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How Should Humanity Steer the Future? Essay Contest (2014)
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How to save the world by Sabine Hossenfelder
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder wrote on Apr. 15, 2014 @ 11:55 GMT
Essay AbstractIf you knew how humanity should steer the future, what difference would it make? The major challenge that humanity faces today is not that we lack ideas for what to do, as I am sure this essay contest will document. No, the major challenge, the mother of all problems, is to convert these ideas into courses of action. We fail to act in the face of global problems because we do not have an intuitive grasp on the consequences of collective human behavior, are prone to cognitive biases, and easily overwhelmed by data. We are also lazy and if intuition fails us, inertia takes over. How many people will read these brilliant essays? For the individual, evaluating possible courses of action to address interrelated problems in highly connected social, economic and ecological networks is presently too costly. The necessary information may exist, even be accessible, but it is too expensive in terms of time and energy. To steer the future, information about our dynamical and multi-layered networks has to become cheap and almost effortless to use. Only then, when we can make informed decisions by feeling rather than thinking, will we be able to act and respond to the challenges we face.
Author BioSabine is an assistant professor for high energy physics at Nordita in Stockholm, Sweden. She works on quantum gravity and physics beyond the standard model and blogs at backreaction.blogspot.com
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John C Hodge wrote on Apr. 15, 2014 @ 18:34 GMT
Thanks for your insights. I think your essay will score high.
“No, the major challenge, the mother of all problems, is to convert these ideas into courses of action.” Agree. Yet, most of the essays leave out the “how” of the topic.
“The root of the problems that humanity faces today is that our adaptation as a species has fallen behind the changes we have induced ourselves. “ Yes. Therefore, any suggestion that begins with change our attitudes or morals is bound to fail. The time required for a morals change is too long. For example, the morals of marriage are still hampered by promiscuity of the stone age.
“We have no intuitive grasp on the collective behavior of large groups …” and “…the adaptation of our systems by trial and error is too slow …” because we depend on the nation the do it one trial at a time. This system can be faster if there are many trials at the same time competing. This has been the history of science development as a result of better communication in the last 200 years. With no intuitive grasp and poor predictability what method is available other than luck?
Part of the problem of humanity going forward is how we address the relative weight of problems. For example, ecology vs. industry (economic). Certainly, everybody wants to solve all our problems. But that is not going to happen. Some problems should be solved before others. Many times some want to solve problems using means that worsen other problems. Most socially addressed problems today are done through taxation. High taxes are a problem, also. What is the optimun mix?
I would have liked to see your essay before I finished mine.
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 10:19 GMT
John: I accidentally posted my reply as a separate comment, see below.
Lawrence B Crowell wrote on Apr. 15, 2014 @ 22:51 GMT
Your essay reflects ideas that I used to think about and voice. I was an organizer of the Green Party. I use the past tense, used not use, as an average. I occasionally say things similar. However, in the last decade I have become a bit jaded about these things. The problem as I see it is that we humans are stone aged creatures that by their ability to learn new ways to exploit their...
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Your essay reflects ideas that I used to think about and voice. I was an organizer of the Green Party. I use the past tense, used not use, as an average. I occasionally say things similar. However, in the last decade I have become a bit jaded about these things. The problem as I see it is that we humans are stone aged creatures that by their ability to learn new ways to exploit their environment have constructed a world we may simply not be well adapted to.
I find it irritating when I see trash lying around, and the standard thought still happens, “How can people be such pigs?” I then step back and realize that this is how we evolved. Our ancestors ate fruit, grains, later meat and took food from the natural world. When they ate a fruit they thought nothing of throwing the core or peel onto the ground. Once the product is consumed it is second nature to cast off the inedible parts. It takes additional thought or training to hold on to that aluminium can and put it later in a recycle bin. In addition our view of the world is local. It is still hard to get people to recycle basic stuff. How many times have I put such material in a recycle bin to see that people discarded their unsorted trash into it?
We evolved in small bands that later, about 30 thousand years ago, became larger tribes and only in the last 5,000 years or so did we start to settle into large sedentary groups or cities. Our species spent 125 thousand years in small bands of a few dozen members and a total world population of a few million. Our perspective was intensely local with very intimate relationships with people. Bands would exchange members, often through marriage, and so outsiders were a presence and such encounters could be peaceful or they could be violent. The tendency is then to act on the basis of very immediate concerns and sensory input. These often involve people in their community and concerns about the “others” on the outside, or what they will eat tomorrow, or in the modern world whether they will have their job next year. We are creatures that no matter how smart we are, or think we are, we still have a stone aged brain that tries to manage in a world that is interconnected across continents, populated by over 7 billion of us and in mega-cities with ten of millions of people.
It is clear that you can motivate people into action if the problem involves people who are identified in some way other than you. This can cover a range of things, from religion, language, skin tone, their flag and so forth. In 2002-3 I found it almost frightening to witness the war fever in the US as it geared up for the invasion of Iraq. This nation spent $3trillion to engage in that adventure. It is far more difficult to get people similarly motivated over the CO_2 molecule and our uncontrolled experiment with the planetary climate by producing about a trillion tons of the stuff. This is far more of an abstract problem. It requires a different way of thinking. It might be the case that education will persuade some people to give some concern over this. However, I have known a number of physicists who regard global warming as a pseudo-problem. There is a certain (I keep unnamed) physicist who is advanced in knowledge of string theory, an inexhaustible bogger and who holds to far right winged (almost fascist) ideology as a higher truth that somehow negates any matter of global warming. Along those lines, 25% of the Nazi SS held graduate degrees. So education may not be the magic bullet we think it is.
I argue in my
essay that intelligent life in the universe faces certain limits due to cosmology, and in addition face problems maybe not too different from what we face. I argue in a funny way that this might in fact be a good thing. You will have to read it to see how that is the case. We appear to be engineering the next mass extinction. Our impact on the environment will persist for up to 100,000 years and could count as severe as the KT or maybe even the Permian extinctions. Our current situation may be just a high energy and high resource consumption period that on a timeline is a narrow Gaussian curve (almost delta function) between two stone ages. We came out of the Pleistocene stone age in a world of great abundance and after this we will be in the second stone age on a planet severely depleted and biologically reduced. Our species may in time be snuffed out as a result.
I will of course continue to hope for the better angels of our nature. I though question whether that can hold.
Cheers LC
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 10:31 GMT
Hi Lawrence,
I find myself agreeing with much of what you say. It is also interesting in that I used to be active for the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and that is what taught me just how hard it is to get people to change anything. People are by default conservative, not in the political sense, but in the sense that they do things 'like we've always done it'. They'll not move until change is in their face and impossible ignore. I proposed back then eg a 'right of information'. That was in the mid 90s. I am still waiting for them to come around to see it's necessary...
In any case, I'm not quite as pessimistic as you in that I don't think we're 'engineering' the next mass extinction. That seems possible, but unlikely. What worries me much more is that the progress we've gotten so used to will turn to regress and we'll fail to act exactly because there's no hard hit that propels us into action. Do you know anybody who has a serious problem with drug or alcohol addiction? It often takes a traumatic experience that makes addicts realize they have a problem and must change their ways. I am afraid that climate change will just slowly put strain on our resources and that not much time and energy will be left for anything else. In practice this just means that things we are now very used to (say, affordable internet) will become prohibitively costly and/or start breaking down. I don't want my children to grow up in a world where they expect tomorrow to be worse than today.
Best,
Sabine
Lawrence B Crowell replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 13:33 GMT
I think the critical set of events surround the timing of what might be called the “oh shits” report. I think that in another decade the climate problem will become too big to ignore and the denialists will be swept from the public forum. That will be good news of course, but then the question is one of comprehensiveness of the response and timing. The response will be best if it takes a...
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I think the critical set of events surround the timing of what might be called the “oh shits” report. I think that in another decade the climate problem will become too big to ignore and the denialists will be swept from the public forum. That will be good news of course, but then the question is one of comprehensiveness of the response and timing. The response will be best if it takes a whole systems approach, which means the entire question of our energy/entropy situation on Earth is addressed. This means wrapping the issue into everything from energy development to the ecological distress of oceans. Timing is also another problem, for it could be that by the time we address this issue it is too late. Methane release from permafrost melt and methane hydrate release is thought to trigger a runaway process. There are now indications this process is now rapidly starting to take place. I suspect that geo-engineering will be forced upon us. I would prefer to think we would not have to take such measures, but we might have no choice.
I happen to think the socio-economic problem is that our future will by necessity require a different mode of operation. The standard system of nation-states with representative governments most responsive to corporations and an economy powered by financial power will have to be seriously modified or changed out with something else. Of course in the United States this brings forth howling charges of communism and so forth. I have for the last year been living in Texas, and as the state advert says, “A whole different state” is not far off the mark. This place is borderline insane. I think changing the socio-economic modality of the world is maybe not so much a problem for Europe, but I fear it could mean the “Second American Civil War.”
The progressive movements in the US, which are folded to a degree into the Democratic Party, tend to choke if they deviate at all much from centrism. The Democratic Party is really a centrist party with a neoliberal agenda that promotes corporate power. The progressive wings of the party are a combination of window dressing and leftovers from the main economic banquet taken by financial power. Clinton and Obama are cases in point, for while they are preferable to the defective twerp we have in 2001-9 they are pretty much operators who curry favor to financial power. From an environmental perspective that translates into support for energy business as usual.
Cheers LC
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 17, 2014 @ 08:02 GMT
Lawrence,
I'm not at all sure that we'll have our oh-shit moment regarding climate change in the next decade. That's what I thought 20 years ago... I've come to the conclusion that we simply do not have the means to react to problems on that time and distance scales. It is interesting if you read the 'limits of growth' report from 1972, that it basically pointed out exactly this problem. But back then we didn't have the tools to solve the problem - now we have them, we just have to use them smartly. That's where my hope is today & that's what my essay is about. Best,
Sabine
George Gantz wrote on Apr. 15, 2014 @ 23:29 GMT
Thanks for a great essay and for your effort to tackle the "how" question about shaping human behavior in ways that will support better long term decision-making. I think this can help, but I'm not sure how much the proposed solution will be able to accomplish. Priority maps and personal preferences are not, at least not yet, based on hard science - as I understand it they can be measured through surveys relative to community norms, but I'm not sure they are useful in shaping community norms. As I discuss in my essay the Tip of the Spear, a community (networked as an institution) needs to sustain shared moral values and cooperative behaviors....
On a different note, how do we protect individual data from being "mined" for commercial purposes rather than social ones? The internet started as an academic initiative - but is not longer subject to those community norms. Moreover, immense volumes of data on social media, personal preferences in entertainment and purchasing practices are being collected and used to tailor what we see (or buy) without our knowledge or informed consent. How could the very valuable data from priority maps be collected and shared without becoming additional commercial fodder?
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 10:39 GMT
George,
Your comment is interesting because you assume that commercial purposes are not in the interest of individuals. That is a very common attitude of course, but reflect for a moment how disturbing this is. The free market economy is supposed to work *towards* our interests, how did we end up in this situation? Well, the reason is that we're not taking into account all of people's priorities...
In any case, for what the protection of individual information is concerned, this is a political problem that requires a solution that balances suitable privacy protection with economic interests. Maybe the balance we presently have is somewhat off, alright, but the real problem is that the way how we aggregate people's opinions and convert them into regulations and policies is slow and works badly. If you want better privacy protection you first need to better know people's priorities about privacy protection. That brings me back to the priority maps... You see why I say it's the mother of all problems?
Best,
Sabine
George Gantz replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 17:53 GMT
Thanks, Sabine - Agreed, the market economy does work efficiently to satisfy individual wants but it does NOT take all priorities into account - including the priority of being left alone. Moreover, I some market interests are better than others at influencing the political process and the accepted "rules of the game" - in order to maximize the interests of certain individuals.
I think there is a larger issue here, one that I address in
my essay "The Tip pif the Spear". The institutions that we are seeking to influence, including markets, governments, media, social movements, religions, and science itself), have evolved to the point of exhibiting autonomous behaviors. By analogy to the human body, the system (markets) bends the behaviors of component units (us) to its ends, not the other way around.
That said, universal priority maps would provide improved "signaling" between component units and increase efficiency in institutions - but this is not the same as shaping community norms and the shared moral framework they represent.
Thanks - George
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 17, 2014 @ 08:13 GMT
George,
I think what you are saying is closely related to my point, though you use a different vocabulary. The institutions that 'we are seeking to influence' is what I call 'the systems that govern our lives'. They are not of course autonomous, but their behavior is so complex that we fail to comprehend it. It doesn't do, basically, what we 'want' (what our priorities are). The function of the priority maps is to enable this comprehension. Thanks for pointing me towards your essay, which I will read with interest. Best,
Sabine
John Brodix Merryman wrote on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 00:14 GMT
Sabine,
It seems you start out with trying to save the world and conclude by arguing for better scientific networking. At the dawn of western civilization, with the story of Adam and Eve, it was recognized that knowledge is a double edged sword. Will expediting the increase of knowledge save the world, or speed up the rate of its consumption? Complexity tends to increase until it becomes...
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Sabine,
It seems you start out with trying to save the world and conclude by arguing for better scientific networking. At the dawn of western civilization, with the story of Adam and Eve, it was recognized that knowledge is a double edged sword. Will expediting the increase of knowledge save the world, or speed up the rate of its consumption? Complexity tends to increase until it becomes unstable, then it resets to a more stable state. Just look at atomic structure. What if rather than creating ever more feedback loops, we were to examine the ones which already existed, to find ways to make them more environmentally friendly? Right now the most monumental and powerful feedback loop on earth, short of the convection cycle, is the financial/monetary system.
My argument is that the major conceptual flaw build into it, which turns it from an effective economic circulation system into a monstrous tumor, is that we imagine money to be a form of commodity, rather than a contract. Now if you had such a magical property which could, in sufficient quantities, provide you with just about anything available to anyone, you would want as much of it as possible and so would every living human on the planet; Right? Then the people in charge of this system would have monumental power over the rest of society, just so long as they continue producing these magical promises. Yet on the other hand, if you understood those pieces of paper were simply notational chits from the broader community and any value assigned them was entirely dependent on the economic well-being and general long term health of said community, you might be happy with just having enough to get by, knowing there is some flexibility in the system and if you come up short on occasion, you'll probably be able to slide by and anyone caught hoarding these promises would likely have the opposite occur, that the community might just turn its collective shoulder and ignore that person's pile of chits. Then there wouldn't be any tendency to draw value out of the community and environment to store as chits, because the greatest store of value would logically be a strong community and healthy environment, not a financial system bloated with far more promises than an increasingly burdened economy can ever possibly hope to fulfill. Would that make sense to you?
Regards,
John M
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 10:54 GMT
John,
I carefully avoided to get into a discussion of economic theory in my essay. Yes, the current economic system has its flaws, even the theory of it is flawed. This has been pointed out by a lot of people for decades, but what difference has it made? That brings you to the starting point of my essay...
You write "if you understood those pieces of paper were simply notational chits from the broader community and any value assigned them was entirely dependent on the economic well-being and general long term health of said community, you might be happy with just having enough to get by"
You are making a big assumption here about human behavior and I don't think that it is true. I wrote a paper some while ago on the problem of aggregating the utility function in economics:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id
=1754423
and I argued there that what people really want to maximize in their life are possibilities. They want money because money is future options. Now the problem is that we have limited resources and that means we have to distribute them in a way that most people agree on is 'fair' in some way. For this we presently use the economic system, and how we think about money will change very little about that. Best,
Sabine
John Brodix Merryman replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 11:44 GMT
Sabine,
Unfortunately the way the monetary system functions, it naturally accumulates and coalesces these obligations in fewer hands, almost as a gravitational process and historically there have been a variety of ways this build up is resolved; inflation, debt jubilees, social break downs, war, etc. Our mathematical and information technology resources are being put to the purpose of creating history's largest such creation of financial obligations. So I can understand why any reasonable person would want to just stay away from it and frankly I usually do. That's why I frequent the science blogs and forums, such as yours on occasion, and only read economic ones, but the topic of this contest asks how to best steer the future of humanity. In which case, trying to figure out how to unravel the financial conundrum seems unavoidable.
Regards,
John M
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John Brodix Merryman replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 12:09 GMT
Ps,
In your essay, you do go into how best to link scientific ideas and that does go to how we categorize and process ideas and concepts, so basically what I'm saying is that money needs to go from the commodity category, to the contract category. If someone gives you a piece of paper that says, 'IOU one ounce of gold,' is that really a commodity, in itself, or is it a contract? This system certainly treats such obligations as commodities and goes out of its way to manufacture as many as possible. Right now there are something like 900 trillion dollars worth of derivatives contracts alone, which amount to a form of parimutual wagering, based on a 60 trillion dollar world economy. Obviously those most able to pull the strings in this world would prefer most people not bother themselves thinking about these things and none of us, even those actually riding this wave, can really do anything about it. Eventually though, this wave will crash up on the shores of a larger reality and those of us left to pick up the pieces will need to ask themselves if they really want to repeat the process, with far fewer resources, or is there a lesson to be learned.
Regards,
JM
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 07:02 GMT
Money is neither a commodity nor a contract, it's a promise. It's a social construct. It only works because most of us have trust others will honor it.
Be that as it may, before there was money there was barter and if people lose their faith in money, that's what they will go back to. That makes economy more cumbersome but doesn't stop it. The problem with the financial system is a lack of insight about its behavior. It's this lack of insight that prevents us from improving on the shortcomings that you point out and it's this lack of insight that I address in my essay. Best,
Sabine
Turil Sweden Cronburg replied on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 13:20 GMT
What if people, instead of the zero-sum idea of barter/money, started to work with the larger world the way they work normally in their day to day lives with their families and friends? Families and friends don't use a zero-sum/competitive system for resource allocation, instead they use a system of (freely) giving what is available to give and using whatever is freely available to improve their lives. In other words, normal, healthy relationships where we take care of ourselves using what's available.
The barter/competition/money/zero-sum system is artificial, and gets in the way of healthy relationships, and makes it more likely that we'll get sick, because resources are hoarded, rather than freely circulating. And most humans instinctively understand this, but simply don't know what else to do, since they feel trapped by the brainwashing that they've been raised with.
Which means it's up to the more intelligent, creative thinkers who can see how insane/sick the zero-sum/competition system is, and instead promote, use, and celebrate the healthy, natural, normal system of choosing to do what we love and offer what we have in excess, independently of the mainstream corporate/government silliness.
Human nature is creative, intelligent, pro-social, and curious, and all we have to do to ensure that these traits are expressed is to stop letting stupid ideas like competition/monetization get in the way!
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John Brodix Merryman replied on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 17:01 GMT
Sabine,
Yes, the nature of finance does need the best minds studying it and not just for their own profit.
Actually there has been a number of studies, both historically and of aboriginal societies and the medium for barter comes late in the game, after systems of social and civil contracts and obligations are established and then they become another traded good. Such as a token...
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Sabine,
Yes, the nature of finance does need the best minds studying it and not just for their own profit.
Actually there has been a number of studies, both historically and of aboriginal societies and the medium for barter comes late in the game, after systems of social and civil contracts and obligations are established and then they become another traded good. Such as a token for grain in the community storage, gold certificates from a goldsmith etc, which then become goods in themselves. What this has since morphed into is that as the economies grow larger, there develops a need for these tokens far greater than their creation, so then it starts to take on a life of its own, so then the idea of futures comes into play. That I will give you some value that I don't yet actually have. Then forms of insurance, etc. Then there get to be situations where there are far more of these promises than can possibly be fulfilled and it collapses. When it gets to this stage, it really does become a giant ponzi scheme, as ever more promises have to be made, just to roll over the ones already due. My point is that if people learned from grade school economics, that these are contracts, not actual commodities, then, hopefully, the bubble will be understood as a bubble much earlier in the process and so it can unravel a little quicker and not use so many resources to support it. As it is, people tend to think of 'their money' as property, rather than promises from the larger community, so they lose sight of the connection between the value of their money and the health of the community. What if your heart, or your brain, or your muscles each thought of the blood as their own and tried to hold onto it as much as possible? Now economists understand why the circulation of money is important, yet when everyone wants to hold as much of this 'property' as possible, flow slows. Yet you will not find much in the way of popular descriptions of economics explaining this.
An interesting essay on Modern Monetary Theory in this month's New Inquiry.
Regards,
John M
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Tommaso Bolognesi wrote on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 08:41 GMT
I was struck by this sentence at the bottom of your abstract:
`Only then, when we can make informed decisions by feeling rather than thinking, will we be able to act and respond to the challenges we face.`
Yes, we are lazy, at least relative to the huge and growing amount of information that we would like to be able to digest daily (and, ehm, I still have to read your essay :-) You seem to imply that `feeling` is faster, more efficient, less costly, and transparent to laziness, than `thinking`: feeling and intuition at the basis of decision making, in place of `traditional` thinking. I suspect that that feeling and intuition may play a stronger role than thinking in several contexts, for example in educating children, or even in scientific investigation, but always at the level of a single person's individual decision. When cooperation is necessary, for handling problems at a more global level, then you need to communicate, and thinking / speaking / writing (increasingly slow and laziness-vulnerable processes) become necessary. Or not?
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 10:45 GMT
Tommaso,
Yes, they become necessary - but we don't make sufficient use of them, that's my point. Most people do not handle problems on a global level with thinking/speaking/writing. They do not handle them at all. I basically try to take humans at face value. There's many things we should be doing, but we don't. Why is that and what can we do about it? That's the question my essay addresses. Best,
Sabine
Member Dean Rickles wrote on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 09:41 GMT
Hi Sabine,
Your essay contains contains very similar diagnoses of the problems to mine (so, naturally, I liked it a lot!). Especially:
"We reached this gridlock because the human brain did not evolve to understand the consequences of individual actions in networks of billions of people. We are bad in making good long-term decisions and do not care much what happens in other parts of the planet to people we have not and will most likely never meet. We have no intuitive grasp on the collective behavior of large groups and their impact on our environment, and what little grasp we have is prone to cognitive biases and statistical errors, many of which are now subject of new scientific areas like game theory, behavioral economics and decision science."
and "We solve them by bringing close that what is far away."
My essay focuses exactly on what to do to close the gap when what is far away is in the future: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2030.
Best,
Dean
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 10:18 GMT
Hi Dean,
Thanks for the pointer, I left a note regarding your essay in your comment section. Regarding the future: I believe in the block universe. I agree that how we think about the future is presently not very helpful to 'steer' it, but even in the (rather unlikely event) that people would change their way of thinking because some physicists have a funny new interpretation of quantum mechanics that wouldn't make much of a difference.
We all have conflicts between our short-term and long-term priorities. Try to imagine for a moment these priorities belong to different people, then we'd go and weigh them both in some aggregation mechanism, may that be our economic system or a political one. But the problem is, if these conflicting priorities belong to the same person, he or she can take only one action. That's what the economists call 'revealed preferences'. Now our political systems are a sloppy way of taking into account that these economically revealed preferences neglect part of the story - you could say, the part of people's thought that did not transfer into a monetary revelation. But it works badly, to say the least, because it's too complicated. That brings you to the starting point of my essay. Best,
Sabine
Author Sabine Hossenfelder wrote on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 10:01 GMT
John C Hodge,
I agree on your pov regarding stone age thinking. It is a shame, really, that evolutionary psychology has produced so much nonsense, because now it's hard to take any of it seriously.
I try not to use the word 'moral', it is too ambiguous. Morals, in my opinion, are an emergent phenomenon, codes of behavior, much like, but stronger and more universal than, social norms. In any case, people tend to misunderstand my use of the word, so I try to do without it.
I don't think that competition is necessary provided that we find a way to scale and transfer social phenomena, but it is arguably very efficient. It seems to me though that our present societies already put too much emphasis on competition. Take eg the whole discussion about privacy of information and nations spying on each other - that's all due to competition. Right now I think we'd need more collaboration, that would free much needed resources. In the long run, we need a way to better balance competition with collaboration. Best,
Sabine
John C Hodge wrote on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 16:27 GMT
Sabine
Thank you so much for your note. Now I see your comment “No, the major challenge,…, is to convert these ideas into action.”
I have “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization” but have only scanned it. The same with his “Environment, Scarcity, and Violence”. I omitted a reference to them because he makes things a bit more complex than they are, in my opinion. That is why I went with Tainter. For example, I agree with Friedman that the Federal Reserve was a big mistake. I suppose he would call me a “neo-Malthusisn”. I did like his stages of denial, some of his income gap comments, and the chapter of “why don’t we face reality”. You can see examples of the latter in these essays.
All his tectonic stresses and conditions in Tainter are present today and have been for a long time. The limited space left me with commenting, “However, the collapse is a failure of the society’s organization to adapt to nature and to the changing conditions.” That is, he is only describing some of the natural conditions imposed on humanity all the time.
Let me take this opportunity to address another idea I think you are tending toward. Almost all the essays have suggestions with little chance of happening. My last comment “The barons are organizing.” suggest the required action is already happening. Look at the conditions that forced the barons to action. They are all present in the US today. Many today are already taking action toward a thing like the Magna Carta that I suggest is a new constitution. The TEA party (they want a smaller Federal Government) is becoming stronger. The secession movement is small but growing. Many are writing books and article s suggesting constitutional amendments (Friedman, M. R. Levin, R. E. Barnet, etc.). The path toward the kind of constitutional change is already happening. I hope the leaders of today are as smart as the leaders in 1787.
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 07:07 GMT
Hi John,
Yes, I agree, most of the suggestions in this essay contest will never happen, they will not even be tried. I think the basic reason that the forces in the US do not propel people into action is that they still have bread and games, as the Romans put it. Best,
B.
Gbenga Michael Ogungbuyi wrote on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 23:25 GMT
Fellow Comrade,
Your article is an intellectual knowledge base. Special appreciation must be given to every author for creating time to share their thoughts. Many time it is not the reward that is attached to this contest that interest me but ability to reason out facts in solving problems. And this is one of my hobbies!
However, I will like to point out some point in your high...
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Fellow Comrade,
Your article is an intellectual knowledge base. Special appreciation must be given to every author for creating time to share their thoughts. Many time it is not the reward that is attached to this contest that interest me but ability to reason out facts in solving problems. And this is one of my hobbies!
However, I will like to point out some point in your high capacity essay. I understand your point on the use of Gamification to balance people's priority. Researcher at the University of Hamburg Germany have criticized the use of Gamification as not being fun and creating an artificial sense of achievement. They concluded that gamification can encourage unintended behaviours may be misleading for those unfamiliar with gaming. Your model of priority map is also good but how will more than 1 billion people mostly in the developing countries who do not have access to basic education use the system and gamification? Some legal restrictions also apply for the following reasons criminals,fraudsters and money launderers
You have said it all. Human wants decision that suits him even though it against the social, economic and environmental issues. You are right. The nagging voice that say he should make better decision as you said. But at the end he end up doing contrary. I call this disobedience to the universal law. Man true heart condition is the true reflection of his heart. On Monday this week, a bomb exploded killing scores and injured hundreds of people in Nigeria capital, Abuja. After the incident, it is possible for the man responsible to come around and show cheap empathy. He caused emotional trauma to his fellow Nigerians because he did not keep the universal law. This is what I call upsetting the ecosystem's balance in my article. I make a lot of reference to 2008 economic downturn. Ben Bernanke in his time alluded to the fact that the banks and bankers did not keep the financial laws which was the cause of the mortgage in US and worldwide. Please refer to my article.
You suggested the use of questionnaire in making decision for right candidate during. This is the system of true democracy. But as I said earlier man's appearance is not the true state of his mind. Why do many politicians failed to manifest their manifesto. It is simple, they couldn't obey the universal law.
Summarily, I wish the whole world is enlightened to use gamification and also in the absence of criminals,fraudsters and money launderers! But if the criminals and fraudsters can keep the law, the global ecosystem will be in a dynamic and balance equilibrium as I asserted in my article
This is an exciting intellectual debate platform.
Stay lifted!
Gbenga
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Gbenga Michael Ogungbuyi replied on Apr. 21, 2014 @ 23:11 GMT
Dear Prof,
I observe you have not commented on my post. I will be glad you comments and also try to read my article and possibly leave a comment- Perhaps some statement were not clearly stated in my previous post. There was electricity failure (power cut) in my area and the PC battery was almost empty and so the post was sent in hurry!
In my article, the hypothesis is hinged on "No natural disaster" which appears to be constant since humanity cannot interfere with this. As you know, certain assumptions could be made while conducting academic research; should we therefore put the “side criticisms and restrictions” on gamification has explained in my previous post as variables to be kept constant? I am a little familiar with your model of gamification that is why I have raised this point. Could you also check up with the researchers at the University of Hamburg Germany if possible? Thank you.
You wrote about human’s action matching his reaction. Likewise his “intuitive feeling matches with decision”. This is similar to some of my outlooks in my article and really be glad if you can read it. I based my philosophy of human’s actions on Newton laws. Please kindly find time to read it and leave a comment behind.
Thank you.
Gbenga
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Stuart Marongwe replied on Apr. 25, 2014 @ 15:16 GMT
Igwe
I think you addressed the author as comrade. This salutation has some political connotations. That's just my thoughts.
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Domenico Oricchio wrote on Apr. 16, 2014 @ 23:34 GMT
A beautiful essay.
It is interesting the acceleration of the idea change approaching far away events with close backreaction, there is an analogy with an accelerated biologic evolution with radiation, or chemical mutagen (on the dna), or an accelerated change in cultural memes (with many innovators that break the knowledge system): it seem that environments that have too fast changing must have a faster cultural change, but there is a limited teaching capacity; a kindly cultural manipulation is natural for a teacher, but I see the futuristic prevision of probable brain implants like a nightmare (the television advertising like an anticipation).
I am not interested to the current practice of publication, that I see like a nonsense, but if a group of researchers in a scientific field, would vote in a manifest way an open article that it is read, and understood (and this essay contest is an example that sometimes work), then everything would be more democratic, and interesting (no referees, no style, no restriction, only good readers of a successful article).
I am thinking that any limitation (not due to ethical reasons) in scientific papers, and in the exploration of the frontiers of the knowledge, limits our capacity of adapt to the environment, along the same road, without variety.
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 07:10 GMT
Domenico,
See, your vision of researchers 'democratically' voting on papers suffers from exactly the problem I discuss: It's a good idea, in principle, but it doesn't work, in practice. It's been tried, repeatedly, and it failed. People do not take the time to participate in such a rating. Most papers never get read. You do not change people's behavior by telling them what would be good if *everybody* did it, but by giving them something that is good for them individually. That's a variant of the collective action problem. Best,
B.
Domenico Oricchio replied on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 23:14 GMT
Thank you Bee.
Yes, I think that the idea is too simple, but an arxiv with (a possible) vote after reading could work, with a different impact factor (so that there is a double impact factor to compare).
The problem is that now if there is a good research line, then each search to publish in this research topics, because there are citations on the topics, so that it is interest in the Universities to product the same research (with no diversification and no velocity in the adaptation); so that I think that if someone work in a field, and someone has the possibility to indicating that some research is interesting, with a different method, with a different line of research, with a different impact factor (this is the nonsense, to focus the research in winning political strategies), then there is a better use of the resource.
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Eckard Blumschein wrote on Apr. 17, 2014 @ 08:17 GMT
Dear Sabine,
You wrote: "I may be naïve and I may be wrong." Yes, perhaps. This makes you cute. May I ask you how your job in HEP contributes to rescuing the world? Voting for SPD or Greens and limiting the number of own children is perhaps not enough.
I hope you will not mistake me.
Best,
Eckard
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 07:12 GMT
Eckard,
I wrote about this here:
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-quantize-g
ravity.html
Which is think will answer your question.
Eckard Blumschein replied on Apr. 19, 2014 @ 04:53 GMT
Sabine,
You wrote "we still build on the new ground discovered by physicists a century ago", "There MUST be more to find than we have found so far", "occurrence of singularities in unquantized gravity", "I don't believe in the non-deterministic part of " [quantum mechanics], "all the rest ... is perfectly fine", "We know the theory MUST exist", "Causality depends on the metric structure of space-time", "A superposition is a state in the Hilbert space like any other state", "It evolves unitary and causally like everything else". Did I get the essence? Good luck.
Being much older, I need no complaining about rejected research proposals. I am merely collecting arguments that may question some of the basics your hopes are built on. Sharing some of your doubts, my approach is more basic. I question any singularities and absolute infinities in physics. I enjoy how Roger Schlafly destroyed spacetime: Time is what distinguishes the past from the future.
Eckard
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Vladimir F. Tamari wrote on Apr. 17, 2014 @ 11:36 GMT
Sabine
It is clear that much thought and a sincere wish to find the right way to solve the looming questions facing humanity has gone into the writing of this essay. You may be quite right in your assessment how much effort an individual is willing or can spend towards solving problems beyond his or her immediate experience.
With the tools available now or will be available soon the implementation of your priority map feedback scheme may well be possible. My iphone priority app will warn me "do not buy that," when its camera sees my hand reaching out for an environmentally harmful product at the supermarket.
I feel though that you have left out a large part of the problem and the solution: the collective organization of society and educating it to act in the right way. This has been traditionally the role of religion and politics - good governance is necessary for solving our global problems. Scientists need not be the only source of new ideas - artists of all kind are essential to translate our inner hopes and fears into a form that can be fed into your priority maps.
Best wishes
Vladimir
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Joe Fisher wrote on Apr. 17, 2014 @ 14:36 GMT
Dear Professor Hossenfelder,
Your essay was beautifully written and held my interest throughout. I do hope that it does well in the competition.
With regards,
Joe Fisher
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 20, 2014 @ 06:38 GMT
Wesley Wayne Hansen wrote on Apr. 17, 2014 @ 18:49 GMT
Sabine,
In 1995, shortly after my honorable discharge from the U. S. Marine Corps, I graduated from commercial dive school and have primarily worked in the petro-chemical and energy sectors ever since. Based on this experience, I find the idea that humans can self-regulate their way to a sustainable future somewhat naive. Don't get me wrong, I feel your Priority Maps would make for an...
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Sabine,
In 1995, shortly after my honorable discharge from the U. S. Marine Corps, I graduated from commercial dive school and have primarily worked in the petro-chemical and energy sectors ever since. Based on this experience, I find the idea that humans can self-regulate their way to a sustainable future somewhat naive. Don't get me wrong, I feel your Priority Maps would make for an interesting research program, I just don't feel your assumptions, which you conveniently placed in the conclusion, have any basis in reality. Allow me to elaborate if you will.
Houston, Texas, hosts
CERAweek, a gathering of top executives from all of the world's energy companies, once a year. 2013 was the first time ever that they acknowledged the existence of anthropocentric global warming. Of course the round-table discussion they held on the subject didn't focus on what they could do to mitigate anthropocentric contributions to the phenomenon, rather, it was on what they could do to mitigate the effects anthropocentric global warming could potentially have on their business model, but at least they acknowledged its existence. Even the
investors in said companies are demanding an assessment of global warming. Meanwhile, conservative politicians and blowhards such as Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump continue to insist it's just a myth propagated by the liberal media. The conservative columnist who writes for The Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, even quoted your favorite physicist, Freeman Dyson, to support his latest
tirade. And he received full support from
Forbes magazine, of course.
I personally had a role in shutting down an operation that was illegally storing and recycling used drilling mud. They were storing the mud in open earth pits - no liners or other containment barriers - just long enough for the drill filings to settle, then mixing the chemicals in the pit by cycling the mud through a system of mix pumps, and then re-introducing the chemicals back into their mud production process. The open earth pits were located just upstream from a large, freshwater lake which was supplying drinking water for two large communities. The man bankrolling the operation has a Harvard MBA and a Forbes profile, of course.
I've had the occasion to get to know a gentleman who works in the Major Offenders Division of a major Environmental Enforcement Agency and he can tell you some tales. He makes a living off of concrete manufacturers and readily admits that he only halts a very small fraction of violators. He's arrested people who are getting paid, and paid rather handsomely, to properly dispose of hazardous materials for dumping said materials illegally and at public detriment.
I have another acquaintance from the commercial dive industry, Paul McKim, who was once a legend in the industry; for a good while he held records for both depth and duration in saturation and was one of eleven American divers recruited by the government of England to implement dive operations in the North sea. In 2001 Paul secured exclusive rights to utilize an innovative, one-man, autonomous submarine with a tremendous depth rating in oilfield support operations and, with said rights, his knowledge of the offshore environment, and his vast network, he developed an offshore support company specializing in deep water work called Deep Marine Technologies (DMT). In 2001 DMT grossed just under $600,000 in revenue; by 2005 Paul was on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine and DMT grossed just under $60 million.
To facilitate the exponential growth of DMT, Paul brought in a venture capitalist from Minnesota, an Iranian/American named Kazimeny; Kazimeny was "friends" with the U. S. Congressman from Minnesota, Norm Coleman. Not long after Paul and DMT were featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Coleman and his wife embarked on a $400,000 renovation of their home in Minnesota. Naturally wanting to help his "friend," Kazimeny decided to funnel $100,000 through DMT to the Colemans. Norm Coleman's wife was an insurance agent licensed in Minnesota and worked as an independent contractor for Hayes Insurance, a company owned by another Coleman "friend." So Kazimeny simply created a fraudulent paper trail demonstrating that DMT engaged Hayes Insurance for "risk analysis" work and instructed DMT's CFO to pay Hayes Insurance, hence, Coleman's wife, $100,000 in four installments. Never mind that DMT, like most offshore companies, utilized Llyods for all of its insurance needs.
After the first $25,000 payment, McKim found out about the ploy and put a stop to it. Kazimeny illegally manipulated the board and promptly fired McKim from his own company. Paul sued in the State District Court of Texas claiming breach of fiduciary duty, amongst other things, and Kazimeny promptly put DMT into bankruptcy because it was McKim's only source of income. Kazimeny displayed absolutely no regard for DMT employees or anyone depending on DMT's services.
Of course the FBI became involved but the investigation went nowhere. Norm Coleman was trying to get re-elected when it all played out and the resulting
scandal was partially responsible for his losing a run-off to the comedian, Al Franken. Today Coleman is a conservative
lobbyist in Washington so now he and his wife can whore themselves with the full support and blessing of the American Supreme Court. Do you think Norm Coleman is the exception or the rule? Call me a cynic, but I say he's the rule.
Not long ago I watched a "gentleman" driving a fancy Recreational Vehicle, a motor home in the $80,000 - $100,000 range, dump his motor home's septic in the city storm sewer. Based on scientific analysis and extrapolation, approximately 350,000 - 400,000 barrels of used motor oil find their way into the Galveston Bay every year. This at a time when all automotive parts stores AND Walmart offer used motor oil recycling FREE OF CHARGE! I could go
on and
on . . .
So perhaps you would be interested in the
Lifeboat Foundation, Ha, Ha, Ha . . .
"I am presently working on three related topics:
1. the paleolithic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a model of what humans have evolved to live like, and thus a good starting point if you want to understand how we can optimize our physical and mental health, strength and well-being
2. the concept of challenge as the fundamental driver of action and development in all agents, human as well as non-human
3. the problem of coordination in self-organization: how can a collective of initially autonomous agents learn to collaborate in the most productive way without any central supervisor telling them how to do it
The three topics are related in that they are all applications of what I call the "ontology of challenge and action," which sees the world as being constituted out of actions and their agents, and challenges as situations that elicit those actions. The life of a hunter-gatherer is essentially a sequence of (mostly unpredictable) challenges - mostly minor, sometimes major. In contrast, our modern civilized life has tried to maximally suppress or exclude uncontrolled challenges (such as accidents, germs, hot and cold temperatures, wild animals). Without these challenges, the various human subsystems that evolution has produced to deal with these challenges (e.g. the immune system, muscles, fast reflexes) remain weak and underdeveloped, leading to a host of diseases and mental problems.
The link with self-organization is that the action of one agent will in general change the environment in such a way as to produce a challenge to one or more other agents. If these agents react "appropriately," their interaction may become cooperative or synergetic; otherwise it is characterized by friction. In the best case, patterns of synergetic interaction propagate via the challenges they produce to the whole collective, which thus starts to act in a coordinated fashion."
- Francis Heylighen, pages 316-317 in
Between Ape and Artilect"I don't like the phrase 'existential risk' for several reasons. It presupposes that we are clear about exactly what 'existence' we are risking. Today, we have a clear understanding of what it means for an animal to die or a species to go extinct. However, as new technologies allow us to change our genomes and our physical structures, it will become much less clear to us when we lose something precious. 'Death' and 'extinction,' for example, become much more amorphous concepts in the presence of extensive self-modification.
It's easy to identify our humanity with our individual physical form and our egoic minds, but in reality, our physical form is an ecosystem, only 10% of our cells are 'human.' Our minds are also ecosystems composed of interacting sub-personalities. Our humanity is as much in our relationships, interconnections, and culture as it is in our individual minds and bodies. The higher levels of organization are much more amorphous and changeable. For these reasons, it could be hard to pin down what we are losing at the moment when something precious is lost. {Addition to clear with Steve: It is more likely that we will only realize what we have lost, long after it's already gone for good.}
So, I believe the biggest 'existential risk' is related to identifying the qualities that are most important to humanity and to ensuring that technological forces enhance those rather than eliminate them. Already today we see many instances where economic forces act to create 'soulless' institutions that tend to commodify the human spirit rather than inspire and exalt it."
- Steve Omohundro, pages 326 – 327 in Between Ape and Artilect
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Roger Schlafly wrote on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 00:26 GMT
Do you have any example where greater communciation or feedback loop would be useful? You mention some things like plastic in the ocean, but in my experience, people think that there is much more plastic in the ocean than there really is. What will be accomplished by better info about plastic in the ocean?
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 20, 2014 @ 06:37 GMT
Hi Roger,
They would know how to best dispose of garbage so it does not end up in the ocean, if they care about this. The information that I mean that people need is not the amount of plastic in the ocean - that's pretty useless. I mean, what's that number good for? People have a 'priority' about how relevant it is for them to keep the ocean clean, prevent birds from dying, keep trash of the beaches, etc etc. The question is how do they know how well their own behavior contributes to the problem? That's what you need the feedback loop for. It would contain, for example, information about where a wrapping or empty bottle is likely to be shipped and how likely it is to end up in the ocean on its course etc. Keep in mind though that this is not to convince people that they should buy this or separate their garbage like that - it simply tells them what will happen if (with a certain probability). It's up to them to decide how much it matters to them.
Best,
Sabine
Anonymous wrote on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 03:57 GMT
Hi Sabine,
I enjoyed reading your essay. I like the way you have focused on the problem of implementing solutions. Bringing the problems close and feeding back relevant information to allow good decision making are two very important points you raise.I agree that having solutions and being able to implement them to give significant change do not currently go hand in hand. Breaking it into a 5 point plan makes it seem more achievable.
I am 'creeped out' by the idea of brain implants to help people 'feel' what is 'right'. It seems a slippery slope to fully automated mind control where people are given what to think but feel it is the product of their own mind. I'm quite creeped out by the whole idea of transhumanism, merging with the machine and in the future AI. I think the suggested brain implant is the first step that crosses the boundary of what it is to be human. I agree it might make life easier if information did not have to be gathered , evaluated and then utilized for good decision making but freedom of thought and being able to find alternative viewpoints and think differently is also important for progress. If we already 'feel' that we have the necessary information there will be no drive to seek further or alternative information.
Would the brain implants be compulsory? Or just marketed as a very cool, socially responsible, time saving technology? Would there be peer pressure from those with implants on those without? Would those with implants consider themselves superior, more responsible people?
Sorry for dwelling on that 'creepy' aspect, which is only a small part of your enjoyable, relevant, very well reasoned and presented work. Good luck, Georgina
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Georgina Woodward replied on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 13:20 GMT
That Anonymous Apr. 18, 2014 @ 03:57 GMT was me.
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Georgina Woodward replied on May. 13, 2014 @ 04:32 GMT
The future of brain implants, Wall Street journal An interesting article on one of the themes of your essay.
It ends, Quote "Will these devices make our society as a whole happier, more peaceful and more productive? What kind of world might they create?It's impossible to predict. But, then again, it is not the business of the future to be predictable or sugarcoated. As President Ronald Reagan once put it, "The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.""
"The augmented among us-those who are willing to avail themselves of the benefits of brain prosthetics and to live with the attendant risks-will outperform others in the everyday contest for jobs and mates, in science, on the athletic field and in armed conflict. These differences will challenge society in new ways-and open up possibilities that we can scarcely imagine."
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Thomas Howard Ray wrote on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 12:48 GMT
Bee, I don't always agree with you in the details; however, I find that all of your writing has a palpable honesty and fearlessness that commands the respect of any rational thinker.
Here, I agree with you heartily: "The root of the problems that humanity faces today is that our adaptation as a species has fallen behind the changes we have induced ourselves."
My own essay, submitted and not yet published, identifies the same problem and the consequences of the feedback loops it engenders.
Looking forward to stimulating dialoque.
Good job!
All best,
Tom
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 20, 2014 @ 06:31 GMT
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the kind words, I will watch out for your essay :) Best,
Sabine
Thomas Howard Ray replied on Apr. 25, 2014 @ 00:55 GMT
Turil Sweden Cronburg wrote on Apr. 18, 2014 @ 13:10 GMT
“humans don’t care what somebody or some thing thinks they should
be doing. They’ll do whatever they please.”I WISH that were true! If so, we’d be totally functional. Instead humans are easily brainwashed by governments/corporations/media to behave in ways that go against their very nature, making them do self-harming behavior, and turning them into miserable,...
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“humans don’t care what somebody or some thing thinks they should
be doing. They’ll do whatever they please.”I WISH that were true! If so, we’d be totally functional. Instead humans are easily brainwashed by governments/corporations/media to behave in ways that go against their very nature, making them do self-harming behavior, and turning them into miserable, anxious, depressed physically ill folks who don’t understand why they are so sick!
Which is why I totally agree with you that “We have a social problem, not a technological one. “
Once we start a social trend of focusing on taking good care of ourselves, and following our own dreams for doing what we feel most inspired to do in life, and attaining what we most value in the world (doing what we please) we’ll finally start to see humans getting out of their own way, and actually being the forward-thinking, pro-social, intelligent, creative beings that we’re genetically programmed to be, rather than the wage-slave, anti-social, vengeful, paranoid beings that we’ve been convinced we’re “supposed” to be.
To me, as a teacher and counselor, the only real solution I've ever found is to create an environment where individuals feel supported, get their basic needs met (with honestly high quality food, water, air, warmth, light, information, and outlets for expressing their body’s excess matter and energy), and are encouraged to follow their dreams for doing whatever they find most meaningful in life. Gamification, while amusing and currently very hip, is likely to fail for the same reasons that our current monetary system has failed, because it adds an artificial, kludgy system of over-complexity and unscientific/subjective valuation to things that are already naturally understood and simple (homo-sapiens’ natural pro-social, creative, playful exploration and mastery of the world).
However, I do totally agree that we need to make information readily accessible to everyone, because ignorance does no one any good! The more information an individual has access to, the better they are able to make decisions based on reality, rather than fantasy. We need to provide unconditional access to high quality communication tools for anyone who wants them.
I also like your idea of priority maps. That’s similar to my own proposal in my essay. Sharing our goals, wants, and offers is crucial to bringing the stuff that is out there to the people who need it to do their best work. I envision a matchmaking system that works like a personal dating service, only for everything. And I mean everything! You want X, I have X to offer. That’s the nervous system of the world. Then we just need an efficient circulatory system for the world to move X from me to you, and we’re all set.
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 20, 2014 @ 06:29 GMT
Turil,
You have it upside down. You can't make people behave 'against their very nature' - that's an oxymoron. Yes, governments and corporations (via the media mostly) exploit human nature to their own advantage. That too, is human nature... You write:
"Once we start a social trend of focusing on taking good care of ourselves..."
How do you want to start such a 'trend'? See, that's what I mean. There are plenty ideas of what we should do or could do, but in practice nothing happens because you don't generate 'social trends' by telling people it would be good if they did xyz. That's exactly the problem my essay latches on. Best,
Sabine
Turil Sweden Cronburg replied on Apr. 21, 2014 @ 14:57 GMT
As I said, I WISH it were true that you can't make people behave against their nature. But that's just not the way humans work. We have the ability to consciously choose to not breathe, or eat, for example, and that's just the very beginning of what we tend to do that is unnatural and against our body's needs.
Though I understand that you might want to include everything we choose to do as "natural". (Which is reasonable in a certain way, but sort of meaningless from a discussion point of view!) My point is that people are often given terrible information about what they should do to be happy and healthy, and it makes them make poor choices that harm everyone. The quality of information needs to change if we are to attain a healthy system that moves us forward in evolution (more adaptability).
And how to start a movement? Well, as with all movements, it starts with a small group of committed folks! As my essay suggests, we can start by telling people that they have a right to invest the time and energy in coming to some understanding about what is truly meaningful in their lives, and asking them what they believe they need, in order to be able to reach their highest goals of what they want to contribute to the world (and beyond!).
Also, of course, change always starts within, so asking ourselves what we find most meaningful in our lives, and looking to understand what we need, in order to accomplish our ideals of what we want to contribute to our lives, is where it all really starts. I've done that for myself (and it is the basis for much of my work already, including my blogs and books and artwork and workshops). Perhaps you also have explored what you most want to contribute to the world, and what you are most in need of, for that to happen most effectively?
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Neil Bates wrote on Apr. 19, 2014 @ 16:49 GMT
Good meta-point, Sabine. My own submission, I hope in the pipeline, also deals with the framing issues rather than specific suggestions. Yes indeed, the human mind and will is flawed. I offer some insights and possible avenues regarding those problems, as well as grounds for optimism that our minds are capable of more than we have thought possible. In particular, in regards to "will power" to get things done (although being able to "stop doing" - and resume - is the key to understanding that the faculty exists.)
Neil Bates
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 20, 2014 @ 06:25 GMT
Hi Neil,
Glad to hear you like my essay, I have put yours on the reading list :) Best,
Sabine
Lawrence B Crowell wrote on Apr. 20, 2014 @ 22:40 GMT
I decided to respond to your reply above here.
The argument by those in economic power is that we must grow the economy further in order to have the economic capacity to work on environmental problems. “Tomorrow we will address the environment,” and of course tomorrow we will be saying the same. The climate issue as a social debate, propped up to look like a scientific debate, will transition into a political and policy issue of whether the economic cost warrants solutions to the problem. It will again be “Tomorrow we will …,” and there is always tomorrow where the problems of today, debts, pollution, population and so forth, can be swept into. Largely if you think about it, the big problems of the 1960s such as drug addition, pollution, nuclear weapons and so forth, are still with us. We have in fact over the years solved very little with respect to these types of problems.
As I say in my essay the MWI of quantum mechanics tells us there are a myriad number of worlds with various outcomes. In our past there are worlds where Napoleon won, Hitler won, General Lee got the better of Meade at Gettysburg and so forth. The same holds for the future. I thought about writing an essay on whether we actually steer anything, or whether our conscious decisions alter either the probability distributions in the MWI branching of the world, or by some means weight the selection of these worlds. Maybe consciousness is just an illusion whereby we observe a certain eigenbranching of the world. Of course then again MWI as an interpretation may not be testable and all of this amounts to metaphysics.
Everything is easy to predict except the future --- Yogi Berra
LC
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Tommaso Bolognesi wrote on Apr. 20, 2014 @ 23:09 GMT
Dear Sabine,
I found several of the ideas expressed in your text quite interesting and original.
We humans are smart in changing the rules of adaptation: we quickly adapt the environment to ourselves, rather than waiting for darwinian evolution to slowly adapt us to the environment, as it did with the rest of the biosphere. But now our adaptation as a species has fallen behind...
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Dear Sabine,
I found several of the ideas expressed in your text quite interesting and original.
We humans are smart in changing the rules of adaptation: we quickly adapt the environment to ourselves, rather than waiting for darwinian evolution to slowly adapt us to the environment, as it did with the rest of the biosphere. But now
our adaptation as a species has fallen behind the changes we have induced ourselves.
So your solution to this problem concentrates on the way the scattered, distant, costly information about the consequences of individual actions (or, more generally, information about how to solve big societal problems) should be turned into close, easily grasped, intuitive, possibly visual messages, thus wiring back into the circuits that our brain is used to work with.
But packing that information in an effective, intuitive way, and moving it close to the individual, or to
the initiators of change, is only half of the problem: before converting that information, one has to build it, i.e., to find or compute a correct solution to the addressed problem.
There are certainly cases (e.g. that of a person throwing an empty plastic bottle in a river) in which it is quite simple to figure out what is the information to be made available to the guy (e.g., showing him a big island of plastic bottles in the ocean). But in many cases the correct action to be taken for solving a societal problem is not knowable, because we are dealing with a complex, layered system, in which emergent phenomena occur.
You write:
We reached this gridlock because the human brain did not evolve to understand the consequences of individual actions in networks of billions of people.Your reaction to this correct observation is essentially: let us reformulate the information about those consequences so that the human brain can better grasp them.
My reaction would rather be: in general, the human brain cannot understand those consequences because we are talking about two distinct levels in an architecture of emergence. Networks of billions of people create emergent phenomena that follow their own dynamics, and cannot be under the control of individuals, by the very definition of emergent phenomenon.
The political, economic, social systems that govern our present day world represent the emergent entities at the next level above that of individual humans. Metaphorically, we are the ants, they are the upper level functions of the anthill. What is the effective power that an individual ant has to steer those upper level functions? Can there be effective interaction and mutual influence between the consciousness and creativity of the super-organism at the upper level, and the supposedly smaller consciousness and creativity of the lower level entities (us)?
If we believe in the beauty and strong explicative power of the notion of emergence (I certainly do), and we rule out the idea of an anthropocentric universe, then shouldn t we conclude that something is happening above our heads that does not care too much about us as individuals?
For example, when you write that these political, economic and social systems are
too slow to adapt to our needs as individuals, I occurred to me that one can reverse the reasoning and take the point of view, and time scales, of these upper level entities: maybe the problem (our problem, not their problem) is that we humans are
too fast in appearing and passing away.
I would be curious to know whether you share some healthy and moderate skepticism about the possibility for us to take the elevator and go talk to the super-organisms at the upper floor.
Best regards
Tommaso
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Michael Allan wrote on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 00:36 GMT
Hello Sabine, I'd like to critique your essay a little. Would you be able to
reciprocate?
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Anselm Smidt wrote on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 17:07 GMT
Emotionen sind ein schlechter Ersatz für FleiB.
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James Lee Hoover wrote on Apr. 22, 2014 @ 17:42 GMT
Sabine<
Your 5 step plan is like a science-aided process. Processes are something common in our corporate world, something that doesn't require thought, only action. Fortunately your steps don't involve just external actions but engaged brains as well.
Your "gamification" is a recognition of the short-term gratification enhancing long-term goals. Certainly it is a recognition of how short-term solutions run rampant in government and corporations, something contributing to long-term needs like climate change being ignored.
Great ideas for a daunting problem
Jim
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James Lee Hoover replied on Jun. 1, 2014 @ 03:48 GMT
Sabine,
Having had rating problems with my Firefox browser and with some 5 days remaining, I am revisiting essays I've read to see if rated. I find that I rated yours on 5/12.
Your given the opportunity, I would like to see your comments on my essay: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2008
Jim
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Rick Searle wrote on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 03:43 GMT
Sabine,
A really well written essay which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. One question I have which I would appreciate your response to: you seem to be more focused on individual or social decision making, but don't really get into political decisionmaking. Isn't it in some sense the job of political institutions to take the long term view and structure society and incentives with that in mind? Of course, in many places they are failing miserably at this long view- is the reason for this the same as with the rest of us?
I would love your feedback and vote on my own essay- even if it might be negative Such is the only way we learn anything. Thanks again for your enjoyable piece.
Rick Searle
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 26, 2014 @ 12:32 GMT
Rick,
Well, 9 pages isn't much space. You're right that I didn't get into political decision making. Political decision making basically means aggregating individual values to convert them into systemic changes. The political systems that we presently have don't do this very well. One major problem with them is that they are too slow compared to the speed at which the economic and financial system reacts. In any case, the mechanism to update the political system is the same again, you need to enable simple feedback about its status combined with knowledge about the system. I certainly hope that we'll see a major reconstruction and update of western democracies in the soon future. I'll have a look at your essay, but I presently have a lot on my reading list already, so it might take a while. Thanks for your feedback,
Sabine
Conrad Dale Johnson wrote on Apr. 24, 2014 @ 15:16 GMT
Sabine --
A very fine essay... like your blog, clear and sensible and fun to read. I think it should win, if only because it might be the only entry with a practical approach. I agree, it doesn't make sense to try to change people, but we can change the informational environment in which they operate. In fact, that environment
is changing quite radically, now -- which is the...
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Sabine --
A very fine essay... like your blog, clear and sensible and fun to read. I think it should win, if only because it might be the only entry with a practical approach. I agree, it doesn't make sense to try to change people, but we can change the informational environment in which they operate. In fact, that environment
is changing quite radically, now -- which is the theme of
my essay on communications technology. And this is an evolution we might hope to "steer" in the manner you suggest.
I like very much that you focus on an everyday issue I can easily relate to -- that no matter how much I'd like to do the right thing and act responsibly, it's so hard to know what that means that I basically give up... just give a few dollars to a few organizations that I hope know what they're doing, and try not to think about it. But it's not just complexity that's my problem. It's also the feeling that whatever I do can make only the tiniest difference to what's happening at a global scale. I don't respond to phone surveys because it's too depressing that what I say won't matter, that it gets reduced to a checkbox answer.
In fact, I think you're wrong that complexity is the root of our problems now. Maybe things look different in the civilized world, but here in the US it seems clear that the free-market principle (which I certainly agree with) has become an ideological screen for the domination of markets by financial power and its political allies. It's a deep problem that so much power lies with institutions, private and public, that have their own very primitive priorities. That's the main obstacle to effective action on climate change, to take one example -- not the complexity of the science.
But the issue you address
is very important, and the notion of priority maps feeding into a global information network gives me hope -- maybe we can find ways to shift the balance back toward a participatory democracy. But I wonder if there's something missing. I think many of us would have a hard time prioritizing our hopes and desires, or even putting them into words. I'm not sure passing out questionnaires will provide the needed input to your system, though if such a project got off the ground, it might help get us focused on what we really need and want. As to brain-scans, I'm happiest believing that no such technology will ever be feasible.
Yet you've already addressed this problem in your essay, suggesting we get the scientists to develop this system for us first, working with a limited range of priorities that might be more explicit and quantifiable. If it works for them, we can think about how to broaden the scope.
Thanks again for giving us such a clear-minded and inventive piece.
-- Conrad
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 26, 2014 @ 12:27 GMT
Hi Conrad,
Thanks for the kind words. I have actually tried to avoid the word 'complexity' though I wasn't entirely successful. It's such a vague expression that people cannot really agree on what it means. Forget about the word for a moment, it remains the fact that humans lack the skill to anticipate large-scale and long-term trends in global systems, systems consisting of people and their environment, of financial and economic transactions, of media influence and political corruption. These problems are solvable if the system is adaptive, but it can only adapt if information about its status is feed back in, leading to a change in behavior. Now the behavior of all these systems is routed through humans, meaning the information has to go through the humans. That's why the priority maps. Best,
Sabine
Robert de Neufville wrote on Apr. 26, 2014 @ 02:36 GMT
Thanks for sharing this essay, Sabine. I think you're right that humanity's greatest challenge is social rather than technological. I think you're also right to say that we could do a lot—both technologically and institutionally—to improve our collective decision-making. If we made choices more rationally and on the basis of better information it would go a long way toward improving our future prospects.
But in my view better information-processing isn't enough. I don't believe most of our problems stem from an inability to reason through the consequences of our actions (although we could certainly do a better job of reasoning through the consequences of our actions!). In my view—this is what I argue in
my own essay—the more profound issue is that there is no single neutral best course of action.
We're not fighting over the steering wheel just because we are stupid, but because we want to go to different places. This makes simply designing an impartial information processing framework a political problem as well as a technological problem. Not only do we have competing visions for the future—I doubt even individuals have stable, well-defined sets of priorities of the kind you seem to imagine—but we disagree over who should receive the benefits of and who should bear the costs of the choices we make. We disagree, in other words, over what's fair.
My own view is that we also need to create institutions that do more align the interests of individuals more directly with the interests of humanity as a whole. Otherwise we may be in danger of steering humanity off a cliff.
Best,
Robert de Neufville
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 26, 2014 @ 12:22 GMT
Robert,
You are right of course that better information routing isn't sufficient, but it is necessary. Of course we do not agree on what to do and also need means to aggregate people's vlues and convert them into action, but for people's opinions to be taken into account they first need to have the information to be able to form an opinion. I will put your essay on the reading list, it sounds interesting :) Best,
Sabine
Mark Avrum Gubrud wrote on Apr. 26, 2014 @ 10:53 GMT
This is still my favorite essay for its informality and straightforward realism. But I'm not seeing the five-step program to save the world. What is new about identifying goals, other than calling this "priority maps (TM)"? OK, everybody should get clear about what they want. And we should all be more efficient and consistent in ordering our priorities and pursuing them effectively. Maybe use some advertising and management techniques on ourselves to keep ourselves on track. What else? I'm seeing some big problems in this world, and maybe small thinking is the best we can do, but...
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 26, 2014 @ 12:18 GMT
Mark,
We are failing to solve problems that affect mankind on a global scale, problems that have many layers, are interrelated, and require that we act in a coordinated way. We are presently unable to solve these problems because we do not, as a collective, have a way to route the necessary information to the actors, that is, individual people. The priority maps are the routers of this information. This is what is necessary to be able to solve the problems. I am not claiming it is sufficient, but without a mechanism like this, I don't think mankind will fare very well in the long run. Sooner or later, this ability to correctly anticipate collective action and its consequences on large scales might develop by natural selection. But I don't think we have the time for this. Best,
Sabine
Neil Bates wrote on Apr. 27, 2014 @ 00:55 GMT
I think it would be a good idea to offer the organizing and reward services you describe in the essay. It comes across as ethically acceptable due to the voluntary nature of these "apps" (should they be called brain apps or etc?) However we can wonder, if the presumed easier access of elites to these apps would give them even more advantage. I wonder if, instead of just reflecting back each individual's preferences, the app could be engineered or even required in regulations, to present at least some portion of global priorities etc? Something to think about at least.
PS, my essay is up at:
Flashlights, Mirrors, Real Brains and Willpower: Steering Ourselves to Steer Our Future.
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Robin Hanson wrote on Apr. 27, 2014 @ 13:01 GMT
People have for many decades worked to create automated tools where users express their preferences and then get decision recommendations. There are even a number of such sites for political recommendations. In general these are not popular, and they are mostly just not good. Most useful decision recommendation tools, like Google or Auto GPSs, don't vary much at all with the person, and so don't bother to collect personal preferences. The useful tools that do vary more by person tend to base their recommendations on a dataset of prior decisions by that person, instead of on explicit abstract expressions of preference.
If our tools are this weak for concrete problems where we have a lot of data and feedback, I don't see much hope for them giving much assistance anytime soon on the big hard problems of how we can each help humanity's future. Datasets of previous decisions by a person aren't very useful, most people don't much understand the relevant abstract concepts, the decision problems are very hard, and there are far more reasons to be concerned that claimed sources of advice are really pushing some agenda.
Really, this isn't a problem that is ready to be handed off to smart robots. We'll have to actually *think* about it ourselves.
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Robert de Neufville replied on Apr. 28, 2014 @ 00:14 GMT
I agree, Robin. I think Sabine is right to argue that better decision-making tools would help. We could certainly improve the tools we have now. But it's not clear humans actually have the stable, well-defined sets of preferences we like to imagine we do. Nor is it clear any set of decision-making tools can really be neutral. How we make decisions inevitably becomes the source of political and ideological conflict.
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 29, 2014 @ 03:58 GMT
Robin,
You are right that these tools exist. I see this as a beginning of a development that we just have to push to its conclusion.
You are also right on your other points. People's preferences aren't stable over time and they are in addition contradictory. That doesn't matter though, the priority maps can be adjusted and that preferences are contradictory just means there is no decision that works towards all.
Regarding the information sources pushing agendas. That is true, but look, this problem is self-correcting once the system is set up properly. So some information provider pushes some agenda. Do you like this agenda? Do you share their values? Are you skeptic about their motives? Do you care about what other people think about them? Which sources do you trust? What do other people think? What is the track record of these information providers?
People aren't stupid. They are influenced by sources 'pushing their agenda' because these sources make their information cheap and because this is allowed in the present system. Now I believe that this is a failure of democracy because people don't want to be influenced this way but don't have the means to express this. If that is so, then giving them the means to express this should address the problem. Best,
Sabine
Wilhelmus de Wilde de Wilde wrote on Apr. 27, 2014 @ 15:01 GMT
Dear Sabine;
You wrote : "some think that quantum computers will solve our problems" and you mention that they will not be able to do so.
My proposition is that quantum computers are not limited by the "black OR white" solution but can also reach all the tones of grey in between the black and white. Once we will have created a quantum computer with 1,000 qubits and control its "decoherence" there will be 10^300 possible configurations, which is more as all the atoms in our visible universe, so we have stocked 10^300 solutions for problems that can occur. Of course this does not mean that any question can be answered, but maybe every question is already answered the moment we achieved this quantum state, even putting on the "power" may not be nececerry...
When we will be able to couple this quantum "computer" to the brain microtubules and so create an entanglement between the available solutions in the "machine" and the quantum coherence in our brain in these microtubules we will have "available" all the answers and maybe able to steer our causal "future".
see
my essay :"STEERING THE FUTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS ?"[:link] Thnak you for putting it on your reading list, maybe you will leave a comment on my thread and rate it in conformity with your appreciation.
best regards
Wilhelmus
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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Apr. 29, 2014 @ 00:33 GMT
Dear Sabine Hossenfelder,
Thanks for your excellent essay, appreciated by many judging from your score and the number of comments. You acknowledge "inborn knowledge", a topic James Putnam's essay deals with.
You also note that our political, economic, and social systems that govern our lives are presently adaptive by trial and error, concluding that this is too slow to solve current...
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Dear Sabine Hossenfelder,
Thanks for your excellent essay, appreciated by many judging from your score and the number of comments. You acknowledge "inborn knowledge", a topic James Putnam's essay deals with.
You also note that our political, economic, and social systems that govern our lives are presently adaptive by trial and error, concluding that this is too slow to solve current problems we face. John C Hodge addresses this in his essay, and is somewhat at odds with this. The key is to partition the system finely -- many instances of local trial and error. Our Internet and existing communication systems will tell us which work and which fail, just as the state of major cities in the US tells us which policies work and which don't work very well. This is essentially parallel processing! Of course, if you are referring to a global system operating by trial and error, then the result is likely catastrophic.
I certainly agree that "quantum computing" will not solve our problems. My favorite line in your essay is:
"The point here is not to manipulate people into changing their ways because I or you or some supercomputer thinks it would be better... The point is to help people make decisions."
I quote you in my essay and suggest change I think would be very helpful.
Your "politics by looks" is shocking but not surprising. That's partly why Washington DC is called "Hollywood for ugly people" (relatively speaking). Also, your example of the mortgage housing crisis was hardly unrecognized. But the politicians who benefited by forcing banks to provide bad loans to their constituents actively opposed efforts to rein things in -- part of the problem I address. I also quibble a little with your distinction between science in the academy and "for-profit" science. Much science today has been politicized, and is essentially "for-profit", whether labeled so or not.
Anyway, thanks again for your fine essay and well thought out approach, and I hope you will find my essay,
the Thermodynamics of Freedom, interesting and compatible with your ideas. I look forward to any comments you might make.
My best regards,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on Apr. 29, 2014 @ 03:43 GMT
Edwin,
Thanks for your comment. I agree with what you say. I see that my sentence about trial and error can be misunderstood. You need a system that provides feedback which tells people whether a decision was working towards or against their goals. I think that is what you mean with 'many local trial and errors' though I think the word 'local' is misleading here. I would call that a small variation and learning. With 'error' I basically mean complete failure that may lead to a breakdown, which is what you want to avoid. Example: You want a feedback that stabilizes the financial system (reaction to small variations) rather than one which only kicks in if things have gone dramatically wrong (error). I can see though that I didn't make this very clear.
In any case, I will have a look at your essay which sounds very interesting. Best,
Sabine
Member Tejinder Pal Singh wrote on Apr. 30, 2014 @ 07:00 GMT
Sabine,
Yours is an extraordinary, beautifully written essay, whose philosophy and proposal I readily support. Towards the end of your essay, you appeal to the goodness of all humans, without which, as you say, making information inexpensive will by itself not be of help. Unfortunately, as we know, in the current scenario, conflict of interest often makes powerful individuals act in a manner which is more suited to fulfilling personal / nationalistic ambitions, not keeping in mind the good of humanity at large [war for instance being an ugly consequence]. Such individuals could be classified as `not good humans’ and are a serious bottleneck. I do not wish to use this space to advertise my essay, but I have tried to make a case that humans can be `trained’ to be `good’. I cannot prove that this will work, for this too requires goodness of political will, but perhaps if we build from grassroots [catch them young] there is some hope that future leaders might begin to act differently, and collectively think of the planet, and not just of nations. One hopes.
Best,
Tejinder
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on May. 2, 2014 @ 10:46 GMT
Tejinder,
I am philosophically very much with Leibnitz who was ridiculed for his argument that we live in the 'best of all possible worlds'. I tend to think it is tautologically true that people are 'good' and try to do the 'best', it's just that they disagree on exactly what that entails. Another way to say this is to notice that the phrase 'pursuit of happiness' in the US constitution is entirely meaningless. Happiness is pretty much by definition that what people pursue. If somebody wanted to pursue unhappiness who are we to decline him his wish if that makes him happy? Or wait, does not make him happy. See the issue? Same thing with being 'good'. Everything everybody does is 'good' for something or somebody. Maybe they are good at being bad? Maybe they just don't care about the 'good for humanity at large' and who are you to tell them they should? Would that make you bad? Would that be good if it made you bad? And what does any of that mean anyway?
Having said that, I don't want to get hung up on a word too much as I think I can extract the essence of what you are saying and I like the sentiment. Best,
Sabine
Thomas Howard Ray replied on May. 2, 2014 @ 14:10 GMT
Anonymous replied on May. 8, 2014 @ 14:13 GMT
Sabine,
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, not Leibnitz, was born two years after the end of a war that lasted for thirty years and decimated the population in the sense that just about every tenth survived. Leibniz died in 1716 before in 1756 a war begun that lasted for seven years. Parts of Germany were occupied by France and Sweden. The chance for a peaceful period, the best of all possible ones, was about the same as for Germany after WWII. I don't like using sentiment when dealing with basic questions of science.
I explained to Mohammed Khali what I meant when I wrote: "Neither Philip Gibbs nor Sabine Hossenfelder will save the world."
Any objection by anyone?
Sabine, please don't take my bluntness amiss. I nonetheless very much acknowledge your absolutely best intentions.
Regards,
Eckard
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Anonymous wrote on May. 2, 2014 @ 08:19 GMT
Hi Sabine,
And thank you for your nice essay! Your ideas would be the silver bullet in the ideal world. Problems arise when we are trying to find out the right actions and priorities. We can't be even sure if our every (major) selected priority or goal does any good in a long run (poor data, poor theories, biases, fabricated data, manipulation, lobbying etc). Anyway, your ideas would be a big leap forward if ever implemented!
So, big hand from me :-) I bet that you don't buy my ideas on antimatter. But let's pretend that I'm right, how would you handle the situation with your suggestions? I'm listening.
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Kimmo Rouvari replied on May. 2, 2014 @ 08:20 GMT
Nice system :-( That was my comment.
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on May. 2, 2014 @ 10:36 GMT
Kimmo,
It is not the case that every particle can be its own antiparticle. I really do not think it is a problem that we have to worry about. Having said that, it is true of course that every new technology brings risks and that these risks have to be properly studied and assessed, preferably before the technology spreads. This is a difficult problem because the question what risk is acceptable is not a scientific one. This risk assessment also must take into account the question of how likely the theory is to be correct, and I am afraid that your theory is almost certainly incorrect, so the risk seems to me very small. In this context however, I recently read about the origin of the word 'megadeath', maybe your worries are worth some gigadeaths then. Best,
Sabine
Kimmo Rouvari replied on May. 2, 2014 @ 12:36 GMT
But IF my theory is right then the outcome might be catastrophic. Can you ignore my chances of being right? I hope not.
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Anonymous wrote on May. 2, 2014 @ 12:43 GMT
Sabine,
Beautifully argued analysis and ideas. I just can't help thinking; a) They can't be effectively implemented (and who draws prejudice free maps!?) And; b) If implemented they'll fail due to how brains work. I agree about attention span, but feedback to a database (lobes) has scant connection to the front cerebral cortex which takes the fast intuitive decisions, often wrong despite...
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Sabine,
Beautifully argued analysis and ideas. I just can't help thinking; a) They can't be effectively implemented (and who draws prejudice free maps!?) And; b) If implemented they'll fail due to how brains work. I agree about attention span, but feedback to a database (lobes) has scant connection to the front cerebral cortex which takes the fast intuitive decisions, often wrong despite 'knowledge'. Once those lessons of youth are imprinted we're indoctrinated. Too late for non surgical cure. But focussed on the young you refer to, then perhaps!
The problem is that we're now beyond Planck's solution, the indoctrinated are cloning the young. The SM you laud is near death in practice. Information overload (your 'reading time' problem) means retrenchment, stifling advancement in understanding. You wrote; "There MUST be more to find than we have found so far" and; "We know the theory MUST exist". Fine and true words, but now just words. When put before our eyes the truth is now only ignored or denied. Read my essay and falsify that statement.
I should explain my view is that of an implementer. Scientist and theorist perhaps but largely exo-academia and Architect trained. I was lead consultant for a North Sea petro-chem consortium bringing home the largest UK project, then recently on the largest UK windafarm (Vestas). All fast-track from blank sheets of paper. Good decision taking methods and feedback are implicit.
Advising on appointing other consultants we've learned to avoid academics as most can't cope with rapid (or any!) advancement. That's what I see really needs to change. Academic theoretical inertia. I've watched it steadily worsen!
I almost wrote the essay on that, and the poor use most make of the brilliant quantum computer in our heads. We need to be trained when young how to use it properly, not just as a database! I decided implementing unified physics is a far more important advancement for science and mankind, thus my essay (and previous).
But while I can make things happen elsewhere, in academia I'm entirely powerless. Many see it as an ego led 'closed shop' but I see the fear, confusion and poor rewards. Whatever the problem it need major surgery! I do like your ideas but they look like darts to me not arrows, and getting close to the target, but not hitting it. I'd love to work with you to help focus and develop your ideas, but of course there's probably no time.
I think if anyone can prove part of the solution not part of the problem it may be you Sabine, but it may need courage and wider vision to see it.
Best of luck. You're my favourite for top spot.
Peter
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Peter Jackson replied on May. 2, 2014 @ 15:58 GMT
T'was I. Why do we let computers lie to us? Let's ban all deception.
I omitted an intended comment on gamification. I agree entirely, and it's an excellent way to inspire and motivate, essential components for implementation.
I also note your comment; "the academic system too isn’t able to learn". Indeed the root of the problem, from Infant age upwards. We do have the means, but so few seem to have the ability.
Best
Peter Jackson (just in case it's lying about login again!
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Laurence Hitterdale wrote on May. 5, 2014 @ 19:09 GMT
Hi Sabine,
You are right, I think, that distribution and application of available information is often a greater problem than acquisition of additional information. I also agree that providing people with better means to achieve their goals will be more productive than trying to persuade people to change their goals. As I understand the requirements of the question, we were asked to make suggestions for concrete action, and you have done that very well. It is a natural question, then, whether some group or institution will start implementing your five-step plan. I would think that a good start would be to set up a step-one process for a group of scientists. They might be in a particular geographical area, or they might work in a particular field. This would be a substep of step 1. We might think of it as step 1.1. After that, it would be possible to implement further substeps of step 1. Before completing all of step 1, we could begin with the appropriate substeps of step 2. At least this seems to me a reasonable approach.
Laurence Hitterdale
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Ajay Bhatla wrote on May. 7, 2014 @ 21:28 GMT
Sabine,
We are in agreement that "science matters for steering the future of humanity" and that "we just have to make it easier for them to convert caring into action." We also agree that the primary initiative lies with scientists.
Where, I believe, we differ is in what we can ask or force individual people to do. Your approach and mine differ (in your five step approach) in step 3. I contend that converting "caring into action" is a very personal and individual thing. While scientists, or others, can rank and prioritize from a BIG picture perspective, the BIG picture is generally not meaningful for the general public or even many countries and institutions. e.g. China and India give lip service to global warming because they see it ranking below economic development.
Please read my essay
here and tell me if you agree with our only real difference in thinking.
- Ajay
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Chidi Idika wrote on May. 8, 2014 @ 10:32 GMT
Dear Sabine,
You operate the thesis that “Only then, when we can make informed decisions by feeling rather than thinking, will we be able to act and respond to the challenges we face.”
I see the possibility that someone instead invents a technology by which we may “feel” (or ask questions of) ourselves and cumulatively of our collective consciousness. That thing will then represent a kind of oracle/real life virtual community. You call it “systems that are able to learn and in return help let us learn about the system. ”
I foresee
in my own approach that this technology may even replace governments! Don’t think it is too farfetched. Once we can properly read/calibrate the individual human (so it represents an individual computer/ip address i.e. a “personal priority map” ) then the de facto “government”, “god” or collective us would be same as what we call now the internet (the individual being an “intranet”).
This situation seems to me sure to come by but it may not be entirely rosy as you imagine. Remember how we used to be all proud of an “industrial revolution” that saved us from servitude to nature? Many years down the line we are now faced with environmental concerns.
Of course in your essay you expressly do not pretend to tell humanity WHERE to steer to but rather HOW to steer. Now I ask you what of that possibility of the “how” getting in the way of the “where” (replacing it) and creating a system of zombie humans?
This is because our intuitive/free will abilities must be like our muscular abilities (I suppose); the less you actually use your muscles, the more you lose them. What do you say about us loosing that critical “liberty” that also makes us human?
Regards,
Chidi Idika
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Preston Estep wrote on May. 8, 2014 @ 16:27 GMT
Dear Sabine,
Tommaso Bolognesi suggested we read your essay since he saw many similarities between yours and ours. In a standard cop-out that you obviously will recognize, we only wish we had the time to devote to our essay to make it is clear as yours, although, we still are likely to have fallen short of your compelling and passionate (and at times very funny!) proposal.
We agree...
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Dear Sabine,
Tommaso Bolognesi suggested we read your essay since he saw many similarities between yours and ours. In a standard cop-out that you obviously will recognize, we only wish we had the time to devote to our essay to make it is clear as yours, although, we still are likely to have fallen short of your compelling and passionate (and at times very funny!) proposal.
We agree that there are clear parallels in our summaries of current problems, although our proposed solutions are quite different. You doubt human abilities to derive meaning from large data sets and to think about long-distance and long-term consequences of our actions, and you say "what little grasp we have is prone to cognitive biases and statistical errors." And then you crystallize these issues thusly: "These cognitive shortcomings are not only obstacles to solving our problems, they are the problem". We couldn't agree more or have stated the problem more clearly.
We also are in complete agreement with your analysis of education: "It is time to wake up. We've tried long enough to educate them. It doesn't work. The idea of the educated and well - informed citizen is a[n] utopia. It doesn't work because education doesn't please people. They don't like to think. It is too costly and it's not the information they want." But, then it appears your solution is to provide training and feedback frameworks, and education on how to implement them. You state very clearly that technology is not an integral piece of the solution: "We have a social problem, not a technological one."
The primary differences between your proposal and ours are as follows:
- We believe the solution to our problems is partly priority and partly technology, i.e. first deciding that we need better brains and other thinking machines, and then creating the technologies to implement the solutions. You appear to agree on the first part, but not the second.
- You believe that training will work this time if we just do it a certain way.
- To guide long-term decisions, your proposal places trust in current human priorities, and thus current levels of rationality. Substantial research by Kahneman and Tversky, Keith Stanovich, Tom Gilovich, Dan Ariely, and many others convince us that people are neither rational nor good forecasters, even when they are focused on the future. You clearly understand these issues, but this doubts about bias and irrationality seem to be overwhelmed by the apparent practicality of your proposal.
After saying the problem is not technological, your essay appears to acknowledge that an engineering solution is preferred: "In the future, information about matches with personal priorities may be delivered wirelessly to brain implants, constituting an upgrade of humanity for global interactions." But given current limitations, you rely on a less reliable but practical solution "With presently existing technology we have to settle for visualizing a match or mismatch rather than feeling it." But this is what education has been doing for centuries: translating data into an intuitive graph, or a problem into another kind of problem, using analogies and other abstractions.
Here is the key question for you: why not simply commit to fixing the intrinsic problems you identify, rather than playing tricks of substitution of a long-term goal for a short-term one, or making someone believe they are eating ice cream when they are actually eating vegetables? Why not instead engineer the brain to be better at understanding data (or to like vegetables more than ice cream)? Without question these are challenging undertakings, but why continue to apply band-aids on top of dozens of previously applied band-aids?
We think our proposal is the only truly efficient (albeit, long-term) approach and, while our proposed solution is not as specific as yours, we want people to engage in a serious conversation about the issues we raise and how to create better brains and other thinking machines - especially the best scientists and engineers who typically have little motivation to consider these issues because they are comfortable with their own intellects. However, we think that this is another illusion of spacetime proximity (close), which is why our essay asks the reader to consider an imaginary being with god-like powers to do science and engineering (distant). The most rational and intelligent people only feel satisfied with their present mental status because human perceptions are selected to be relativistic about abilities, but the problems highlighted by both of our essays apply to everyone.
I hope your essay does well since the parallels of our two essays are striking and it is important that these issues take center stage. I also hope that you read our essay and that we persuade you to some degree of the soundness of our proposal. Whatever the outcome, we're glad to have made your acquaintance through this competition.
All the best,
Preston Estep (and Alex Hoekstra)
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Anonymous wrote on May. 9, 2014 @ 02:43 GMT
Sabine,
I am still waiting for your objection. Let me check whether or not you are ready to answer questions that I consider foundational ones. English is not our mother tongue. Therefore I looked into my dictionary for the meaning of the word humanity and found:
#1 "Humanity is the same as mankind." All essays I got aware of understood humanity in this sense which corresponds to...
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Sabine,
I am still waiting for your objection. Let me check whether or not you are ready to answer questions that I consider foundational ones. English is not our mother tongue. Therefore I looked into my dictionary for the meaning of the word humanity and found:
#1 "Humanity is the same as mankind." All essays I got aware of understood humanity in this sense which corresponds to the German word Menschheit.
#2 "A person's humanity is their state of being a human being, rather than an animal or an object, a formal use." While logically a bit imperfectly formulated, this corresponds to the German word Menschsein.
#3 "Humanity is also the quality of being kind, thoughtful, and sympathetic." The German word is Menschlichkeit, and this is what distinguishes your essay.
#4 "The humanities ..." does obviously not apply to the topic of our contest.
You will certainly agree on that #3 summarizes what is also called human values. Because I feel that Mohammed Khali cannot answer my belonging questions, I hope you will dare. To Muslims the doctrine "as many (Muslim) children as possible" is a value in the sense of #3, and when I lived together with a Tunesian he told me why: The more children, the more food for the elderly.
While the notion overpopulation lacks a reference value, it is indisputable that the consequences of unlimited growth cannot forever compensated. Ethics needs to be modified, and I consider this a pressing most fundamental necessity.
Let me refer to Nigeria where Boku Haram is said having kidnapped 200 non-Muslim school girls, possibly with the perspective of selling them. You will certainly agree that this is a crime against humanity #3.
Those who are fighting against polio in Nigeria are guided by #3. They are facing resistance because of distrust. Some Muslims suspect getting cheated with the aim to hinder them getting as many children as possible. While this is definitely not true, I see their attitude unacceptable. Isn't hindering the worldwide fight against polio a crime against humanity #3 too? Do you agree, and if so, is the modification of #3 justified?
Voluntary restriction to one or two children per couple worldwide may stop the rapid destruction of environment. Such modified ethics should be encouraged by demonstrating that life in non-growing states is much richer and more peaceful.
Any objection?
Eckard
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Tihamer T. Toth-Fejel replied on May. 13, 2014 @ 03:58 GMT
Dear Eckard,
Most essays considered the context of the word "humanity" in the contest question and it fits your definition #1 (mankind), though many also thought that our future would be brighter if we all acted more like definition #3 (show kindness).
You wrote: "To Muslims the doctrine "as many (Muslim) children as possible" is a value in the sense of #3, and when I lived together...
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Dear Eckard,
Most essays considered the context of the word "humanity" in the contest question and it fits your definition #1 (mankind), though many also thought that our future would be brighter if we all acted more like definition #3 (show kindness).
You wrote: "To Muslims the doctrine "as many (Muslim) children as possible" is a value in the sense of #3, and when I lived together with a Tunesian he told me why: The more children, the more food for the elderly."
In a primitive society with no pension plans or social security, that certainly makes logical sense, don't you think?
Rich countries have fewer children, and they also take better care of their environment (even if they keep growing their population). So ask the next question (as Ted Sturgeon always urged): Why aren't you trying making everyone rich?
Again, ask the next question: Why do Muslim countries (on average, even with all that Middle East oil) have the lowest standard of living on this planet?
It's because they believe that Allah is utterly transcendent, and as Master over us slaves, he is not necessarily beneficent nor ordered. This is what Al-Ghazali, the 2nd-most influential prophet (after Mohammed himself), in fact did teach. The unintended consequence of this was that it destroyed the fledgling sciences in the once-great Islamic civilization--by denying that God's universe had predictable causes or that any causes would make sense. Science breeds technology, and technology is the lever of wealth, because it allows everyone to accomplish more with less. Hence the low standard of living for Islam.
You admitted that "the notion overpopulation lacks a reference value".
I'm not sure what you mean by that, other than the fact the carrying capacity of an environment can be (and has been) changed considerably; first by the evolution of photosynthesis (which poisoned the atmosphere and caused a 300 million year ice age), then the evolution of multi-cellularism (the most totalitarian regime possible), the development of consciousness (which made psychological suffering possible; as opposed to only physical pain), and more recently the invention of fire, agriculture, food preservation, and the green revolution. Each step significantly increased the carrying capacity of Earth, though it changed the environment significantly too. It seems that you cannot imagine the next step, so it cannot happen. Please read my essay on "Three Crucial Technologies" and tell me why nanotechnology and expanding into Space won't increase the carrying capacity of this solar system by many magnitudes.
Are a conservative in the traditional sense: afraid of change?
You also said, "It is indisputable that the consequences of unlimited growth cannot forever compensated."
I bed to differ. Our single-celled bacterial ancestors would probably have said the same thing 3.6 billion years ago. As Malthus said more than 200 years ago. Isn't it indisputable that the exponential growth of Moore's Law and Kurzweil's more general Law of Accelerating Returns have a much faster growth rate than human reproduction? (e.g. 18 months vs 30 years) I will concede that according to our best current scientific theories, Asimov's ball of flesh can't expand any faster than the speed of light.
Finally, you said, "Ethics needs to be modified, and I consider this a pressing most fundamental necessity."
Ethics *ought* to be modified? Do you realize the inherent contradiction in your statement? How can you apply an imperative to changing a set of imperatives? You can't. At any rate, Ethics is objective, not subjective. If it was subjective, then it would only be an individual's or group's changing opinion. How do you know that it isn't your "personal ethics" that needs to be changed?
What's wrong with having a ball of humanity augmented by silicon, diamondoid, biology, and superconducting machines expanding into the universe at light speed, transforming all the dead matter in the universe into life that thinks, feels, and loves?
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Member Marc Séguin wrote on May. 11, 2014 @ 02:39 GMT
Hi Sabine,
Thank you for a very entertaining and thought-provoking essay!
I really like your idea of personal AI assistants that know your values and suggest the right actions for you to take --- in fact, I want one right now, not just to help me make the right choices concerning the future well-being of the planet, but also to help me plan my day to day routine in order to be more...
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Hi Sabine,
Thank you for a very entertaining and thought-provoking essay!
I really like your idea of personal AI assistants that know your values and suggest the right actions for you to take --- in fact, I want one right now, not just to help me make the right choices concerning the future well-being of the planet, but also to help me plan my day to day routine in order to be more productive!
I teach science to 18 and 19 year-old students, and it probably explains why, in my essay, I explore the idea of improving
education in order to raise the collective knowledge and awareness of the world population towards the issues that are the most important for the future of humanity. You will perhaps disagree with my solution, since you write in your essay that
We've tried to educate [people]. It doesn't work. The idea of the educated and well-informed citizen is an utopia. It doesn't work because education doesn't please people. And yet, you also say that
[T]he main problem [...] isn't to collect information, but feeding this information back into the system, back to the many humans who are the initiators of change. In my experience as a teacher, I certainly have seen a lot of students whose attention span and interest is limited in the way you describe in your "split-second looks at photos" analogy. And yet, I still believe it is possible to teach differently, to teach better, in school settings but also in lifelong learning endeavors, such as YouTube videos, or accessible, entertaining and pedagogically sound MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses).
I agree with you that humans
do whatever they please. The only way to change their ways is to please them. Please them differently than before, and change will follow. So I hope that the educators of the world can come together in a
worldwide futurocentric education initiative, and find a way to "please" the people while raising their knowledge and awareness of what is going on in the world, and what is likely to come next. In doing so, to paraphrase what you said in your essay about your proposal, maybe we can "use people's priorities and values in a systematic way to discover shortcomings in the system and improve it".
And when your personal AI assistants become reality, perhaps we will be able to use some of what we learned in the Futurocentric Education Initiative in order to construct a better, less "costly" system to inform and guide mankind towards a better future!
I consider your essay one of the best in this contest, and I hope you do well in the final judging.
Marc
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on May. 13, 2014 @ 05:08 GMT
Marc,
I don't think we actually disagree. You are right in that better education can and will make a difference. It is just that this difference is too little too late to help us overcome the problems that we have already created. Best,
Sabine
William Amos Carine wrote on May. 11, 2014 @ 14:35 GMT
Hi Hossenfelder,
A very relevant essay here! An age where people are well enough to base decisions off of their feelings is indeed something to strive for! The mind ought to be updated in the way we use it. I wonder what all a brain can really do. Neuroscience does have a lot o explore, it seems. Your main first argument that we have simply done to much to change the world and can't seem to catch up goes along with the notion that the progressions and paradigm shifts people as a whole have experienced change at a greater rate today. They seem to be speeding up, and humans are caught with the tough task of jumping from treadmill to treadmill, each faster yet. So I would like to emphasize that that point is valid from what i see and have read elsewhere. It is important to note the issue because it means that something about us has to update quicker, or differently. Tech booms info past what our brains can incorporate into our ways of living. The internet informs everyone about everything, but nobody does or has experienced the majority of what the now know so much about. So some feedback would be appropriate to the sudden influx of info, and of cousre, some paving needs done to reach the day when humans are even more attached to the internet, like brain downloads or what-have-you. A good read that brought up many valid points, this essay also just had a bit of spark to it. It was presented with a personal touch that was refreshing to read. I hope people read this batch of essays in general. Read, and then do a little differently.
With warm wishes,
Amos
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Author Sabine Hossenfelder replied on May. 13, 2014 @ 05:06 GMT
Hi Amos,
Indeed, I have been wondering if it may be possible to make the argument about the different time scales scientifically precise, to turn it into something measurable. So far however nothing has come to my mind. I do actually believe that reading can change the world :) And many of the excellent essays in this contest have given me something to think about. Best,
Sabine
Tommaso Bolognesi wrote on May. 13, 2014 @ 10:50 GMT
Recap. The human species has created a complex hybrid environment/system X (technology, politics, economics, etc., on top of the natural system/biosphere) that has somehow changed the rules of the evolutionary adaptation game to our advantage. But the accelerating complexity growth of X is bringing it out of our control, making it hard to close the feedback loop between individual human actions...
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Recap. The human species has created a complex hybrid environment/system X (technology, politics, economics, etc., on top of the natural system/biosphere) that has somehow changed the rules of the evolutionary adaptation game to our advantage. But the accelerating complexity growth of X is bringing it out of our control, making it hard to close the feedback loop between individual human actions and their effect on X. Our cognitive skills have been left behind, with a mismatch between our ability to analyse local scenarios and act accordingly, and the global dynamics of system X.
And so you propose to build a `bring-closer` information system for bridging the gap between global-collective and local-individual info and action, that should also learn from the priority lists expressed by individuals. Users should ideally find the information all in one place, well integrated and effectively presented, to please their intuition.
My concern (partly expressed in a previous comment) derives from the gap I perceive between plainly collecting and integrating information on one hand, and actually computing the correct global consequences of individual actions on the other, for informing the decision of the individuals (and the institutions).
In other words, I totally agree on the psychological usefulness of the `bring-closer` service for wiring back to our cognitive circuits - that`s one of the most brilliant and well expressed ideas of your essay - but I believe the devil would often be in the process of actually
building the info to be displayed closer. Computing the consequences of a local event in a complex system is intrinsically hard. (Not to speak of the potential uncontrolled influences from political or commercial agendas in this process, but that`s a general problem.)
I am still inclined to look at these issues in terms of emergent properties of a layered system, where the emergent entities are largely independent from those at the lower layer. Under this light, it occurred to me that your proposals could be seen as a creative and generous attempt to strengthen the communication channel between two adjacent layers, in both directions. And this vaguely reminds me of an essay on the importance of top-down causation by
George Ellis in a previous contest.
Regards
Tommaso
PS
(I hoped that re-reading and re-commenting your essay could help me deciding how to rate your entry, but I confess that I still have mixed feelings between the pleasurable presentation style, the originality of the analysis and the potential problems with the proposed solution. Not that this would change anything, given your top position in the community ranking! Congratulations!)
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Anonymous wrote on May. 14, 2014 @ 16:55 GMT
Dear Sabine
Scientifically lay people are certainly not lazy and indifferent... They may not be scientists, scholars, or academics, but you would be surprised how much they might know about relevant things concerning life... And in general, the less influenced by irrelevant values of the society - the wiser they are. The reason why they may not be interested in science is in "science", not...
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Dear Sabine
Scientifically lay people are certainly not lazy and indifferent... They may not be scientists, scholars, or academics, but you would be surprised how much they might know about relevant things concerning life... And in general, the less influenced by irrelevant values of the society - the wiser they are. The reason why they may not be interested in science is in "science", not in them. The "fundamental science" transformed into a mass in Latin... Lay people are conditioned by and respond to the system that they don't understand, which doesn't make them any different from you or anybody else. Knowledge is not the information learned by heart, but the information understood by heart. Do you understand any equation containing G, or any other "universal constant of nature"? Do you understand the quest of searching for the smallest division in nature? Considering you knowing the fractal mathematics... and that all natural forms are fractals...
When CERN announced the possibility of finding the Higgs Boson, I was sitting in a café, watching the faces of people scrolling newspaper headlines... The supposed to be "The ultimate discovery ever", didn't catch anyone's attention... It didn't change anything in anyone's life. There was no enlightenment, no shift of a consciousness, understanding, philosophical insight... but it produced some good jokes :) It may be that people are simply fed up of being stuffed with useless information. Instead of increasing our spiritual wealth, junk makes us spiritually fat, increasing our inertia.
If one refers to the laws of nature, one sees its self-organised, self-sufficient and self-similar matrix of chaos. If not disturbed, one witnesses equilibrium tending to equilibrium. On the other hand, self-proclaimed legislation of men, tend to ever greater order, i.e. ever greater polarization. "If there would be no order, there would be chaos..." Facing such contradiction we are offenders either to nature, either to the artificial system of institutionalised men...
"I am" follows only the rules of living knowledge, not the rules of dead conjunctions maintained by non-living institutions which usually do things in the name of humanity, in the name of progress, in the name of democracy, in the name of our children, in the name of some god, etc... never in the name of "I am". Well, statistically, "I am" is insignificant, anyway :)
Institutions are not to be misinterpreted as organ of an organism. Institutions are official seals whit taken power to set rules, valorise and judge. Although build and fed on the idea of the individual, institutions are negation of the individuality. With time, they become purpose on its own, acting as a tail of retardation creating instruments and tools for their own existence, thus maintaining and creating problems... On a big scale, the result is the self-similar matrix manifested as the age of problems...
You may have been noticed that non-living systems - institutions (states, religions, corporations, institutionalised science...) - favour all which is unnecessary, artificial, unhealthy, uniformed, obedient, destructive, lethal, non-reproductive, and non-alive. On the other hand, living necessities like reasoning, individual intelligence, sexuality, reproductive organs, natural food, healing plants, freedom, diversity, life as such... are "legitimately" stigmatized, neglected, rejected, forbidden, tortured or executed... On the universal scale this self-similar matrix can be recognized as Tanatos versus Eros... On a scale of a body, it is virus versus cell.
So, just let "I am" be self-sufficient, self-organised, self-aware, self-responsible and unique "I am". Do not think of mapping "I am's" brain or extending its capabilities with some artificial implant (do you know or does anyone know what brain really is?). "I am" does not want to be "I am not". "I am" is not the statistics in some stock market graph or the IP address in some global network. "I am" is alive and life is the infinite chaotic function of equilibrium tending to equilibrium. "I am" is the measure and the building block of "We are" - the Humanity.
To conclude, instead of "How to save the world", I would suggest "How to save I am". Only then, billions of infinitely unique, though self-similar snowflakes can fall free, creating a matrix of harmony. And if we are imprinted that this is utopia, then the universe and everything in it is utopia indeed :)
Regards,
andrej
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Andrej Rehak replied on May. 14, 2014 @ 17:03 GMT
for some reason, I was signed as Anonymous :)
andrej rehak
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Don J Chisholm wrote on May. 15, 2014 @ 12:42 GMT
Hello Sabina
I just read your essay and can see why it is doing well. You make a good summary of good summary of the human predicament in this paragraph:
“No, the biggest challenge mankind faces today is not the development of some breakthrough technology. The biggest challenge is to create a society whose institutions integrate the knowledge that must precede any breakthrough technology: The knowledge about the systems themselves that is necessary for the realization, adaptation and use of technologies . All of our big problems today speak of our failure, not to envision solutions, but to turn our ideas and knowledge into reality. We have a social problem, not a technological one.”
Indeed, our problem is social and not technical. You speak of a “priority map”. In my essay, ‘Our journey to the next paradigm’, I deal with this as an envisioned future that uses existing tools of science, psychology and social management to guide the future rather than today’s form of governance, highly influenced by corporate interests, all based on a flawed economic system.
Hope you continue to do well in the ratings.
Don Chisholm
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Israel Perez wrote on May. 17, 2014 @ 01:44 GMT
Dear Sabine
Your essay is well written, organized and at the same time controversial. It has enough material for long discussions. Although I agree with some points in your essay I also have some disagreements.
You mention that: the mother of all problems, is to convert these ideas into courses of action.... we are also lazy and if intuition fails us, inertia takes over
I don't think this is the problem. I also wonder who is "we" because in current societies, people have different functions. There are those who are in charged of ruling, those who develop science and technology, businessmen, teachers, workers, etc. Therefore, I would not expect from a worker to take actions against global warming or waste disposal. So each person has a function in this society and each person has to do what they have to do. In my view, politicians and businessmen as well as scientists are in charged of driving humanity and they should be responsible for the consequences of their actions. This is also related to this comment: It’s just that in practice it takes too much effort to look into the details. And they actually do not want to know the details.
I don't think we are lazy, I think those who lead and steer countries have other interests, such as supremacy, hegemony, economy, etc. I discuss a little of this in my
work and I'd like to invite you to read it and leave some comments.
All the best for the contest!
Best Regards
Israel
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KoGuan Leo wrote on May. 17, 2014 @ 09:47 GMT
Dear Prof. Sabine,
Excellent essay indeed. To lower the cost of relevant information needed by the decision maker is key to humanity. Yes, I concur. I like this one most out of five you listed: "Upgrade priority maps to brain extensions. In the long run, we should avoid using the visual cortex as pathway to display matches with priority maps. The potential of cheap information will be fully realized when information about our social systems is directly fed back into our brain and we can truly feel the consequences of certain decisions."
Good luck!
Regards,
Leo KoGuan
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KoGuan Leo replied on Jun. 5, 2014 @ 00:03 GMT
Dear Sabine,
To lower the cost of relevant information and lowered the cost of that information needed by the decision maker to make correct decisions for the survival, peace and prosperity humanity. I scored a full score ten (10).
Good luck,
Leo KoGuan
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Hoang cao Hai wrote on May. 20, 2014 @ 02:20 GMT
Dear Author Sabine Hossenfelder
Perhaps your solution is not enough to "save the world" but I liked the goals that you set out to be "How to save the world" ?
10 points for thing that - Hải.CaoHoàng
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Ross Cevenst wrote on May. 22, 2014 @ 10:43 GMT
Hi Sabine,
I really enjoyed the central theme of your essay. Your comments about scientific people overlooking the cost of information issue for regular people is a great one. I also think your ideas concerning priority maps is very interesting. A priority map would sure be handy even for this contest!
For me, your priority map resembles something sales and advertising people get that science often doesn't. In a sense, an advert is a priority map like you describe - associating the purchase of a product with a desired outcome such as hedonistic, sexual or social advantage. One core difference is that the objective is to sell the product using any means rather than provide accurate information. In a sense this is my only gentle criticism of your paper - isn't this space already occupied, wherever possible, by advertisers? Perhaps they might actively discourage or intefere with accurate priority information? Do you think encouraging this method of human decision making might actually increase the power of advertisments on people if they begin to neglect the capacity to research and think complexly?
Criticism aside I thought your ideas were very enjoyable to read with some very precise points. I hope you make further progress exploring this great topic. If you get a chance I'd love for you to view my own entry (mine draws on science fiction to make its point) and rate it! Thanks again, best regards,
Ross
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Luca Valeri wrote on May. 25, 2014 @ 21:36 GMT
Dear Susan,
I past your essay to my wife, that is working in the marketing of carbon offsetting company. She was very inspired and started a new discussion on marketing strategy.
So it seems already reading your essay might bring us to a better future.
Regards
Luca
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James A Putnam wrote on May. 25, 2014 @ 22:24 GMT
Sabine Hossenfelder,
I like your essay very much; however, I have held off rating it. Here is one reason why? Could you please say more about your analysis of the mortgage crisis with respect to measuring emotions?
"Moreover, emotions can capture problems that do not result in actions at all (are not “revealed”). Take the 2008 mortgage crisis as an example. If you read reports...
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Sabine Hossenfelder,
I like your essay very much; however, I have held off rating it. Here is one reason why? Could you please say more about your analysis of the mortgage crisis with respect to measuring emotions?
"Moreover, emotions can capture problems that do not result in actions at all (are not “revealed”). Take the 2008 mortgage crisis as an example. If you read reports from back then, many people clearly felt something was wrong. “Something about that feels very wrong,” a banker said, “It makes me sick to my stomach the kind of loans that we do,” a mortgage broker was quoted with [6]. But these feelings didn’t register in the system. Imagine we could have measured the tension in priorities between, say, keeping their job and acting morally right. This could have been an early warning sign. How many warning signs do we currently miss?"
If feelings were measured, who's would we choose to side with? There was a vast number of others who were available to be tested at the time. What would their responses have registered? It is not my intent to pin blame. My question has to do with the difficulty of relying upon emotions ahead of an event. Who would you have relied upon for emotional guidance before the collapse?
"...on Oversight and Government Reform
Darrell Issa (CA-49), Ranking Member
The housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to a financial crisis can be traced back to federal government intervention in the U.S. housing market intended to help provide homeownership opportunities for more Americans. This intervention began with two government-backed corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which privatized their profits but socialized their risks, reating powerful incentives for them to act recklessly and exposing taxpayers to tremendous losses. Government intervention also created “affordable” but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage. Finally, government intervention created a nexus of vested interests – politicians, lenders and lobbyists – who profited from the “affordable” housing market and acted to kill reforms. In the short run, this government intervention was successful in its stated goal – raising the national homeownership rate. However, the ultimate effect was to create a mortgage tsunami that wrought devastation on the American people and economy. While government intervention was not the sole cause of the financial crisis, its role was significant and has received too little attention.
In recent months it has been impossible to watch a television news program without seeing a Member of Congress or an Administration official put forward a new recovery proposal or engage in the public flogging of a financial company official whose poor decisions, and perhaps greed, resulted in huge losses and great suffering. Ironically, some of these same Washington officials were, all too recently, advocates of the very mortgage lending policies that led to economic turmoil. In a number of cases, political officials even engaged in unethical conduct, helping their political allies, family members and even themselves obtain lucrative positions in the mortgage lending industry and other benefits. At a time when government intervention in private markets has become alarmingly common, government “affordable housing” initiatives offer important lessons about the dangers of government efforts to manipulate or conjure outcomes in the market. ..."
There is much more that could be said about who played what role. However, my point still has to do with emotions. I don't remember the date, but, President Bush, in a speech to the nation, mentioned with pride the high rate of home ownership. I recall feeling that that was a good result. I knew that mortgages were very lenient compared to any that I had received in earlier years. But it felt good to think that the government was making it possible for more people to own homes.
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Janko Kokosar wrote on May. 28, 2014 @ 16:28 GMT
Dear Mrs Sabine Hossenfelder
The future of our world is very dependent from knowledge of phenomena, from which we are dependent, thus from knowledge of correlations of these phenomena. I wrote about this also in
my essay. You also write about similar things. Your idea about chips in heads is cruel, but I am afraid that it will be necessary for survival of humanity. For instance, number of people will soon be to large, thus migration in the universe will be necessary. Until then the problems on earth should be solved, and this should be done very effective, or it will be very painful.
Besides your solution, development of artificial intelligence should be also necessary.
I was thinking something similar for jobseekers. Recruiters sometimes have 500 candidates, but they do no choose the very best candidates. Recruiters only needs a few seconds for one candidate. However, if the candidates files in questionnaires, it would then be statistically processed by the recruiters. So they can obtain more information from the candidates. This is a similar principle as that which you are requesting.
Besides, our contest is also is an example of what you write. We cannot read all essays, I would need chips in the brains. At the same time, I wish that others read and comment on my essay. I would be very grateful for this, including the comments of old essays. Also I read your essay. : )
p.s. In
your old essay I gave that your model disagrees with
Duff's paper. You do not answered me. :)
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Ray Luechtefeld wrote on May. 29, 2014 @ 18:47 GMT
Hi Sabine,
Thanks for your interesting essay. I think there are corollaries with the "dialogic web" I discuss in
my essay on computationally intelligent personal dialogic agents. It is like a "virtual conscience" that can guide us through our interactions with others and the world. I have developed a prototype as part of a "CAREER Award" grant from the US National Science Foundation, and studies indicate that it can "nudge" people to more effective actions by providing feedback and guidance in their everyday actions.
I'd appreciate a rating on my essay, if you can do that, since I am a bit short on ratings. Also, if you know of anyone that might be interested in collaborating on the further development of the dialogic web, please give them my contact info. My gmail username is my first name, then a period, then my last name.
Thanks,
Ray Luechtefeld, PhD
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Member Flavio Mercati wrote on May. 29, 2014 @ 21:29 GMT
Dear Sabine,
thank you for your interesting essay!
Today I stumbled upon this gallery of `awareness-focused' ads:
http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2014/05/29/foto/guarda_e
_pensa_quando_la_pubblicit_diventa_messaggio-87596208/1/?ref
=HRESS-1#1
and it made me think of your essay. Is this the sort of strategy you would use to trigger an emotional response in the public, right there where they are taking the decisions that matter (e.g. throwing a plastic bottle or something...)?
best,
Flavio
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Mark P Aldridge wrote on May. 31, 2014 @ 18:27 GMT
Hello Sabine,
I enjoyed your essay and thought it identified a major problem our species currently has and proposes an interesting (and more importantly, implementable!) solution. This solution ultimately seems to hinge upon mental/cognitive enhancements that would allow us access to and processing of a vast amount of data which has been heretofore, beyond our capabilities. I find this suggestion to be in alignment with my own proposal of a general program of cognitive enhancement, or the development of an intelligence greater than our own.
Thank you for a very insightful read and I hope your work is communally judged appropriately for it's merits.
Thank you,
Mark
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Don Limuti wrote on Jun. 5, 2014 @ 22:23 GMT
Hi Sabine,
I find your thesis... how should I say... Scary. If plastic in the ocean is bad (and it is), then we should wire humans (a minor brain implant) so that their faulty brains would respond appropriately when they attempt to put garbage into the ocean.
There have been historical political leaders who have tried to get OTHERS to do the right thing on reflex without the "neat" technology of brain implants (think torture chambers and Chinese collectives). It does not work.
I do not find this essay up to your excellent scientific standards. Tell me this is not what you meant.
Don Limuti
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Member David L. Wiltshire wrote on Jun. 6, 2014 @ 22:47 GMT
Dear Sabine,
Some interesting points. But what I miss in your argument is: (1) how are individual priority maps to be translated into collective action?; (2) what happens when group think drives collective action to a disaster?
The 2008 financial crisis you mention is an example of a system where there is de facto collective action, because we now have a system of rapid international...
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Dear Sabine,
Some interesting points. But what I miss in your argument is: (1) how are individual priority maps to be translated into collective action?; (2) what happens when group think drives collective action to a disaster?
The 2008 financial crisis you mention is an example of a system where there is de facto collective action, because we now have a system of rapid international financial transactions, driven by individual priority maps of traders who mostly want to make profits on quite short timescales. As you say some of them did not feel right about it, and continued nonethless - and actually a number of smarter ones got out of it well before the crunch hit. But the point is, even better knowledge would not prevent the herd running to a disaster, as long as the dominant priority map driving the collection of traders is making a profit on a short time scale at the expense of others. With better information the crunch would have just hit sooner. Setting aside questions of ethics, such a system is just intrinsically unstable and the increased connectivity in the internet age can just amplify the instabilities.
If we just consider the less politically charged sphere of academia and science that you discuss (well less charged for those outside academia!), then individual researchers do (at least subconsciously) have priority maps which we apply every day when we scan arXiv abstracts to decide whether a paper is worth looking at. In fact, priority one for the vast majority is: will this paper help me with what I am working on, the things I want to know more about to write my next paper? (The writing of papers recognised as good by our peers is the basis of reward.) As with the financial markets, the internet amplifies perturbations where there is a strong prior propensity for group think. BICEP2 and primordial gravitational waves from inflation is a topical example. Will it go the way of the OPERA experiment and the faster-than-light-neutrinos that generated a similar sociological phenomenon? Who knows.
For the record I would say that inflation is an interesting phenomenology, which looks to be correct at the surface of last scattering. But it is a phenomenology still in search of a fundamental theory. (And it may well involve quantum gravity in the end; the really hard important stuff.) So the question of whether there are primordial gravitational waves is important. But inflation is a phenomenology that is very easy to arrive at: add a few more epicycles to the action, solve a bunch of differential equations and avoid thinking deeply. That is why there are hundreds of inflationary models on the market, and it is why BICEP2 is a sociological phenomenon.
Card-carrying members of FQXi have got into the club because hopefully we do try to take a larger scale view of the fundamental issues in science. I think the real problem is not so much the construction of individual priority maps, but the fact that the present reward systems that drive collective action do not have a longer-term, 100+ year perspective, either in science or society at large.
All best wishes,
David
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Anonymous replied on Jun. 8, 2014 @ 12:37 GMT
David,
Since Sabine is apparently preoccupied at the moment, with your and her forgiveness please allow me to barge in.
First, you said something very important and relevant to these FQXi discussions, on your home page, in disputing John Horgan's idea of 'ironic science' (I share your view):
"John's use of the term 'ironic science' belies the fact that despite all those books...
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David,
Since Sabine is apparently preoccupied at the moment, with your and her forgiveness please allow me to barge in.
First, you said something very important and relevant to these FQXi discussions, on your home page, in disputing John Horgan's idea of 'ironic science' (I share your view):
"John's use of the term 'ironic science' belies the fact that despite all those books he has read on the philosophy and methodology of science, despite all his interviews, he still does not ostensibly display any understanding of how science works. Science does involve forming testable hypotheses, but one cannot form a testable hypothesis unless one has a consistent logical framework within which to pose a hypothesis. You cannot write down a sentence before you learn language. In physics, the language of which is mathematics, this means constructing a self-consistent mathematical framework. Einstein could not have arrived at general relativity if he had not known about Riemannian geometry: 19th century 'ironic science'. The conventional frameworks for quantum gravity are not mathematically self-consistent. Someone needs to construct such a framework before physicists can pose any testable hypotheses."
I hated John's book (
The End of Science). I hated it so much that I read it three times in a row when it was first published almost 20 years ago. I came to realize I hated the premise, and loved the journalism. The candid thoughts of some of my favorite scientists were shining refutations of the premise; irony implies unexpected consequences, while a scientist's framework is based on expectations. Whether those expectations are physically right or wrong is beside the point; they are, as you said, logically and mathematically self consistent.
Time and again in these forums, we have to confront either inconsistent frameworks that leave huge gaps in understanding of the physics that we already know to be true -- or that, as you point out, simply interpret empirical phenomena absent a theory that would incorporate it.
To bring relevance of these facts, to Prof. Hossenfelder's essay, and your counterpoint:
The individual sorting of useful information by the scientist, and the application of a group consensus by the scientific community, are often at odds. A scientist may not find the consensus useful; and the community may not find the scientist useful. All that we have to objectively judge utility is, as you say, objective language.
I think Bee's conclusion supports that point: "To steer the future, information about our dynamical and multi-layered networks has to become cheap and almost effortless to use. Only then, when we can make informed decisions by feeling rather than thinking, will we be able to act and respond to the challenges we face."
That is, expectations ("feeling rather than thinking") align with facts only when objectively derived information -- like air -- is freely available for the breathing.
All best,
Tom
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Jun. 8, 2014 @ 12:38 GMT
Kevin O'Malley wrote on Jun. 13, 2014 @ 03:07 GMT
I played around with Excel last night and came up with a way to predict the contest winner. Basically, by downloading all the data pertinent to this contest such as the title of the essay, how many posts, the community rating, the public rating, how many community ratings and how many public ratings, and one more column for a combination of all the ratings and how the essay judges are likely to weight all the columns with respect to eachother, it spits out an answer.
With all those numbers, I sorted on each column and changed the color of the top 10 essays in each column. Then when it was all done I just looked for the "most colorful essay".
And the winner (will likely be)...
Open Peer Review to Save the World by Philip Gibbs
#2: Recognizing the Value of Play by Jonathan J. Dickau
#3: Bohr-like model for black holes: the route for quantum gravity by Christian Corda
#3 wins the slot because the contest judges will want to be science-minded. That's why Corda will likely win out over the Honorable Mention
How to save the world by Sabine Hossenfelder
because #3 is very science-y and #4 is a bit more of a preachy title without as much of a hint towards what the essay is about.
Well, there's my prediction. It was enjoyable to participate in this contest. By my own criteria, my essay wasn't "colorful" at all. Maybe the judges will score highly on ease of understanding and practicality? Nahh, the guys who are at the top of this list still do very well in such categories.
Good luck to you all.
Kevin O
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Wilhelmus de Wilde de Wilde wrote on Jun. 13, 2014 @ 15:28 GMT
Dear sabine,
Congratulations with your high community score and admittance to the finalists pool.
I hope that the discussions continue so I have the pleasure to sent you
a link to my contribution : "STEERING THE FUTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS" and hope for your comment on my thread.
Good luck with the "final judgement" and
best regards
Wilhelmus
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Thomas Howard Ray wrote on Aug. 20, 2014 @ 22:13 GMT
Forget the announcement drama -- I'm predicting a first prize for you. :-)
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