Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

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guitarplayer
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Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by guitarplayer »

One thread of thought is this.

The adulthood recapitulation of the infancy acquired virtue of trust as per Eriksson's stages of psychosocial development is something to do with letting go of the / accepting internal inconsistencies of cognitive systems of conceptualizing the world. The idea behind recapitulating virtues in later stages of development is to imagine the stages of development on one axis and virtues on the other axis, and populate the empty fields around the diagonal where the current stage/virtue development happens.

The internal inconsistencies of cognitive systems in conceptualizing the world are inevitable as per the Goedel's incompleteness theorem.

The ability to employ or emulate the early acquired trust in adulthood to mitigate the inconsistencies enables / unlocks Csikszentmihalyi's Flow State
The 8 Characteristics of Flow

Csikszentmihalyi describes eight characteristics of flow:

Complete concentration on the task;
Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback;
Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down);
The experience is intrinsically rewarding;
Effortlessness and ease;
There is a balance between challenge and skills;
Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination;
There is a feeling of control over the task.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

So, it is difficult to achieve flow when nearing the end of "trust" in the paradigm of current level of development? And at any level of development, the paradigm will have inconsistencies that can't be resolved without development of next level paradigm perspective.

I wonder whether there is some way to make transitions quicker, smoother, less painful, or FITB? For instance, can you choose between just feeling bored and frustrated for many years vs. the external realities that are inconsistent with the "tool" (paradigm) you keep "hammering" with suddenly engulfing you in misery?

daylen
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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by daylen »

The incompleteness theorems apply to formal systems that conceive of counting or arithmetic. Extending interpretation beyond such is not necessarily wrong but not really correct either. Note that the theorems claim that a formal system can not be both consistent and complete, but a formal system like ZFC (Zermelo Fraenkel set theory) may be consistent but just not complete in the sense that there exist true statements that cannot be proved from within the system.

With that said, through dialog between systems that contradict each other various moral questions can arise. Development in some sense can be thought of as cutting several Gordian knots. Consider the following knot:

1. Everything is just the way is should be.
2. Everything must change.

To cut the knot is to.. well.. not think about it too hard.. keeping both in mind while putting one foot in front of another. Now do this for any knot that arises and nothing well ever stump "you" again.. much easier said than done. Plus, it is only human to be knotty.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@daylen:

Yeah, I hear you. One of the reasons I wasn’t sold on the Boyd article on “Destruction and Construction” posted elsewhere. What do the Uncertainty Principle, Incompleteness Theorem, and Second Law of Thermodynamics really have to do with each other or activities within the sphere of human “will.” Seems like “The map is not the territory” is sufficient. IOW, human knowledge is obviously incomplete at level far removed from mathematical proof.

guitarplayer
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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by guitarplayer »

daylen wrote:
Tue Aug 30, 2022 9:47 am
The incompleteness theorems apply to formal systems that conceive of counting or arithmetic. Extending interpretation beyond such is not necessarily wrong but not really correct either.
@daylen, like @7w5 alluded, the incompleteness theorems in this thread did come from Boyd (and earlier from Joscha Bach). Admittedly, I have not read Goedel's work and not sure I would be able to comprehend it in reasonable time.

Although I would think that Joscha Bach, when he talks about Goedel, takes Goedel's work literally, obviously Boyd takes it as a shorthand for 'a system cannot define itself from within itself'. This is I think from the point of view of using them (Goedel's theorems) as mental models, the way Charlie Munger talks about mental models such as 'tipping point', 'critical mass', 'momentum' etc. Concepts that have a very precise meaning in their respective fields but taken loosely in a different field.
daylen wrote:
Tue Aug 30, 2022 9:47 am
not think about it too hard..
...but engage emotively, trust me! ;)

@7w5 yeah this makes sense, thought this is thinking on a much grander scale than I intended. I focused mostly on cognitive systems as this is something I occasionally struggle with. As in, I struggle with how various fields cannot exhaustively explain a phenomenon. It is probably on some level an ontological struggle, but I don't think I have the power to dwell too much on the 'what is' question. So I figured one way would be to resolve in trust. Imagine someone who turned blind and suddenly has to trust in the other senses will lead them, then by extension apply to someone with all senses intact trusting in reason to lead them.

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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by jacob »

guitarplayer wrote:
Wed Aug 31, 2022 2:41 am
This is I think from the point of view of using them (Goedel's theorems) as mental models, the way Charlie Munger talks about mental models such as 'tipping point', 'critical mass', 'momentum' etc. Concepts that have a very precise meaning in their respective fields but taken loosely in a different field.
Indeed. If [using esoteric concepts] is taken too seriously, it quickly leads to quantum wooness. The inductive minds tends to focus on the similarity of conclusions in separate situation and then proceed in the hope that one might learn something from the other situation given its analogous structure. This goes off the rails (or off into the deep end) when it's presumed to be a deduction. It's like a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy in parallel.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Deductive Reasoning:

All men are mortal.
Obama is a man.
Therefore, Obama is mortal.
Here we have an example of hierarchical reasoning. What is true for the higher level of organization (“man”) must be true for the lower levels as well (“Obama, a man”). This is a type of deductive reasoning, but it is actually more reminiscent of Te than Ti! How can that be? The reason is that here we see some top-down logic that actually leaves some theoretical nuances on the table. We reason in an efficient manner, and we don’t care about the possible exceptions to the rule.
-emphasis mine

https://www.idrlabs.com/articles/2013/0 ... deductive/


It's difficult for me to articulate what I didn't like about Boyd's article, but the above goes some way towards explaining my perspective. Boyd gathers up mental models like any Te thinker gathers up facts, and then he uses them to create a theory about creativity that actually favors inductive reasoning from the perspective of a Ti (predominantly deductive thinker.) IOW, he is presenting the models of the incompleteness theorem, the Uncertainty Principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics as evidence towards his theory rather than considering them in whimsical analogy.

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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by jacob »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Aug 31, 2022 8:42 am
IOW, he is presenting the models of the incompleteness theorem, the Uncertainty Principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics as evidence towards his theory rather than considering them in whimsical analogy.
Yes, therein lies the problem. Quantum woo originates in the same problematic kind of reasoning. It's somewhat painful to observe for those who have a deeper (more specialized anyway) understanding of whatever concepts are being used. It's a significant risk for those who are widely read and largely self-taught, especially if the education happened at the [popularized] Gladwell level. The problem is mainly in not knowing what one doesn't know and also how little one actually knows. Having deep knowledge of one field can temper one's confidence [as a know-it-all after spending all last week on a so-called "deep dive"] but that can lead to a strange combination of imposter system and "I know more about any subject than you except your one field of specialization" regardless of whomever one is talking to. (Yes, I'm somewhat talking about personal experiences here.) This is what makes being an intellectual generalist (or generalized intellectual) so difficult.

guitarplayer
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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by guitarplayer »

jacob wrote:
Wed Aug 31, 2022 9:01 am
It's somewhat painful to observe for those who have a deeper (more specialized anyway) understanding of whatever concepts are being used.
@daylen I had this thought when reading your first comment above. The same applies to me sometimes when I read psychology stuff here in the forum as psychology was the first field I took a deep dive into.

May the thread flourish and I am going to hopefully contribute more but I need to go look for mushrooms now with DW.

daylen
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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by daylen »

I invert the pain back into pleasure from pleasure using a pain-pleasure inverter (rick and morty reference). I am mostly for woo exploration as the expert/amateur distinction is not always a solid metric and people should probably learn to think for themselves on most topics. Actually, you could probably sum up most of my online existence as encouraging people to think.. perhaps not always in the most transparent ways.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Goedel's incompleteness theorems, Eriksson's trust, Csikszentmihalyi's Flow

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

jacob wrote:This is what makes being an intellectual generalist (or generalized intellectual) so difficult.
True, but there's no avoiding being/becoming a generalist at systems level, so I guess we will all have to cut ourselves and everyone else some slack :lol:

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