It really just begs the question of what circumstances can be foreseen. In particular, a theory built on the thermodynamics should surely be able to predict "solar system crashes" and "being hit by an asteroid".
Nope. We believed this in the 19th century. Today, just ask your favorite meteorologist.
It can still be a game of chance. In such situations, the best you can do is try to ensure that the odds are in your favor. And all you have to work with is your filtration.
Your meteorologist is going to be more accurate than your rain dancer because he can take more of the filtration into account but neither can predict the future with perfect accuracy.
And I agree about free market theory not telling us how to succeed, though I interpret succeed as succeeding to "life the lives we want to lead" rather than "succeeding to make money."
These analogies are a bit dangerous–money is analogous to free energy not alpha. Nevertheless, in the context of this analogy, we only need to focus on making money. Even in this restricted sense, free market theory does not offer any univeral solution for financial success–late night informercials notwithstanding. Again, the best you can do is maximize the odds.
Aaron H,
Apologies for hectoring you for cash value; I was admittedly anxious to jump ahead and look for real-world applications, but I’m willing to be more patient now. However, I have a question about alpha*:
What about the drunk who realizes that his habit is damaging himself and his family, but goes on drinking anyway? He knows what he is doing is destructive and wrong, but continues anyway. How is he following alpha*?
Aaron,
Consilience is one of my favorite books. What he wrote about theory, its components and utility, is priceless.
There is one thing Wilson wrote in it that deserves repeating: "For best results, cultivate individuals, not groups." It explains a lot of things, like why Democracy triumphed over Communism. And on the subject of thermodynamics, one of your favorites, following that axiom is the one way to combat the dreaded inevitability of entropy, which is a major reason for social decline.
Alright, one _last_ set of comments:
1. "If the derivation of alpa theory is not sound, its applications are definitely not correct."
Again, I believe the soundness of the theory should be judged by its conclusions about art first and by its foundational/derivational soundness second. I do not believe this to be as controversial a statement as it might initially appear. The Dirac delta function proved a useful and valuable construct in quantum physics for many years before Schwartz’s theory of distributions actually gave it a firm theoretical grounding.
2. "Nope. We believed this in the 19th century. Today, just ask your favorite meteorologist"…"Your meteorologist is going to be more accurate than your rain dancer because he can take more of the filtration into account but neither can predict the future with perfect accuracy."
I would just point out that the dynamics of asteroids is well-predicted by standard Newtonian dynamics. There is no need to invoke chaotic dynamics to predict, to high accuracy, their orbits. The notion of a "solar system crash" is ambiguous, but to the extent that it involves the nuclear processes occuring in the sun, it, too, can be predicted with fair amounts of accuracy ("how much fuel remains?") using basic nuclear physics. The aside being made was not about perfect accuracy, merely about general scientific capabilities.
And again, it is not a refutation to say that the model is not unidirectional because actors in the model cannot know with perfect accuracy the correct direction. Thermodynamics does not require sentience. If there is a cumulative thermodynamic maximization process occuring, _both_ the meteorologist of the modern day _and_ the dancer of the modern day should be relatively more maximizaed than the meteorlogist and dancer or, say, 10000 years ago. _That_ sort of unidirectionality over time is what I’m talking about, not the notion of imperfect progress due to imperfect information. This is why I have referred to the _overall statistic trend_ of the theory, not the particular progress of any individual within it. Imperfect information changes the _rate_ of progress of an individual component but not the _direction_ of development of the aggregate.
3. "[F]ree market theory does not offer any univeral solution for financial success." This is true, I suppose, though irrelevant to my main point. But for what its worth, free market theory does offer particular solutions — that’s what drives economic policy, after all — and certainly makes claims about the aggregate performance of difference types of economic organization — at the very least of the performance of free market economies versus other types of economies. It endorses certain policies over others not because of a universal success formula for an individual, but because of presumed aggregate performance of a collective over time. Indeed, since free market theory is a theory about the efficient production and distribution of goods, _it is indeed providing a universal formula for success_ — i.e., a formula for the most success in efficiently producing and distributing goods. _That was Smith’s whole point_. Nobody ever claimed that free market theory has anything to do with making you individually rich. Such "Get rich theory," is, as you say, currently being developed late at night. All I know currently is that it involves real estate, no money down, and having two dads (one rich, one poor).
Now I really will shut up.
Anon
Anon,
Again, I believe the soundness of the theory should be judged by its conclusions about art first and by its foundational/derivational soundness second.
How can you understand the justification for conclusions if you don’t understand how the theory can be applied?
If the theory’s conclusions are wrong, how do you know you haven’t misapplied the theory or "forgotten to carry the one"? Your approach takes less work but is more prone to error.
We’ll turn the ignition key soon enough but a routine (boring?) systems check first may avoid many, many more posts for clarification later.
If there is a cumulative thermodynamic maximization process occuring, _both_ the meteorologist of the modern day _and_ the dancer of the modern day should be relatively more maximizaed than the meteorlogist and dancer or, say, 10000 years ago.
And should the weather be getting better all the time? It, too, is a thermodynamic system.
Thermodynamics does not work this way. No physical process occurs in isolation. Alpha theory illustrates how systems can become organized and offers a way to measure this organization. It doesn’t state that they must remain organized nor become more organized.
The processes to which we’re exposed are a product of all types of randomness. We can not conveniently separate them and assume that they are completely predictable. The best we can do is estimate them.
and certainly makes claims about the aggregate performance of difference types of economic organization
As alpha theory does. Both give us the concept of direction but neither gives us a crystal ball.
Now I really will shut up.
No need. However, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Consider the following:
Both science and art are better understood as verbs than nouns. Science is a process that aims to produce a logically consistent body of knowledge. No matter how many disciplines exist within science, they can be collectively viewed as one aggregate formal system.
Formal systems have limitations. Godel’s incompleteness theorem states that there will always be truths that are outside the reach of any formal system.
Art is a process. Given the limitations of formal systems, it offers a complementary channel to communicate information. There are no universal strong solutions to produce good art. Nevertheless, good art has an effect on the receiver. Its consequences can be measured in alpha terms.
Mr. McIntosh,
Alpha theory doesn’t state that any given Eustace will follow low epsilon strategies. The nature of addiction is too broad to accommodate in the comments section (another post). Keep in mind the model of the filtration as seen by the addict.
The progressive nature of addiction is incomprehensible to users and loved ones alike. For most of us, it seems strange that drug abuse represents behavior that is beyond "voluntary control." The central feature of addictive disorders is a progressive loss of control over substance use, whereby chemically dependent people continue, and even amplify their use — despite increasingly devastating consequences.
The behavior patterns that define substance dependency are characterized by the individual’s inability to accurately predict the timing, amount, duration, or consequences of substance consumption: "The substance use is continued despite knowledge of having persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problems" and "there is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control (i.e. predict) substance use" Furthermore: "The substance is often taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than was intended " and "there is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control substance use" DSM IV (APA, 1994, p. 181).
Science clearly has a role in these matters. Has art ever played a role in these matters? Has it ever been used to help people see things differently?
Bourbaki,
Not quite. Mr. Haspel was using existing ethical frameworks as a litmus test, not as a rule, to illustrate that it coincides with many of our intuitions.
I fail to see the difference between a "litmus test" and a "rule" in this context. Either our intuitions (if I take it right that this is where you derive the knowledge that murder is wrong) are properly the standard by which Alpha Theory is judged, or not. Whether you compare that standard to a litmus test or to a rule, it’s there or not.
If validated, alpha theory is the standard by which to measure ethical theories.
If so, then it cannot be validated by reference to existing ethical theories (however you conceptualize this referencing), since those very theories — including ones based on intuition — themselves have need of validation by the very thing they are to validate. If you do make those theories a litmus test, they must already be validated somehow.
Mr. Armitage,
If so, then it cannot be validated by reference to existing ethical theories (however you conceptualize this referencing), since those very theories
You are absolutely correct and this is most definitely not how alpha theory is to be validated. It’s a purely empirical theory. It must be validated by science not through other ethical theories.
But I imagine you can see that comparing alpha theory to other ethical systems, both past and present, can be helpful?
Anon,
One last comment on your post.
I would just point out that the dynamics of asteroids is well-predicted by standard Newtonian dynamics. There is no need to invoke chaotic dynamics to predict, to high accuracy, their orbits.
This is not true.
The three-body problem is much more complicated; its solution can be chaotic. In general, the three-body problem cannot be solved analytically, although approximate solutions can be calculated by numerical methods or perturbation methods.
Anon,
Directionality, yes.
Linearity, no.
Whereas Time may be an Arrow, the Flux of the Universe, and the behavior of one man, or Man, or the life of the ecosystem, or evolution, or the movement of clouds, is not.
Aaron’s use of the mesh over a cloud of gas is very appropriate, indeed, as a way to visualize life systems.
And as Bourbaki pointed out, the system can allow for movement inward, or into itself.
(I wish I had some topographical maps to show this.)
Therefore, there is a direction to our behavior, our energy moves us in that direction at any given t, but it is not linear movement.
Also as Bourbaki has pointed out, F is also changing at every time, t.
And yes, addiction, …"The central feature of addictive disorders is a progressive loss of control over substance use, whereby chemically dependent people continue, and even amplify their use — despite increasingly devastating consequences."…is a failure of F.
Behavior has a consequence.
New F.
Lastly, Bourbaki, quoting DSM IV.
Brilliant.
No apologies required, Matt; in the time I have taken to lay this out the patience of even my most sympathetic readers must have worn thin.
One passage seems to have provoked Aaron Armitage, and I quote it in full: "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."
Aaron A. regards this as an appeal to some extra-alpha standard, and if you omit the last three sentences, as he does, it certainly seems that way. But all I really say is that universal moral rules are the product of evolution, and evolution has certainly done a better job, to date, than moral philosophy has. So they are odds-on to be true. This makes them a useful sanity check. It does not make them the standard by which the truth of the theory is to be judged.
Bourbaki,
At this point we’re just speaking past each other. Forgive the snark, as I’m avoiding more pressing work by writing this comment.
1."How can you understand the justification for conclusions if you don’t understand how the theory can be applied?" So I assume you do not accept movie recommendations from anyone who hasn’t submitted a proper theory of film first. And I assume that once you’ve judged a movie appropriately, no actual dialogue with another person can _convince_ you of anything else. Not placing such great importance on axiomatic details makes you more open to suasion, not less.
2. "And should the weather be getting better all the time? It, too, is a thermodynamic system." I’m not sure what you mean by "better." The universe certainly is getting colder. All the time.
3. You invoke the N-body problem, but I am not trying to give you a universally precise description of the asteroid. I simply wanted to point out that we have very good ways to find ones that might hit us and estimate if they will hit us. That’s why I mentioned Newton specifically, and not Einstein/relativistic calculations. The entire fruitful field of perturbation theory, after all, was built out of _NOT_ solving the N-body problem.
Also, MeTooThen,
4. "Directionality, yes.[…]Linearity, no." But I wasn’t claiming linearity, only directionality. But for what it is worth, I do believe that statistical thermodynamics is a directional _AND_ linear theory.
Anon
Sorry for being away so long. I know you all missed me so much. I continue to question whether this s really ethics. So, would Bentham really be proud? Is a concept like "rights" a "hard solution"–nonsense on stilts–to be avoided? Is a principle like, "humans should never initiate the use of physical violence against another human being," too rigid? Can alpha’s advice be articulated in principles at all–"fatherly" or not?
Yes, Bill, generally pro-man, pro-life–perhaps the physics behind all that I call teleology–but is it ethics?
Anon,
At this point we’re just speaking past each other.
I disagree. I think it takes a while to integrate all of the pieces.
And I assume that once you’ve judged a movie appropriately, no actual dialogue with another person can _convince_ you of anything else.
Any physical process has physical consequences for any given Eustace. One consequence is the direct physical interaction. The second is the cascade effect it initiates.
We interpret this as the experience and our interpretation and response to the experience. Both are contingent on the state of Eustace when the process occurred. A pat on the back or a series of sounds (music) are both physical processes. Each depends on context or the state of the receiver.
An encrypted message will have a different effect on a receiver that possesses the means to decode it.
Consider what you’re saying–you give me a review (a variable check list?) of positive qualities for a movie. I should simply accept your judgement because this list of criteria has been satisfied? Or that it has done well at the box office?
So, yes, Anon, you can try to persuade me that a movie was good but you can’t change how it affected me. You can’t take the receiver out of the equation and substitute him with yourself.
You can, however, help me decode things better. Armed with your argument, I can review (or watch) the movie again and look for the things that I missed the first time. This may allow me to see things differently and experience it in a more enriching way.
The universe certainly is getting colder. All the time.
Humans have only existed for ca. 7 million years. Culture for only 10,000 years. We’ll all be dead in ca. 100 years. The scale you’re talking about has no impact on our affairs. We’re considering all that stuff that happens in between.
I simply wanted to point out that we have very good ways to find ones that might hit us and estimate if they will hit us.
Exactly, Anon, might and estimate.
Mr. Valliant,
What would you like to call it?
Jim,
It ain’t ethics because it assumes what is good and works from there. Ethics examines what is good. But the more I think about it, Bourbaki, more I think it would make interesting history. You could reconfigure history as a quest for free energy. Not so far from Jared Diamond, is it?
Mr. Kaplan,
It’s not far from a lot of scholarship. Alpha theory doesn’t radically overthrow what we already know–it brings things into better focus.
You’re right about Diamond. Diamond illustrates what happens when the quest is focused on free energy instead of alpha.
But then again, so do these guys–the notion of fluxes also makes sense in psychology and anthropology or, basically, any field where we try to make sense of events and information.
Anon,
Have you wondered why a haiku or line drawing can be just as moving as an epic poem or a lush oil painting?
Or why ‘simple’ or ‘pop’ art and music is more widely accepted than rich, demanding work? Did the Austrians have a greater appreciation for the opera house because they were better patrons or because they were more homogeneous?
Consider this in alpha terms.
Numerator: reinforced ideas, new associations and new ideas
Denominator: effort spent to process information
What happens if I don’t possess the ideas that the art is attempting to stimulate? What happens when I spend hours working through thousands of lines of poetry without the cultural or historical background to make sense of the material?
That epic poem is still an information-rich signal but I simply may not have the ability to decode it. Now let’s consider a more democratic and free collection of ideas.
From the guy who was onto the number thing before anyone: One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. Its just an awful lot of ‘us’.
Is art getting worse or are you increasingly unable to decode increasingly diverse signals?
How can you tell? Perhaps by exchanging more ideas to better understand these kids and their crazy rock and roll music?
RIGHTS. Maybe if I just keep repeating myself…?
Mr. Valliant,
Forgive me, I’m a bit slow.
You’re saying the following?
"alpha theory is a form of rights."
Don’t rights need to be granted? Who is granting us these rights?
Cash Value Corner
What little rigor we had in the posts was not particularly well received. So let’s agree to do a little hand waving to see what we can get out of this theory.
Way back when we talked about the notion of time. We said that energy flux is required. Time is the causal interleaving (before, after) of these fluxes. Although we don’t re-order the fluxes, sometimes time seems to move at different rates. Why?
Let a*_you = your alpha-star
Let a*_clock = clock alpha-star
We know there is some relationship (I will refrain from equal signs) with the signal generated by the clock and how you process it:
a*_you ::: a*_clock
Now reduce your alpha by sitting in a doctor’s office, consuming waking energy, without anything to do:
(1/x)a*_you ::: a*_clock
where x > 1.
But wait, you can only see things from your own perspective.
a*_you ::: (x)a*_clock
Time seems to stretch out. But events are still ordered in the same way.
Now try the reverse. You work on a crossword puzzle or read National Geographic and learn something cool. You perceive your alpha to be increasing.
(x)(a*_you) ::: a*_clock
again, where x > 1.
From your own perspective, you get
a*_you ::: (1/x)a*_clock
In other words, time flies. Well, maybe it never "flies" in a doctor’s waiting room but you get the idea.
And so our perception of time is nothing more than the ratio between alpha processes.
x ::: (a*_you / a*_clock)
We’ll save the consequences for speed of light travel and inertial frames for another time.
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT’S relativity."
–Albert Einstein
So what will alpha say about important matters? The lack of any universal strong solutions gives us a great deal of freedom but does not relieve us from thermodynamic consequences, both foreseen and unforeseen.
Here are some implications for legislation. Laws are vital to any society but laws can not continually adapt to a filtration. They can only be revised intermittently and must be followed 24/7 and 365 days per year unless there are explicitly enumerated exceptions:
Death penalty? No. And most "developed" nations have already abandoned it.
Abortion? Yes. The state can’t coerce anyone to jeopardize her own safety for the benefit of another. This decision is best handled by the individual who is putting herself at risk. Ironically (and thankfully), this alpha theory explanation doesn’t even need to include notions about when life begins.
Same sex relationships? Yes. Just because reproduction is a very important strong solution doesn’t mean that we should only pursue means that lead to it and prohibit all others. Thanks to birth control, sex no longer necessarily results in reproduction. And thanks to fertility therapies, sex is no longer necessary for reproduction. The filtration has changed.
Genetic engineering? It depends. Are we repairing damage or reducing the diversity of our gene pool based on what is appealing to us today?
More to come. Much like Anon, we all have other matters to attend to…
Bourbaki,
No, I was perfectly clear: I am asking what alpha says about the concept of "rights." Is it a "hard solution" to be avoided? Is it sheer "nonsense," as Bentham said, or, perhaps, "theology," as Aaron might say?
I think you’ve answered, in part: no, rights do not have to be "granted" by anyone. They are not capable of being alienated from me at all, as the Declaration asserts. They can, of course, be violated. I’m with Locke and Jefferson, here, they are aspects of reality in relation to human beings by their very nature.
This is a testament to what I owe to this site. Thank you all. Here, if you feel inclined, I have read every comment and post, and decided to bring it all together in my mind in the hopes that this will benefit everyone. This is long, and I am sorry for that.
Alpha says that all things are commensurble. It says that every energy based system EVER and always, so long as thermodynamics stand, is connected.
The alpha scale is a thermodynamic model of consequential action, determined by an application of measurement to consequential energy fluxes.
Let me ask you this. Since you are convinced of the idea enough to actually write it, how has it affected you? What has changed for you since you understood this stuff? What have you done differently now? What have you thought that you never would have thought? What do you see in the worldly interactions of our species, in all species, that might make you happier or better off or your family or friends or other people better off because you understand this theory?
Bourbaki, same question, keeping in mind that I now fully support the formula. I am now curious, because I don’t see how it changes me, or don’t feel it. Knowing the path doesn’t mean you will follow it, knowing the way doesn’t mean it is TO BE FOLLOWED. What might SEEM like a choice could conceivably be nothing more than a self replicating (self perpetuating) system of referential equations (in reference to: UNIVERSE) in our brain processing maximal alpha, well perhaps for me. I mean, knowing this to be the case, because we believe according to all evidentiary support frrom ribonucleic acid to the history of human understanding to our knowledge on thermodynamics to everything, but now that I have learned all this stuff and read all this stuff, I still see all of us commentators to be almost obsessively confined to our forged-in-the-fires-of-debate and/or I-chose-to-sense-evidence, of drastic (massive) manifestations of our own individual consciousness.
Bourbaki always talks about his tons of flaws and mistakes because he is full of them. He admits it. Has his understanding of this new philosophy changed that? He might be a casual interlocutor bandying about his intellectual missives in the simplicity of a cafe, only just because really, there was nothing better to do, but that is bullshit, because if you understand this stuff and see worth in it you need to say what you are saying and take pride in it. So good for him. Bill, you are good at math. What are you looking for in life? The ethical answer? If it isn’t here, find one, come back and demonstrate how it is better than a maximal alpha. If you don’t understand it because it isn’t true, please show me what you think is, this is the forum for it right? Aaron won’t mind.
Guess what Im saying is, make this personal. Not personal as in a specific PATH to follow. But personal as in listen to yourself.
All energy interacts. There is a dimensionless standard that measures this interaction.
OK. Aaron wrote this because he wants to do away with the religion and the almost religious devotion that the nonreligious have for systems of conduct and codes of behavior. To the huddled masses, keep yearning, etc.
Look, Christians will still think Jesus did it. Volition and intention masochists will still refute the contention that a measurement of energy transference is an ethical system. Bourbaki will assume that he should ask Jim to chill out over a cold beer. All things stand as they are.
Now, this system does away with the codes of ethics and religion in many respects, when considered to its fullest sense of application. It does not apply to HUMANS and everything else, it applies to everything. So long as thermodynamic evidence stands, this does.
But if it took me forever to see your point, even after I understood your formulas, and I was open minded, this will not work for most people. You know this. But like in Ishmael, start small, see where it goes right. But I got to be honest, even though this sounds silly, you were preaching to the converted. I never bought into most of the shit that this theory refutes before I read it.
Which brings me back to my point. Bill will disagree with something he doesnt understand because he knows you cant prove it to someone who doesnt want to know. And Jim will in many instances of definition still be correct in asserting this is not ethics, but a tremendous lack of it. THIS IS A SYSTEM THAT MEASURES EVERY FUCKING THING. It’s HUGE. Ethics are small and relative to the conduct of mere humans.
But fuck ethics. Because there are no strong solutions. There is no way I can use my knowledge of alpha maximization to make Jim happy and live forever. Stopping for a second: GOAL = to LIVE. This would require a permanent strong solution. Cant happen. We all die. This theory isnt going to tell you how to live into the future, its only going to tell you how you go about living into your future. Its not going to tell you what you SHOULD DO. It’s going to say this is what happened in terms of alpha. It wont even say this is what is GOING TO HAPPEN, in terms of alpha, only that alpha will be vital to all that happens.
And since this theory measures the entire process of everything, it measures the entire process of man. It does not say man is not consciously doing something, it says that mans consciousness is somehow making choices that maximize alpha, or else it wouldnt be conscious anymore. It would be dead. But it does not do so in specific, but rather in abundance. So stop, drop, and roll around, and while doing so try to consider all those ethical questions bill Kaplan raised.
This theory wont be telling you what to do with them. Rather, it tells you what is happening in concrete terms under which all life and happening, especially in reference to humans, but especially in reference to everything else, so that you can see the big picture, literally the biggest picture, and go from there.
It tells you what you are doing when you make a decision, so you can now put things into a concrete sense if you so feel inclined. It does not suggest that you do so. It simply allows you to.
It does not say it is best that you do so. It simply shows you what would be happening when anything happens, including what would happen when you personally decide for yourself what is best. IT CONNECTS everything to everything else without all the lame abstractions about physicality and actuality. Therefore, this theory is of the greatest assistance to real ethics, which need only be measured by (and in ways against) the advancement of all coexistence.
So alpha hasnt told me how to make Jim happy, or Bill lose weight, or what to think of Bourbaki sitting in his little caf smoking Buddha listing to Govt Mule. Or am I wrong in thinking it’s that kind of caf?
Anyway, sorry for going on so long, but stop projecting your goals for a perfect IDEA system that tells what actions are best (in a preordained manner) and start looking at what the system actually does. It is a new way of seeing the interconnection of all things. It unites us under the banner of heaven, to be gay and borrow from Krakauer for a moment.
Oops, one more thing. Stop asking for examples, that is missing the point. I think people here tried to give too many examples. The formula is simple.
Alpha measures energy transference, which is a verifiable algebra of actual events. No one disagrees with thermodynamics right? Then no one disagrees with what alpha does. You all might THINK he is saying it does, or all you are actually WANTING it to do, it doesn’t. Sorry.
All it does do is show how we are truly linked with our universe in a powerful, real way, and not some disembodied hodgepodge of cadence and insecurity and soon to be erased from time and memory ghostlike presence, we are real, we are here, just like everything.
IT CONNECTS everything to everything else without all the lame abstractions about physicality and actuality.
Therefore, this theory is of the greatest assistance to real ethics, which need only be measured by (and in ways against) the advancement of all coexistence.
(society is where humans live, and continue to try to live together in perpetuity. this is the point of it, ala, coexistance)
So alpha hasnt told me how to make Jim happy, or Bill lose weight, or what to think of Bourbaki sitting in his little caf smoking Buddha listing to Govt Mule.
all it does is peel back the think skin covering everything and reveals the furnace under the surface that teems with gazillions of little energy fluxs. it gives you the guts and innards of the universe, of which we are all a part. it is a system that functions in evidence of all things. it is a cosmological constant or sorts. LOL. im done, curious to see what people think of my ramblings. Aaron, am i far off?
And so our perception of time is nothing more than the ratio between alpha processes.
ghaa, isn’t the perception of everything(anything) nothing more than a ratio between alpha processes?
Prague – A 32-year-old Czech tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat with a chain saw but survived after the machine missed his jugular artery and got stuck in his spine, a report said on Wednesday.
Alpha does not preclude "hard solutions" under specified contexts, right? There are contexts where I am dealing with much greater certainty than merely the random. When the truck is speeding straight for me at 100 mph, unless my life itself is worth surrendering at that point, getting out of the way is the only and very "hard solution," right?
no.
the guy cut his neck with a fucking chain saw.
and i think you are still looking for the wrong type of answers from alpha.
I am looking for what was claimed: an ethics. And, the chain-saw, as fascinating as it was, did not bear on my comments.
I already have good reasons for being honest. None are so ambitious as alpha. All involve the pursuit of my well-being. Many are "hard" solutions, values to be sought until and unless something more important to my well-being, a higher value, is involved. Thus, with my total well-being at the top, a hierarchy of relative values can be established, from food to reason itself. This hierarchy of selfishness tells me why it’s always wrong/self-defeating to tell a lie to get someone’s money out of his pocket and into mine (hard as a rock), and why it’s o.k./life-enhancing to lie to the Nazis demanding to know where I am hiding my Jewish friends. Ethics is always a "soft" solution in that it provides only conditional demands: IF you want X, then you must do (or avoid) Y. Such conditional advice is consequentialist, choice-guidance. This is not my objection to alpha at all. I need a working technology of choice. And, my mind remains open…