- What is Computation? it is the manipulation of arbitrarily shaped formal symbols in accordance with symbol-manipulation rules, algorithms, that operate only on the (arbitrary) shape of the symbols, not their meaning.
- Interpretatabililty. The only computations of interest, though, are the ones that can be given a coherent interpretation.
- Hardware-Independence. The hardware that executes the computation is irrelevant. The symbol manipulations have to be executed physically, so there does have to be hardware that executes it, but the physics of the hardware is irrelevant to the interpretability of the software it is executing. It’s just symbol-manipulations. It could have been done with pencil and paper.
- What is the Weak Church/Turing Thesis? That what mathematicians are doing is computation: formal symbol manipulation, executable by a Turing machine – finite-state hardware that can read, write, advance tape, change state or halt.
- What is Simulation? It is computation that is interpretable as modelling properties of the real world: size, shape, movement, temperature, dynamics, etc. But it’s still only computation: coherently interpretable manipulation of symbols
- What is the Strong Church/Turing Thesis? That computation can simulate (i.e., model) just about anything in the world to as close an approximation as desired (if you can find the right algorithm). It is possible to simulate a real rocket as well as the physical environment of a real rocket. If the simulation is a close enough approximation to the properties of a real rocket and its environment, it can be manipulated computationally to design and test new, improved rocket designs. If the improved design works in the simulation, then it can be used as the blueprint for designing a real rocket that applies the new design in the real world, with real material, and it works.
- What is Reality? It is the real world of objects we can see and measure.
- What is Virtual Reality (VR)? Devices that can stimulate (fool) the human senses by transmitting the output of simulations of real objects to virtual-reality gloves and goggles. For example, VR can transmit the output of the simulation of an ice cube, melting, to gloves and goggles that make you feel you are seeing and feeling an ice cube. melting. But there is no ice-cube and no melting; just symbol manipulations interpretable as an ice-cube, melting.
- What is Certainly Truee (rather than just highly probably true on all available evidence)? only what is provably true in formal mathematics. Provable means necessarily true, on pain of contradiction with formal premises (axioms). Everything else that is true is not provably true (hence not necessarily true), just probably true.
- What is illusion? Whatever fools the senses. There is no way to be certain that what our senses and measuring instruments tell us is true (because it cannot be proved formally to be necessarily true, on pain of contradiction). But almost-certain on all the evidence is good enough, for both ordinary life and science.
- Being a Figment? To understand the difference between a sensory illusion and reality is perhaps the most basic insight that anyone can have: the difference between what I see and what is really there. “What I am seeing could be a figment of my imagination.” But to imagine that what is really there could be a computer simulation of which I myself am a part (i.e., symbols manipulated by computer hardware, symbols that are interpretable as the reality I am seeing, as if I were in a VR) is to imagine that the figment could be the reality – which is simply incoherent, circular, self-referential nonsense.
- Hermeneutics. Those who think this way have become lost in the “hermeneutic hall of mirrors,” mistaking symbols that are interpretable (by their real minds and real senses) as reflections of themselves — as being their real selves; mistaking the simulated ice-cube, for a “real” ice-cube.
“I have taken some time to reflect because I think the situation is too serious to comment on without really giving it thought.
Yes, приятелька. no call for snap judgments when unprovoked bombs are again raining on Ukraine from a nuclear superpower, thrice its size, and people are dying. Just stress that you are a patriot, and apolitical.
“First of all: I am opposed to this war…
And that is of course what you say to твоему приятельнику, Володке, each time you meet…
“I am Russian and I love my country…
Very reassuring, and very à propos – when your country is bombing Ukraine…
“…but I have many friends in Ukraine and the pain and suffering right now breaks my heart.
To hear what you are going through breaks my heart…
“ I want this war to end and for people to be able to live in peace. This is what I hope and pray for.
And what I wanted when I presented 1M rubles to the Russian nationalist leader, draped in the Russian secessionist flag, when my country invaded and annexed Crimea…
“I want to add one thing, however: forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right. This should be a free choice. Like many of my colleagues, I am not a political person. I am not an expert in politics. I am an artist and my purpose is to unite people across political divides.’
Which was also what I had in mind when I presented 1M rubles to the Russian nationalist leader, draped in the Russian secessionist flag, when my country invaded and annexed Crimea…
To hear what you are having to go through to save your career breaks the whole world’s heart…
Yes.
(But why do we always,
reflexively,
ritually,
appropriate animal suffering
for solemn admonitions
about human suffering?
Because it’s not tragic enough
on its own?)
You may reply,
“Yes,
but why do you always
turn it in this direction?”
Maybe because most
keep turning it in the other…
But that’s just about me. As to free will, I agree with Sapolsky that there is no “independent” causal force – in the brain, or anywhere else – that influences the causal pattern of events. It’s all unfolding mechanically by cause and effect since the Big Bang. That it seems otherwise is probably just due to two things:
(1) Uncertainty; there are many causal factors we don’t know and that cannot be known and predicted, so there are many “surprises” that can be interpreted as interlopers, including me and my “decisions”. The physicists say that uncertainty is not just that of statistical uncertainty (we can’t predict the weather or who will win the lottery, but not because it is not all causally determined, but just because we don’t know all the causal details); there’s supposedly also “quantum uncertainty” which is not just that we don’t know all the causal details but that some of the causal details are indeterminate: they somehow come out of nothing. (This could be true — or our understanding of quantum mechanics today may be incomplete. But in any case it has nothing to do with free will. It’s the same in all of the inanimate universe, and would have been the same even if there weren’t living, seemingly autonomous organisms — and especially one species that thinks it’s an exception to the causal picture).
(2) More important and relevant (at least in my understanding of the FW question) is the undeniable fact that FW is a feeling: Just as seeing red, hearing a loud sound, or feeling tired feels like something – and feels like something different from seeing green, hearing a faint sound or feeling peppy — so stumbling because you lost your balance or because someone pushed you feels like something, and something different from doing it deliberately. And that same feeling (of “volition”) applies to everything you do deliberately, rather than inadvertently. That’s why I think the full-scale FW puzzle is already there in just a lowly Libet-style button press: deciding whether and when to do it, and, when you do, feeling as if “I” am the one who made it happen. It’s not a cosmic question, but a very local question, and, under a microscope, either a trivial one or, more likely, a special case of a much bigger unsolved puzzle, which is why do sentient organisms feel anything at all, whether redness, loudness, fatigue or volition? (In fact volition is the biggest puzzle, because the puzzle is a causal one, and sensations just happen to you, whereas voluntary action feels like something you are yourself causing.
The fact that there exist states that it feels like something to be in, is true, and sentient organisms all know what it feels like to feel. (That’s the only substantive part of Descartes’ “Cogito”.)
It’s also true that what has been lately dubbed the “hard problem” (but used to be called the “mind/body problem) is really just the problem of explaining, causally, why and how organisms feel. Darwinian evolution only requires that they be able to do, and be able to learn to do, whatever is needed to survive and reproduce. What is the causal contribution of feeling to the Darwinian capacities to do? What is the causal value-added of feeling? No one knows (though there are lots of silly hypotheses, most of them simply circular).
Well the FW problem (I think) is just a particular case of the hard problem of the causal role of feeling, probably the most salient case.
And it’s not the metaphysical problem of the causal power of sentient organisms’ “will” or “agency” (a misnomer) in the universe. Organisms are clearly just causal components of the causal unfolding of the universe, not special ringers in the scheme of things.
But the puzzle remains of why they think (or rather feel) that they are – or, more generally, why they feel at all.
And that question is a causal one.
]]>The capture as well as the breeding of other sentient beings for human uses are imprisonment and slavery – involuntary – and contrary to the biological imperatives of the victims. It is anthropocentric arrogance and aggression to presume that humans have a natural (or divine) right to inflict this on other sentient beings (except in cases of vital [not commercial or hedonic] conflict of biological imperatives, such as between biologically obligate carnivores and their prey).
La capture ainsi que l’élevage des autres êtres sentients pour les usages humains sont de l’emprisonnement et de l’esclavage — involontaires — à l’encontre des impératifs biologiques des victimes. C’est une arrogance et une agression anthropocentriques de présumer que les humains ont un droit naturel (ou divin) d’infliger cela à d’autres êtres sensibles (sauf en cas de conflit d’impératifs biologiques [pas les intérêts commerciaux ou hédoniques], comme entre les carnivores biologiquement obligés et leurs proies).
]]>That plants do feel is about as improbable as it is that animals (including humans) do not feel. (The only real uncertainty is about the very lowest invertebrates and microbes, at the juncture with plants, and evidence suggests that the capacity to feel depends on having a nervous system, and the behavioral capacities the nervous system produces.)
Because animals feel, it is unethical (in fact, monstrous) to harm them, when we have a choice. We don’t need to eat animals to survive and be healthy, so there we have a choice.
Plants almost certainly do not feel, but even if they did feel, we would have no choice but to eat them (until we can synthesize them) because otherwise we die.
]]>1. Insects and oysters have a nervous system. They are sentient beings and they feel pain.
2. It is not necessary for human health to consume sentient beings — not mammals, birds, reptiles, or invertebrates.
3. It is plants (and microbes) that do not have a nervous system and hence do not feel.
4. What is wrong is to make sentient beings suffer or die other than out of conflict of vital (life-or-death) interest.
5. Morality concerns, among other things, not harming other sentient beings.
The rest of the proposal of Christopher Bobier is unfortunately mere casuistry.
To help the victims of plant agriculture for human consumption, perhaps strive instead to develop an agriculture that is more ecological and more merciful to the sentient beings who are entangled in mass consumption by the human population.
Instead of fallacies like the call to consume some sentient victims so as to give further sentient victims the opportunity to become victims, it might be more virtuous to consider reducing the rate of growth in the number of human consumers.
De la casuistique d’un «éthicien» concernant la « vertu»
1. Les insectes et les huitres ont un système nerveux. Ils sont des êtres sentients et ils ressentent la douleur.
2. Il n’est pas nécesaire à la santé humaine de consommer les êtres sentients — ni mammifère, ni oiseau, ni réptile, ni invertébré.
3. C’est les plantes (et les microbes) qui n’ont pas de système nerveux et donc ne ressentent pas.
4. Ce qui est mal, c’est de faire souffrir ou mourrir les êtres sentients sans nécessité vitale (conflit d’intérêt de vie ou de mort).
5. La moralité concerne, entre autres, ne pas faire mal aux autres êtres sentients.
Le reste du propos de ce « scientifique » n’est que du casuistique.
Pour aider aux victimes de l’agriculture des plantes aux fins de la consommation humaine, lutter peut-être plutôt pour développer une agriculture plus écologique et plus miséricordieuse envers les êtres sentients qui sont empétrés dans la consommation de masse par la population humaine.
Au lieu de sophismes comme l’appel à consommer des de victimes sentientes pour donner l’occasion à davantage de victimes sentientes à devenir victimes, il serait peut-être plus vertueux de songer à réduire le taux de croissance du nombre de consommateurs humains…
]]>I think it would be more informative to ask people:
- whether they or their loved ones have any (a) mild, (b) moderate, or (c) grave illnesses
- whether they or their loved ones do not have enough to eat for the foreseeable future
- whether they or their loved ones do not have a place to live for the foreseeable future
- whether they or their loved ones are not free, or in danger of harm
If their reply to 1-4 is no, then they should forget the 10-point Hygge ladder and count themselves as happy (and consider helping those sentient beings whose reply to 1-4 is not no).
]]>the one I consult
to ask
whether whatever happens to be troubling me
at the time
(a paper rejected, a grant application denied, a personal disappointment)
matters.
She has just arrived at Fearman’s
at the end of days of transport,
her first glimpse of light,
thirsty, frightened,
after the brief eternity
of her 6-month lifetime,
confined,
in the misery and horror
of those bolted, shuttered,
cramped, suffocating,
brutal
cylindroid tubes we keep noticing
in what we had imagined
was an innocent pastoral countryside.
Now she is 45 minutes
before being brutally thrust into the CO2 chamber,
and then the foul sabre
that will sever her larynx,
and the drop
into the scalding water
to disinfect her sullied flesh,
to make it worthy
of our plates and palates.
Her answer is always the same.
No, it does not matter.
None of that matters.
Save me.
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