ERE Education

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
daylen
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Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: ERE Education

Post by daylen »

I may be overloading the term "linear". In my mind, I am visualizing how different humans operate over time. Some people learn in a more linear, step-by-step way where knowledge is gained a little bit at a time. Some other people tend to gather information on different frameworks, then they start to organize data/observations into these frames until the whole can be inferred; this leads to not much knowledge being gained at first, then the details start to fill in quickly.

Puzzle analogy
1. Build a puzzle one object at a time.
2. Start with the edges of the puzzle, then fill in the middle. (With larger puzzles it my be useful to also focus on the edges of large objects in the middle where there is a high contrast between in and out)

The latter strategy may make slower progress at first, but then the edges make it clear where the remaining pieces are likely to go. In the context of abstract systems, this strategy seems to help me understand what can be known without an awareness of the details/substance. Once the frame is established, then tests can be constructed that search for details that would contradict the entire frame (falsifying). This seems to be a highly efficient way to learn with practice.

daylen
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Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:17 am
Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: ERE Education

Post by daylen »

What does it mean for a theory to be consistent? Brute is not sure theories can be consistent/inconsistent. Humans can in their use of theories?
I am not sure either, but typically a formal system is not considered consistent if the axioms contradict each other somehow.
ok sure, then yes. this means all theories are inconsistent if brute understands Gödel's uncertainty theorem right, because every formal system can be proven to be contradictory.

Gödel showed that no system could prove its own consistency, but that does not imply there are no consistent systems.

How is a small city similar/different to a large city? Size.
What about in relation to energy measures and industry/business availability?
some things grow exponentially with linear increase in size.

My point here is that there is more to be known in this area. As the size of social systems increase linearly: infrastructure requirements increase sub-linearly and social interaction increases super-linearly. Similar scaling effects can be observed in organisms and companies.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31670196-scale

How does this explain the limitations of medicine and politics? Does it? Brute would say emergence is a better explanation for both.
Could be. Applying linear strategies to a non-linear system doesn't work for long, so often compromise and communication improves diagnostic ability.
brute is unsure what linearity of strategies has to do with compromise and communication.

Imagine a panel of doctors, each with a different specialty. The endocrinologist will likely only consider solutions that hint at an underlying hormone issue, the oncologist will look for signs of cancer, and so forth. If all these doctors can communicate in a way where each solution can be judged, then the doctors are much more likely to succeed diagnostically. This social networking effect eventually starts to decrease as the group size increases since larger networks are bad at compromise. This is related to politics as well; the political network is large enough that the conversations are not really conversations anymore; as the size of a social network increases, the political game starts to become dominated by the propagation of memes without compromising ability (outrage memes in particular).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_community

What is a probability? Chance X will happen.
What is chance? Is a probability just a frequency? Is the dichotomy between prior and posterior probability important?
out of x attempts, it will happen y times. frequencies seem more deterministic than probabilities to brute, even though they represent similar things. what is the dichotomy?

There has been an ongoing debate between the 'bayesian' and 'frequentist' schools of probability theory for a while now. In modern applications, the bayesian methodology appears to be superior in every way but is not universally applicable. There is reason to think that probabilities should not be treated just as frequencies but also as rules for conducting inference (i.e. plausible reasoning). The frequentist methods provide no technical means to eliminate nuisance parameters or to take prior information into account.
https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/prob/book.pdf

How is information encoded in the brain? Biochemically and electrically.
Can considering more dependencies be useful? What happens before that?
sure can be.

Again, the purpose is to promote wonder, exploration, and humility of what can be known.

How did everything evolve into existence? One step at a time.
How can the process be modeled?
brute isn't sure it can.

It seems that evolutionary explanations are more dialectic, and these explanations are best understood with an awareness of how evolutionary theory evolved itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Struc ... ary_Theory

What does is mean if something is adaptive? It adapts.
Can the adaptive ability of a system be measured and predicted?
in simple systems (e.g. suspension).

In evolutionary theory, there are multiple definitions of adaptation, and dialog helps to find a balance between them when trying to explain a specific phenomenon.

Do selfish systems survive? Sometimes.
Are they likely to reproduce and persist? How does this relate to cancer, infections, memes, addictions, psychopathology, and authoritarianism?
it depends. some of the systems daylen mentions are too greedy to survive what humans would consider a long time. a system can definitely self-destruct directly or by destroying its host by being too selfish.

I find the connections in this area very interesting. They hint at something deeper going on. It reminds me that life appears to be an ongoing dance between different replicators competing or cooperating into existence; it is all in a continuous flux of focus where different levels dominate selection at different times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great ... _Evolution

What is a virus and how does is go viral across a population? Host transmission and incubation.
Does it make sense for a virus to infect the whole population? (assuming the goal is to persist over evolutionary time)
ascribing sense-making and goals to a non-living phenomenon does not seem useful. sometimes it happens.

Right, selection happens on many levels, so having a dialog between different levels is helpful. It is possible that the whole ecology could not exist in its current form without the periodic rise and fall of a specific type of replicator at a lower level. There does seem to be case studies where the relevant levels are quite clear by applying the adaptation test widely and discussing observations.

daylen
Posts: 2518
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Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: ERE Education

Post by daylen »

I went on a walk and thought of a tangent related to entropy, living systems, and scale.

One way to think about entropy is that hidden(*) information tends to increase forward in time (but not forever). In an isolated system, over a long enough time period the energy/matter/substance will oscillate between more ordered and more disordered states. Order can be thought of as how much information is required to describe the system(**) in a way so that it is hypothetically reproducible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhnKBKZvb_U&t=1s


I will focus on earth since it can be approximated as an isolated system. There appears to have been a direction to evolution/change. The direction seems to have been pointed towards an increase in the number of different forms/systems that appear to import simpler systems with the potential to rapidly transform into less ordered states (potential energy). This process seems to be reversing since some systems are 'winning' in the short term, and this potential is becoming too concentrated (humans, companies, cities, etc) at the expense of destroying the ecology that allowed their existence in the first place.

Humans, companies, and cities all seem to get better at mobilizing and directing resources/capital/assets as they grow larger (cheaper infrastructure/economies of scale/network scaling effects). Larger could mean an increase in awareness or an expansion of infrastructure (for acquiring resources or information).

This is intertwined to capitalism which can be a very uni-dimensional game (acquire money) depending on how capital is defined. ERE and the systems theory revolution is aimed at undermining the belief in the sustainability of uni-dimensional games, and promoting a multi-dimensional approach to the idea of capital or goals. This is related to post-modernism and the focus on conversation that deconstructs and reconstructs different forms of hypothetical capital or values continuously.

Currently, the global economic system incentivizes the pursuit of money almost exclusively. Money is the focal point for most individuals. The larger the company, the less focus there is on the individuals in favor of just money. Similarly, the larger the city, the less focus there is on the individuals and companies in favor of just money. This seems to hint at the core of why the system needs to undergo a phase change in the near future; reminds me of the difference between solids, liquids, and gases -- solids and gases are easier to model than liquids -- are liquids like complex, living systems in this sense?

(*) Hidden to agents or living systems that are centralized and mobilized enough to import it for future use. Use depends on the goals of the particular agent.

(**) This description is usually best constructed from an external agent that is mostly isolated from it and can perform experiments or observations on it.

BRUTE
Posts: 3797
Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: ERE Education

Post by BRUTE »

daylen wrote:
Thu Dec 27, 2018 11:46 am
They hint at something deeper going on.
maybe this is the fundamental difference. brute is quite convinced that there is nothing deeper going on. it's all just stardust.

at a more practical level, brute finds that dialog, compromise, and communication provide far less marginal utility to him than daylen seems to derive from them. on the panel of doctors, if one of them is right, any compromise will negatively affect the outcome. brute has yet to see a group of 5+ humans communicate effectively. "12 Angry Men" seems the default setup more often than not. except the verdict typically does not come out right.

while brute enjoys the pursuit of (some) knowledge, he admits it is useless in the greater scheme of things. brute has communicated enough times with experts in their field that had no idea about their field. large edifices of science are just bureaucracy and terminology, without much additional understanding. scientists are human. humans are extremely fallible.

brute has tried to contribute to science, and the level of disinterest in limiting the suffering of affected humans has been astonishing.
brute has tried to help humans by giving them knowledge, and the level of disinterest in not losing sight and limbs (diabetes) has been astonishing.
brute has tried arguing logically, and found that humans generally do not care about the efficacy or veracity of their arguments.
brute has tried manipulation/rhetoric, and found it to be pretty much the only thing that matters.
brute thinks humans learn by brainwashing, either of their own or someone else's design.
brute has tried to find what brings humans meaning, and has found that there is typically nothing there.
humans do not typically appreciate brute pointing any of this out.

all in all, brute has found that he is alone in a giant rube goldberg machine. and most likely, he's not even really there, either.

daylen
Posts: 2518
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:17 am
Location: Lawrence, KS

Re: ERE Education

Post by daylen »

In the panel of doctors scenario, I was thinking that compromise would mean that individual doctors would be willing to subordinate their ideas to a group strategy. The strategy would take all the ideas and their ability to be tested into account. Such a strategy could run multiple tests simultaneously and potentially engage in multiple treatments. This mostly just makes sense for complicated problems.

We have a different view of what dialog, compromise, and communication consists of. I rarely actually communicate in a physical way (except family). I just like to think about it mostly, and the subjects are not all human.

I like to imagine what it is like to be different types of living systems. Understanding how they evolved into existence gives me an idea of what they do and what types of information they attend to. Then I can simulate different situations where different agents interact, and this can help me understand the hidden connections between them. This is basically empathy.

Trying to understand what other organisms, companies, cities, or whole ecosystems will do in the future is highly practical, but to do it well requires an awareness of many different physical, physiological, economical, cultural, and geological processes. Reality to me is like a giant superposition of different signals that extend far into the past and into the future. The past signals (usually wave-like) are more known, and the future signals are blurry/fuzzy/ambiguous. Over time these signals become more clear as I learn about the details of specific systems and infer their relationships to other systems via thought.

I agree with you that actual conversations with experts are often boring.

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