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.)
Bourbaki,
The inner torment over your unresolved problems is that bad, huh? Just calm down. You’ll "probably" survive.
No, logic is logic and anger is anger, (that was fair) but, yes, anger will help you out sometimes. Or, are emotions now useless, too. Geez, and I thought we were now simply wallowing in aspects of a consciousness that doesn’t really exist!
But just exactly WHY are rights "necessary"? To whom and for what? Don’t you know that "probability doesn’t work that way"?
And, oh, yes, Authority determines what Objectivism says, i.e., what Rand said, and how could any of those fine folks be wrong, anyway? How could I have been so dense as to stick to the author of a philosophy rather than her hostile critics? But, dude, why keep at Rand like some O-C Howard Hughes rather than confront the unsolved issue on the table? (We were talking aboput alpha and its problem before you changed the subject for no apparent reason.)
Psychiatric help is recommended, but your problems are just mounting. I suggest sticking to alpha rtaher than take on more issues you won’t be able to resolve.
Bourbaki,
You’re on fire!
Cardozo, good one.
Again F@t-1
Mr. Valliant,
There are always consequences.
First, when someone chooses one behavior, one does so at the exclusion of other behaviors.
And remember, theft and sexual assault are illegal, and that in and of itself makes likely those acts are alphadystropic.
And yes, the case of theft of the timer is a good example of when ethical behavior is sometimes illegal (see above).
"Rights" are necessary because they are alphatropic. We define them, implement them, and enforce them because so.
The nations where the rights of its citizens are upheld are the most prosperous, most free, with the best health care, longest longevities, etc. All seemingly alphatropic.
Natan Sharanksy makes this claim cogently, in http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1586482610/qid=1106942495/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-6724299-9085707?v=glance&s=books&n=507846"The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror.
Mr. Valliant,
Will you consider updating your understanding of science while I go attend to my inner torment? Mental health is very important.
You see, randomness in mathematics sounds impossible. If anything, mathematics is where there is least randomness, where there is most certainty and order and pattern and structure in ideas. Well, if you go back to Boltzmann’s work, Boltzmann also put together two concepts which seem contradictory and invented an important new field, statistical mechanics.
I remember as a student reading those two words “statistical mechanics,” and thinking how is it possible—aren’t these contradictory notions? Something mechanical is like a machine, predictable. What does statistics have to do with mechanics? These seem to be two widely separate ideas. Of course it took great intellectual courage on Boltzmann’s part to apply statistical methods in mechanics, which he did with enormous success.
Statistical mechanics now is a fundamental part of physics. One forgets how controversial Boltzmann’s ideas were when they were first proposed, and how courageous and imaginative he was. Boltzmann’s work in many ways is closely connected to my work and to Gdel’s work, which may be a little surprising.
I’m trying to understand Gdel’s great incompleteness theorem, I’m obsessed with that. I believe that the full meaning of Gdel’s result can be obtained by taking Boltzmann’s ideas and applying them to mathematics and to mathematical logic. In other words, I propose a thermodynamical approach, a statistical-mechanics approach, to understanding the foundations of mathematics, to understanding the limitations and possibilities of mathematical reasoning.
Gregory J. Chaitin, IBM Research Division, New York (1991)
MeTooThen,
Even if proven wrong, alpha theory does make learning a lot more interesting (at least for me). Mr. Kaplan saw application in law and history. I see them in biology, computer science and economics.
It’s been a good motivator to study new fields. I don’t think I would have ever read Marvin Harris without it. There’s a much better chance that I will actually get through all of Kandel. Darnell, Lodish and Baltimore took me a year in graduate school. There was no concept of any unifying principles–just common features in living cells.
And it brings attention to outmoded ideas in science that continue to serve as straw men.
It seems to deliver on E.O. Wilson’s Consilience.
Bourbaki,
Objectivsim isn’t your forte, so, without mentioning it or Rand, please just attempt the answer what we both know is impossible to answer under alpha.
This will be, mercifully for you, my last shot at getting you to actually respond, rather than evade–AGAIN.
"One or two thefts are o.k., so long as we ‘use our brains’ and the odds are really good for success." How does alpha respond?
MeeTooThen,
Yes, and the "consequences" of having ten million buck are really clear to me. When the chances of getting caught are near nil, it does sound tempting under alpha to steal. Rights should takes a back seat here, just as they do when my neighbor has a nuke. Outside of getting caught, I don’t see what my problem with "others" is. Having learned to avoid religious ethics, from alpha, trust me, there will be no guilt involved. (primitive thing, really.) And, indeed, the opportunity cost of NOT stealing seems highly alphadytrophic itself.
And, are you actually saying what you seem to be saying: outside of a legal structure, what we call "criminal activity" is more likely to be moral, i.e., it is less alphadystrophic (if at all)??
This is more wretched than the crudest form of pragmatism. Qua ethics, that is.
What a mess!
Too All and Sundry,
I am increasingly concerned about the appearance of strong universal solutions on this thread, folks. Historically fortuitous "necessities," and contextual absolutes, appearing here, there, everywhere… Please stop it.
Aaron,
Do you support the concept of "rights" articulated above. It’s good for a few laughs, but, seriously…??
Mr. Valliant,
Objectivsim isn’t your forte
A pity. I wasted all those years learning all this other crap.
No one seems to understand it. Anyone who challenges it is "excommunicated". I don’t know what Objectivism could be a "forte" for. It’s an ideology. It’s a insular caricature of the world. Challenging an idea in math or science doesn’t open the door for mystics or justify anger. Although some scientists are prone to fits.
It’s the scientific method that matters. It’s about how well the evidence fits the model and how much can be explained with the fewest assumptions. Science is constantly challenging itself. Ideologies, instead, rely on sophistry to disregard new and potentially contradictory information.
But I’m getting the impression by the lack of diverse citations and references that you don’t challenge your assumptions much.
"One or two thefts are o.k., so long as we ‘use our brains’ and the odds are really good for success." How does alpha respond?
Are you including stealing someone’s heart?
Up to seventeen thefts are fine (no more, no less) so long as the outcome is alphatropic for the systems involved. In the prior example, if there were six timers or twelve, you can steal the lot of them. But you can’t just "decide" that the outcomes are alphatropic because they seem that way through "instrospection". You have to provide evidence.
You’re falling prey to a selective sample bias: "I’ve seen criminals get away with a crime". You’re not considering all the criminals that failed. A life of crime is a very messy business.
This is the same fallacy that makes the Lottery so appealing.
You can’t assume a plan will work out well anymore than you can assume that your hand in poker or your investment strategy will succeed. Las Vegas makes a great deal of money on our inability to internalize that notion. In fact, so does Wall Street.
I ordered 13 books on amazon.com by Fermi Waldrop and continuing on into books published just recently in January 2005 on thermodynamics and the big bang and on evolution.
I am going to order a book on recent information theory. Until they come, I’m backing off. But they are coming. As such, as it now stands I am being lazy but with a deadline. Remember, I ain’t rich like you guys, I can’t afford overnight shipping.
As for Rand and Objectivism: it seems like Rand follows a lot of the ideas that phenomenologists use as basic fundamentals and tactics. I suggest a thorough purusal of Derrida for anyone interested in a healthy debate againt dualism or objectivism and the bias of presence and absence, as well as the undecidability of decision (actually a fundamental of alpha theory) and many many many other fields like architecture (Ayn’s cup of tea in the Fountainhead, my favorite book when I was fifteen: I read it in a day and a half) as well as literary theory and criticism. Jim lets hit the books together. Tell me which books on Rand and Derrida you are gonna read and I’ll do the same. I got nothing but time.
Bourbaki. I have supported myself through illegal action since I was fifteen on until I turned 20. If you are interested in how crime does and does not pay, I am a good person to ask.
Criminals succeed far more than they fail. "No one gets caught their first time breaking the law," this is almost a rule. And always will. Speed limits are not a suggestion by the way. Most crime is something that one of us does to ourselves, or something that we commit by overlooking what one of our acquanitances (however personal) are doing to themselves.
Obviously, at one time it was illegal to teach a black person to read.
The damage of a life of crime comes in much the same way as what occurs to a buisnessman when he gets overly concerned with his boards bottom line and, while making record profits each year, is firing more and more people. Humans lose their alpha apparent worth, and become an idea as flimsy and objective as machines in a factory or compartmental means to an end. In both sales and drug dealing, we are in the buisness of selling dreams and logically unsupportable wants. In America we are raised to want unrealistic things because we are raised to THINK WE NEED THEM. We have such a confused sense of what is neccessary.
This sense plays itself out in drug use and vapid consumerism. It also serves the trickle down effect of influencing others because, I believe, man is by nature a suggestible animal, as I said earlier.
And, actually, a life of crime (where life of means to support oneself through) is a very messy buisness as you said.
But as it stands, even when we "get away with" the crime it does not mean that it was maximizing our alpha star. In the examples above, speeding may increase the chance of a Poisson accident where another car randomly swerves or cuts you off, smoking weed four times a week can marginalize interest and sap short term memory, etc. The benefit of getting ten million dollars in alpha terms doesn’t mean your life is actually better now. I know many very rich people, and most of them are alcoholics or people that bought drugs from me. In my experience, their kids are far far more fucked up than them. That ten million might very well be delivering your kids right into the hands of someone like myself in days of yore. Then imagine all the shit that pops up because you got a junkie for a son. Most poor people have to get crafty and smarter to support their habits, but, rich kids stay consistenly as stupid or far more and usually more sheltered.
This is not a universal rule, obviously, this is simply my experience with probability. Good day all, see you tomorrow.
Bourbaki,
I don’t like to cite to anybody. I like plain talk. I trust only clarity. I was dragged to the subject of Ayn Rand kicking and screaming, and (as any observer of these threads knows) against my will. Now I am subjected to a barrage of attacks on Rand, someone I admire, that have nothing to do with alpha, and maybe even nothing to do with what I am saying in the thread! Forgive me, but it does seem unnecessary and really rude.
If you value this discussion at all you will please stop it. I am not thin-skinned, just impatient with meaningless tangents.
Alpha does justify some risk-taking, no? In a sense, many of our decisions are a "lottery." Please demonstrate that the House is rigged to win if my theft is a singular event, and one under such controlled circumstances that, like many thefts, it very likely that I will succeed.
All of your justifications have so far amounted to, "it is generally not a good idea," or "don’t make a habit of it," or "gee, if everyone did it, the economy would collapse." All are inadequate for obvious, shall we say "universal and strong," reasons.
For example, would you say that my personal F can never justify my sky-diving? (Where death is the down-side.) My personal F can never justify GOING to Vegas?
Now you can actually show me, using just alpha, that there are never any circumstances, though perhaps very refined sets of circumstances, under which theft is not the alphatropic thing to do? I don’t care for appeals to the interests of other "inputs" except as they affect MY downside.
Please do so.
"Don’t just copy and past passages and type "Huh?" afterwards. You’ve already shown that you’re too sharp for that. Quit being so lazy. Hit the books."
I didn’t just copy and paste and type huh. I typed "What does that mean? Third order. Huh. And before that I asked a lot of questions and posited one pretty interesting idea. Anyone want to take a stab at them?
Jim:
"Please demonstrate that the House is rigged to win if my theft is a singular event,"
Please demonstrate how you are rigged to win by getting that money. That is all simplistic and reductionist, something that this theory is trying to curtail in other theories. It is a nonreductionist contention on emergent behavior concepts.
Bourbaki,
The neighbors with the nukes only highlights the issue for alpha, no? If the blast justifies it, why not all the good alpha-use I can put the money to. Let’s say, much better than those religious victims who are my targets.
Tommy,
No one pursing money as just one of their aims is being alphatropic, then?
Bourbaki,
You could just take the bull by the horns and say that under certain circumstances, theft is moral, that the alphatropism of certain well-planned thefts depends upon your personal F and leave it there. Otherwise, this is the same sticky wicket we still can’t seem to get an answer to… but just the latest.
[Can’t stop myself: The more I consider your assertion that it is I who rarely "challenges his own beliefs," the more convinced I am of your complete blindness to irony.]
So much heat, so little light. I feel like the headmaster only stepping in to chide the boys here, but I feel like I have to do this again.
Bill: I like your assessment of what alpha is definitely good for, even if it’s not ethics, and I’m inclined to agree. Like you, I’m skeptical of the ability to get useful measurements out of this. But as Aaron has said (I think), if there’s one thing humans are good at it’s solving engineering problems. That’s what alpha presents us with. Impossible now? Sure. Impossible later? I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
Bourbaki: stop the jabs at Rand and just answer Jim straightforwardly. I agree with you substantively, but this line of argument is one big bloody distraction. You get better results with direct responses in plain language than a whole lot of clever verbal fireworks.
Jim: I understand your annoyance but I also can’t help but feel it’s causing you to miss some of the points being made. For one thing (as has been pointed out already) your many-times-reprised theft example makes some rather remarkable assumptions that don’t map well onto reality. How can the theif be totally sure that no-one would ever be able to get evidence on him? How can the rapist be sure the woman won’t wake up in the middle of his act, or find his, ahem, DNA on her and go to the police? These are generally absurd assumptions; you may as well be playing roulette with your life. Sure, crooks can get away with it, but it’s a damn huge gamble. There is no such thing as the perfect crime in our society.
But now that I’ve said all of that, I think I have a more provocative hypothetical. What about someone living in an area where there is no "law" as we understand it? We’re in Sudan. Forget legal repercussions, it’s not gonna happen here. I can rape and murder and pillage at will, and these poor villagers aren’t armed well enough to ever have a hope of stopping me and my band. I stand to gain from this by killing them and taking their land and women. Is this not alphatropic in these circumstances? Bourbaki? Aaron?
I dunno. I am ironic. I don’t get your irony. I get my irony. Ironic.
"Please demonstrate that the House is rigged to win if my theft is a singular event, and one under such controlled circumstances that, like many thefts, it very likely that I will succeed."
Please demonstrate how you getting that money implicitly lowers E. Otherwise, I don’t care if it can lower E. If it can (if it is possible) well, I don’t care. Lots of things are possible. Remember: you are formulating Gaussian non-anticipatory strategies as well as trying to generate threshold awareness to contain the devastation of Poisson randomness. Under this context demonstrate how your question has any relevance at all, i.e., how it is demonstrative of lowering epsilon. Then, because you just showed how it was, you will clearly be able to see where it is not, because there are no universal strong solutions, and therefore this strategy both will and will not lower E to any degree based on the variables applied to it, i.e., the more variables you add or assume or not in place, the more you are looking at a pretty little intellectual model that conforms in no way to reality.
What I am saying is: all your ideas are just conceptual simulators you run through like some benefit cost effective ratio or like some checklist of proper "this much moral but this much benefit to me" type scenario.
Its all ludicrous. A specific theoretic example does not work. Tell me something you have already done, and tell me what happened, and tell me the circumstances, then we can MAYBE determine the alpha. Maybe.
"What we are now only discovering, Kauffman says, is that range of spontaneous order is enormously greater than we had supposed and, in fact, self-organization is a great undiscovered principle of nature. He contends that complexity itself triggers self-organization–what Kauffman calls "order for free"–and that if enough different molecules pass a certain threshold of complexity, they begin to self-organize into a new entity: a living cell. There is a phase transition when water abruptly turns to ice. Likewise, life may have originated when the mix of different molecules in the primordial soup passed a certain level of complexity and re-grouped into living entities"
See the word Threshold?
Matt,
I grant you that theft usually–almost always–doesn’t "map well" for the thief. My point is about "strong solutions." Alpha cannot say that stealing as such is immoral.
Matt,
And stealing for profit without the need of saving the neighborhood.
"But now that I’ve said all of that, I think I have a more provocative hypothetical. What about someone living in an area where there is no "law" as we understand it? We’re in Sudan. Forget legal repercussions, it’s not gonna happen here. I can rape and murder and pillage at will, and these poor villagers aren’t armed well enough to ever have a hope of stopping me and my band. I stand to gain from this by killing them and taking their land and women. Is this not alphatropic in these circumstances? Bourbaki? Aaron?"
If you are smart enough to come up with the hypothetical, carry it out. No one can carry out a hypothetical for you, because there is no threshold on which we can say THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING, this is what has happened, this is what the people involved will do, this is how the land will respond. You can’t pose any hypothetical for alpha like this. Show how it lowers E. When you do, you will see instances where it would not. Everything must be taken as a whole, not as a conceptually isolated or as a specifically relative consequence in favor of *variable person number* here. It don’t work that way.
Jim, your example is weak and wrong. Whether I am an ethical Communitarian *the importance of COMMUNITY is stressed where all individual ethics are derivative* or Individualist *society must be subservient to the goals and ambitions of autonomous individuals*, neither of these will say that stealing is ALWAYS ethically wrong. And neither will alpha.
Tommy – Nevermind, after I hit the post button I realized that I was thinking about this the wrong way.
Jim – You’re right, it can’t. If that’s what you’re looking for, you should have listened to Bill and stopped 50 posts up. Everything depends on F and the surrounding environment. As such, no act in itself can be called wrong in alpha terms. No universal strong solutions, etc.
You wouldn’t call Darwinian natural selection a "moral" process, and evolution is just a subset of alpha; morality as you concieve of it is an advanced alpha strategy for organisms who have come far enough along to be able to rise above the Hobbesian state of nature. I managed to forget that for a moment when that hypothetical popped into my head. Personally I’m already a moral subjectivist (of sorts), so this is nothing horribly shocking to me.
On with the show.
Tommy,
That’s a lot of books. Although there’s no better investment. I’m looking forward to your take on Complexity. I think it’s a very good non-technical introduction to the field. If you enjoy it, I can recommend other books for you. If you don’t, please don’t hesitate to point it out.
By spontaneous order, or order for free, I mean this penchant that complex systems have for exhibiting convergent rather than divergent flow, so that they show an inherent homeostasis, and then, too, the possibility that natural selection can mold the structure of systems so that they’re poised between these two flows, poised between order and chaos. It’s precisely systems of this kind that will provide us with a macroscopic law that defines ecosystems, and I suspect it may define economic systems as well.
Kauffman’s theories are on the same arc but without the potential benefit of alpha as a physically defined quantity.
Mr. Valliant,
Kicking and screaming is a tough way to learn anything. You appear to be wedded to a particular philosophy and the crux of your arguments appear to flow from that framework. I don’t see any problem with calling bullshit on any ideas or the origins of those ideas (yours or mine). A self-cultivated somber tone gives philosophy and religion too much cover. I don’t buy it.
There is plenty of "plain talk" in books. Hopefully, Tommy will share his opinions on the books he’s reading and pass on recommendations for the good ones. If he thinks any of my recommendation are crap, he should not hesitate saying so.
This blog is a great place to discuss and challenge ideas but not the best place to learn them. Mr. Haspel has laid out an excellent series of posts covering a lot of diverse and technical material. That’s not enough if you haven’t seen it before–you need to follow up with books and in-person discussions with people who know the material.
Probability is difficult to teach to an impartial, motivated student. (e.g. ask someone the Monty Hall problem and ask them to provide an explanation.) It’s impossible to teach to someone who already seeks a particular answer because a distribution will always allow for it.
Mr. McIntosh,
It looks like you’ve got it. Legislative laws can be alphatropic. In Sudan, or any other place in the Universe, the laws of physics don’t change. Organisms that survive have adopted strategies (morphological, behavioral, social) to preserve alpha.
I’ve mentioned Marvin Harris before. He’s a prominent anthropologist that studied the origins of culture by examining how they adapt to the specific carrying capacity of their environment. I’m sure his name will come up again. He’s also very plain spoken.
On Earth, you can model each day as a Bernoulli trial. Now consider what happens if you add a slight bias for extinction to the cell, organism, group or ecosystem.
Life depends on homeostasis. However, there is no homeostatic upper limit (other than available free energy) for alpha in a living system. More alpha is always better. Less alpha is always worse.
Individual agents tend to adapt much better to local conditions than centrally controlled groups. It’s an information problem. But information doesn’t always flow that way. For example, consider an organized evacuation from a pending natural disaster compared to a free-for-all. The information problem is inverted. There are exceptions to every rule. But some rules may have exceedingly few exceptions in our normal daily lives.
Heisenberg cleanup
Care is necessary since versions of this equation using Planck’s constant h instead of h-bar, omitting the factor of 2 (Cassidy 1991, p. 234), or both (Pais 1991, p. 305) are commonly found in the literature. Heisenberg’s original paper does not attempt to rigorously determine the exact quantity on the right side of the inequality, but rather uses physical argument to show that the uncertainty between conjugate quantum mechanical variables is approximately h (Heisenberg 1927, p. 175, eqn. 1).
Bourbaki,
Then it is clear that there is no answer to a simple, clearly put problem, that required no Objectivist premises or beliefs to grasp.
Too bad for alpha’s defenders.
The problem that I have posed is not one unique to Objectivist critics or readers. But it does seem to be a problem for which neither you nor Aaron have an answer.
I have "challenged my own beliefs," as you put it, by coming here and trying to understand, as honestly as I could, this theory. I have learned a great deal in the process. Whether you believe me or not, my opinions are based on my honest assessment of the evidence using logic as best as I can. I reject the opinions of any authority which I find unsound. Since it is plain to anyone actually familiar with Rand’s work, that you don’t have the first clue what it actually says, you are hardly in a position to determine whether or not my responses or the problems I have presented are even coming from that perspective or not. Your attack on ME as opposed to the simple problem that I posed is an age-old technique of evasion. It is most unscientific, but it is all too common among scientists themselves. Unfortunately, it is your only way of dealing with such problems. I wish you well in all of your future endeavors, but the rancid insults are not worth it to me anymore.
A good shrink is advised.
Recess is over. Let’s back up a few steps, take a careful look at what the theory says, and then return to the problem of the happy criminal, which turns out to be no problem at all. The first thing to understand is that there is no "moral" and "immoral," no good and no evil. There is only more or less optimal. Jim, for all of his perfectly valid objections to dualism, falls into the bear-pit time and again. (His earlier distinction between "observation" and "inference" is one such case — the scientific fact is that our "observation" is mostly "inference." His insistence on natural rights is yet another. This is what happens to people who try to spin models of the world out of their heads.)
"Alphatropic" and "alphadystropic" have frequently been used on this thread as synonyms for "good" and "evil." They are not. Sometimes simply minimizing alphadystropy, as in cases of acute pain or illness, is the best of the available alternatives. No boundary line divides good from evil. I repeat myself, like others on this thread, but apparently saying something once, or twice, or four times does not suffice.
Now it should be obvious that theft, generally, and in Jim’s hypo, is a suboptimal strategy, for reasons beyond the likelihood of being caught. Jim acknowledges this fact himself sometimes, although at other times he appears to retract that. The error, again, is in disregarding the boundaries of the system. You are an open system whose boundaries do not end at your skin. Theft disrupts the stability of the system in which the thief must function, very much in the way that cancer cells kill their host, and thus, eventually, themselves. That the world financial system can withstand the disruption, in the individual case, is beside the point. Damage is damage, regardless of the scale. The homily about hurting yourself when you hurt others turns out, according to alpha theory, to be true.
One can probably devise certain absolute proscriptions (though never imperatives, except "pursue alpha") that conform to alpha theory. You have to figure that genocide, say, is never going to be an optimal strategy. Theft happens not to be such a case, but the exceptions are so rare as to amount to an engineering zero. Laws against theft are not only fine, they’re warranted. "Don’t steal" is a useful heuristic. If everyone followed it the world would be a better place. But useful heuristics are not Biblical injunctions, and to understand alpha theory you must understand the difference.
Why Jim considers his hypo devastating to alpha theory eludes me; I will let him speak for himself:
"Alpha gives the prospective thief no good reason not to steal, ‘just this once,’ or not one that I can yet detect. Why on earth should he even care about abstract or collective alpha implications when the money would so improve his life and, all other things being equal, this one act won’t destroy the world? So, give it a whirl. If you think I will be tough to persuade, just imagine trying to persuade the average Joe, your real challenge. That is, if this is ethics."
It’s true, it’s true! Someone bent on stealing millions won’t be dissuaded by a lecture on probability and thermodynamics. Alpha doesn’t preach as well as man the hero or man the apple of God’s eye. But I thought we were discussing the truth of the theory here, not its effectiveness as an instrument for social control.
One last word about alpha and ethics. Alpha theory defines "the good." It quantifies it. It gives people useful advice on how to pursue it. It explains why people fail to pursue it. What has "ethics" got left to do?
Aaron,
So while alpha does not–and cannot–ever advise you to steal–in many contexts it actively advises against it–there is no way to call it wrong as such from the standpoint of the ethics of alpha.
This sounds like it’s been spun out of someone’s head–someone’s unstated metaphysical premises–rather than observation. I assure you that all of my beliefs are "empirically based." Insults do not become you any more than Bourbaki, Hatch. Play with words all you like, equivocation–as with the word "inference"–does not become you, either. You should know that in the sense you mean, Objectvism knows sense-perception to be a kind of "inference," too. That ragged saw has been around longer than you imagine.
If this is no "problem" for you, ethically, then carry on, sir. At least I got an "answer." And it’s an answer that lots of non-Objectivists will want, too, I promise.
What is really distressing Aaron, is how you tolerate the intellectual hypocrisy of Bourbaki. He bitches and moans about authority and the scientific method and how religiously closed-minded Objectivism is (though, why, God only knows!) Then, in the next breath, he attacks me–using no science, just plain, closed-minded and religious emotionalism and ad hominem–for even raising the problem you have patiently tried to answer. Freud called this "projection."
It’s now obvious, alpha isn’t ethics. It doesn’t even refute a single previous idea about ethics, right or wrong. It arrogantly assumes it has so refuted them (while assuming many of those previous ideas without admitting it) after finding a small peice of the puzzle.
And the "consensus" you want to achieve is a long, long, long way off, indeed.
Aaron,
I have the patience of Job, I tell you!
You meaningfully used the term "sense-perception" and everyone knew just what you were talking about. Perception is a VERY "processed," but when I open my eyes seemingly "automatic," thing, indeed. This a point belabored by Rand and other Objectivists. It is YOU who need to remember that the distinctly human perspective can never be ignored. No matter what science discovers, the order and hierarchy of awareness imposed by our means of knowledge is, indeed, the omnipresent context to bear in mind.
I hate to even mention it, but you have never read the Objectivists on perception, have you? Try Kelley’s The Evidence of the Senses, based on his Princeton PhD dissertation. This is gone over in much greater detail there with enough reference to contemporary science to keep Bourbaki happy, at least in that regard.
Fortunately, we are capable of distinguishing between what we immediately experience when we open our eyes and those things that we are still trying to figure out with words and numbers. Of course, they are the same KIND of thing, but this ability to distinguish the two is the very thing that allows us to separately study sense-perception, its means and apparatus.
A distinction is not a dichotomy. From Plato to Hegel, to… alpha, that was the real issue.
Sorry for the multiple posts, but my company keeps insisting!
So, leaving legal issues aside, alpha makes no distinction between, as you put it, the ‘happy’ thief and the happy sky-diver. Both are engaged in dangerous activities that their personal F’s need to justify. They should both "use their brains" about the dangers as much as possible, of course. Our alpha-tropic laws should regulate WHERE our sky-diver should jump (and how, etc.?), and regulate the thief more comprehensively, perhaps, but there is otherwise no reason to treat the two differently. Outside of such legal technicalities, the two are just both engaged in "risky behavior," under the "ethics" of alpha?
An "ethics" with no "good," no "bad," no "moral." An ethics carefully sticking to observation, it claims. Well, no, can’t trust that–"rigorous" science and math, only, of course, but whose authors dismiss all previous ethical thought even as they lay not a single effective finger on the worst of it.
Sorry, we’re on California time!
As to those "legal technicalities," Bourbaki did have the gall to mention "legal applications," a proposed change in the law will require for my vote something other than a demonstration of improved alphatropic filtration. Keep your brave, new alphatropic laws off my body, please.
Aaron,
This isn’t necessary to the following example, but, just for color, let’s assume that, realizing that all previous ethics was a bunch of idiocy, someone became a thief. Then he read alpha theory and realized what an alphadystropic thing he just did in his last heist.
Here’s the example: even if it looks like he’s going to get away with that last heist, and clearly realizing what an alphadystropic thing he just did, should our repentent thief turn himself in on his own?
Would he be a sap or doing the alphatropic thing? Or, would it depend upon his personal F? Does it matter? Is it an "ethics" question even?
Just wondering…
Another movie tip: MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. This is one atheist who can admire St. Thomas More, from a different, but equally "ethical" perspective–a persepctive that alpha, alas, can never share.
What about:
Stealing drugs from a kid and throwing them out?
What about stealing money from a kid who wants to buy heroin and giving it to a homeless person.
These examples, while cute, don’t cut the mustard with this theory, because they are too conceptually isolated. All I’m saying.
Mr. Valliant,
there is no way to call it wrong as such from the standpoint of the ethics of alpha.
Not quite. In each case, the evidence must be considered. Isn’t this how the law works? If an individual demonstrates a pattern of sociopathic behavior, there’s a high likelihood that the pattern will continue.
It doesn’t even refute a single previous idea about ethics, right or wrong.
Again. Not quite. It says that all strong solutions are wrong some of the time. But as Mr. Haspel pointed out, we can treat engineering zeros as zeros and consider the exceptional cases.
So, leaving legal issues aside, alpha makes no distinction between, as you put it, the ‘happy’ thief and the happy sky-diver.
Wrong. The upshot of alpha theory isn’t to stick your head in the sand and try to hide from reality in a bunker. In order to adapt to F, you must engage F. Learn. Explore. Discover. Skydiving is not dangerous. Even I’ve managed to jump out of a plane without a scratch. For instance, people use it as a safe way to help overcome their fears.
Russian roulette is a different story.
He bitches and moans about authority and the scientific method and how religiously closed-minded Objectivism is (though, why, God only knows!)
No one here is arguing against the existence of external reality. Nevertheless, I looked up Kelly’s book. But it seems that poor fellow has already been de-frocked and shot out the air-lock:
This competently-executed volume was once, briefly, the pride of the Objectivist movement — a work of genuinely original philosophy along Randian lines, which held out the promise that "Objectivism" might someday win something like academic respectability. I say "was," because its author, David Kelley, was booted out of the movement for being willing to scold libertarians in person rather than just in print.
Mr. Valliant, you’re advocating dualism.
I might have even made it into the Rand inner circle. But I would have been promptly excommunicated as an unreformed heretic (the worst kind, since reformed heretics can at least be retrained and forgiven), with my belief that no absolute morality is scientifically or rationally tenable, even that which claims to have been derived through pure reason, as in the case of Rand. The reason is straightforward. Morals do not exist in nature and thus cannot be discovered. In nature there are just actions–physical actions, biological actions, and human actions.
Alpha extends the reach of science into areas that were purely philosophical. As Mr. McIntosh pointed out, our morals and ethics are an advanced strategy used by humans to preserve alpha. They don’t exist outside our thoughts. There is no physical basis to make them absolutes in the external world.
Contrived, isolated and pre-determined scenarios don’t sway the argument.
Tommy’s on the right track.
Bourbaki,
A bit OT.
I read (not with understanding) the Chaitin lecture.
Thanks.
And yes, it does make for fun.
For the past few months, I have been exploring Friedman and Hayek.
Right now, I am reading http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226320847/qid=1107105373/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-6724299-9085707?v=glance&s=books&n=507846"The Constitution of Liberty.
It’s everywhere.
"to preserve alpha."
I ain’t preserving no alpha. That would be silly. I am going to steal 10 million dollars instead. Since I can get away with it, why shouldn’t I? I’m only stealing it from my dad. He ain’t gonna mind, he gonna die soon.
Seriously: calculate all actions in terms of Global E and personal E by considering them to be two separate things. It creates a lot of conceptual paradox’s it seems. Damn amazon takes forever with my books, still waiting. Thanks for the links.
oops. That was meant, by considering them to be two separate things, I mean considering my one has no bearing on the effect of the other. So its like, think of the E of all humans/ the E of one of you. I.e., imagine the actions we all as humans make all across the planet, for our collective E.
A Bournelli trial of the human race once every 24 hours. How many of us die?
Aaron,
We need numbers associated with comments.
Jim,
Aaron is wrong, it isn’t ethics. Get over it.
Bourbaki,
An aside. I don’t care what you think about Mach, he was no fool. Besides it doesn’t matter what the path of an atom of a gas is. It matters enormously what the path of a man’s life is.
I don’t care generally what you think about alpha theory: most of your arguments are from suspect analogies.
What I DO care about is your cooking. Who do you find good and why? Who is overrated? I have now eaten in the best restaurants in Beijing and have not found even one as good as in NY. (I’ll report on Shanghai and Shenzen at the end of the month.) The same is true for London and much of the rest of England. Yet, Portugal, France and Italy have numerous wonderful eateries and the single best meal I’ve eaten was in Iceland. Why is that? Can alpha explain it? Or is it culture that explains it? And if culture, what accounts for the difference if all food culture seeks alpha? Is haut cuisine alpha dystrophic compared with fast food?
Mr. Kaplan,
Besides it doesn’t matter what the path of an atom of a gas is. It matters enormously what the path of a man’s life is.
Dualism again? You’ve already quoted Mandlebrot. You know that distinction, though lyrical, is arbitrary. Path dependency is implicit in the theory via the nature of entropy.
I don’t care generally what you think about alpha theory: most of your arguments are from suspect analogies.
There’s a delicate balance between richness and reach when presenting a new idea. If the arguments are purely technical, most of the audience will be excluded. If they’re purely anecdotal, they’ll lose accuracy.
Some people think there are too many links, others think there aren’t enough. I can only make course corrections in the discussion based on the feedback here.
You’re right to not care about what I think about alpha theory. I’m not presenting arguments as evidence but as exposition. Tommy thinks my analogies are misleading. He’s also pointed out valid oversimplifications in my examples.
However, if my arguments convince anyone that there’s something worth exploring, the arguments have achieved their purpose. Rhetoric has been more effective at hindering discovery than advancing it.
That was Mach’s failing.
Why is that? Can alpha explain it?
Yes. Application to aesthetics and taste are forthcoming. Despite the early predictions on this blog, it’s neither confining nor limiting–much like the rest of the theory. And the doorjams have held fast.
Fundamentals can be boring. Playing is always more fun than training. However no amount of training can prevent all mistakes; the discussions here might help us more easily recognize them.
Mr. Kaplan,
If you have the opportunity, do try El Bulli in Spain. A friend who was a sommelier at Ducasse said it was the best meal she’s ever had.
I have not had occasion to try it myself.
Stealing a candy bar from a store.
I was hungry. The engineering isn’t zero on this. A candy bar does not effect things the same, especially if I consider that the man owning the store was a child molester and using the money to fund his perversion.
The point, I wonder, has been grasped? Examples do not work unless you do the work for em. Theoreticals must be weighed against E. If you can figure out how, do so, if I could, I would say so. But just asking for someone to prove it to you because you can’t do it to yourself, and then somehow assuming that because they can’t that there is something wrong with alpha theory means nothing. There might be something wrong with us, or our understanding, but it is not evidence in itself against it when viewed that way. I got a book from Amazon, but it was a comic book (Y: the Last Man, very good…about last male on earth and his (well there are 2 I guess) male monkey Ampersand, who wears a diaper). Science books are coming soon though :)
Heh. A monkey in diapers. Alpha, you rock man.
Tommy, you may be the first living example of alpha’s ethics in action.
No you are.
Tommy,
Hardly that, as I use "universal strong solutions" incessantly–my information set being wider than thermodynamics and statistics, and my applications much narrower–to my distinct advantage, including a rather contextually absolutistic view of "rights."
Sorry, I leave this heroically noble honor to you.
"my information set being wider than thermodynamics and statistics,"
Where statistics mean probabilities and thermodynamics means the emergence of complexity and chaos right? Also, since this is about an application of these ideas, I’m sorry. You are wrong again. The first and second law of Thermodynamics, when applied, are how you can live, therefore think. So, in the same sense that alpha is an application of algebra and the laws, so to is your "Wider information set" and therefore, I know you are but what am I?
Hey Jim. Do I have this right?
All kidding aside, I don’t get what you mean by saying I alone have blah blah alpha ethics, or that I may be the first. Wouldn’t Aaron be the first?
One more thing. What does contextually absolute mean? Isn’t that semantically contradictory, and if not, wouldn’t contextually then be unneccessary. Also, how can you be SURE that anything is to your advantage (that does not kill you, a la, anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger). If that is how you can be sure, how can you prove it? Alpha is a scientific application of this fundamental lack of commensurate standards by which validation might be found.
Mutually, and to the exclusion of all self rightousness as means of "contextually absolute" evaluation. That thought may be illogical, I didn’t bounce it around much. It is after all just a thought. Get it?
Let’s be real specific. When a person who doesn’t want to die is standing on railroad tracks and a train is speeding in his direction on those tracks, allowing insufficient time for the train to stop before it reaches the person’s position, he should get off of the tracks if he wishes to continue to live or remain uninjured. If my explicit goal is nothing so grand as improving my alphatropism (even if, in a sense, all goals are the quest to improve alphatropism), say, survivng to next hour, and if the circumstances allow for greater certainty than mere statistics, then rules of absolute application can be derived. Of course, to be absolute in application, the rule must be delimited in context. Within such a defined and delimited context–the very reason for the rule in the first place, let’s hope–we can set the boundaries of its application. Coordinating all of my goals hierarchically allows me to develop a set of ethical priorities. All the "rational" thefts mentioned, or "rational" suidides, etc., are cases outside of the normal context of application–and the reason for the rule. Indeed, if my values are fully integrated, the exception will invariably invoke the same greater goal as the rule itself had in its origin.
Take Locke on liberty. Liberty, he said, isn’t the absence of law, it’s the correct amount of law. Liberty can be violated by criminals as by the state. If the state fails to protect me from them, it fails to defend my liberty. Thus, if all of the laws are only aimed at defending individual liberty, there is never a conflict between law and liberty. What do want, the "liberty" to destroy liberty? (Liberty being a condition between people. It has no meaning to a man alone.) Thus, only law can maximize liberty.
Good ethics has developed, like the common law, from the ground up and often for solid, clear and practical reasons. One of the insidious features of religious ethics, is that it makes people forget the actual reasons for developing the rule in the first place. This causes guilt where there need be none, and confusion over the "absoluteness" of the rule’s application. The reasons for good rules have long been forgotten, and, of course, some really lousy rules have entered the stream, but, so often, people simply ignore the context of the rules’ origin and therefore the boundaries of its application, and put rule over substance. Religion almost mandates this. This is the real reason for a lack of consensus in ethics. Not that we don’t have a lot of (generally) good ethical rules–about which there is as wide a consensus as any claim ever made a scientist!!–rather, the argument concerns the origin and nature of ethics itself. Is it a mystical absolute, a command from another wolrd? Is it merely the innate emotional prejudices of individuals and our race? Is the priavte subjective feelings of people? Or, does it serve some function–like all the rules about which there is consensus?
Ethics is a practical necessity of our species. We, alone, need a SCIENCE of ethics, rules to live by. There is no way to mentally hold, much less apply, the knowledge of the human race in every decision-making process. We need rules. No matter what an ethical subjectivist, like the authors of alpha theory, claim, they usually live by rules, too. Subconsciously, true, but their observed actions will conform to rules laid down in their heads–cognitively–long ago. (I know a older Jewish man from Russia who actually got sick the first time he ate perfectly good pork.) Ethics, values, are an inescapable reality that programs our consciousness and informs our emotions and behavior. Thus, I get angry when someone’s rights are violated. This is healthy. This is human. This helps me focus on and quickly coordinate the priority of the issue. My anger, while it proves nothing, is GOOD.
Now, of course, thinking is the only wy to determine truth, not feeling, but feelings are part of human beings’ ETHICAL mechanism. Rational thought is too. To the extent that alpha can help our decision-making process be more rational, it will be a great asset to ethics.