Walter Williams on freedom of association and discrimination

Walter Williams raises an interesting point. Are laws that force us to associate with each other better than laws that force us not to?

Critical thinking

Here is an interesting article on a priori knowledge in science.
Here is a discussion of authoritarian and libertarian rationality.
And a discussion of dogmatism.
And one on rationality that I can't quite describe but I like it. Here's part of the abstract:
"If the task of theoretical reason is to discover truth, or reasons for belief, then theoretical reason is impossible. Attempts to circumvent that by appeal to probabilities are self-defeating. If the task of practical reason is to discover what we ought to do or what actions are desirable or valuable, then practical reason is impossible. Appeals to the subjective ought or to subjective probabilities are self-defeating. Adapting Karl Popper, I argue that the task of theoretical reason is to obtain theories that we can agree to instate given that they appear to have greater explanatory merit than their rivals. I then argue that the task of practical reason is to decide which ought-propositions to act on."

Frame of reference

Every question comes with a frame of reference, a set of assumptions that help it make sense, a background against which it blends or contrasts. If we examine our frame of reference, we must provide a new one. How does this process end?

Relativism recognizes that we can analyse the same thing from different perspectives, by changing our assumptions. It does not insist that we must value them all the same.  That sort of relativism deserves a different name or qualifier. Maybe we should call it value relativism, or meta-relativism, or just nihilism.

We struggle with our thoughts to make plans that succeed. We rationalize our actions and seek to justify them in retrospect, hoping to maintain or improve our status. Maybe we're just curious.

Attacking/Defending Donald Hoffman's reality

An uncharitable interpretation of Donald Hoffman might view him as claiming that a completely deluded agent has an advantage over an agent with some grip on reality. I hope he does not actually take this extreme view. 

Hoffman likes to use the graphic user interface of a PC as an analogy. Computer users do not wish to know everything about what is happening in their PC. They find it much easier to deal with an abstract representation that in some ways corresponds to the internal workings of the computer, and in other ways is just made up to make sense to the user. An icon's image or location on the desktop says nothing important about it at the deep level. These are just handles that the user can manipulate for reasons that have nothing to do with internal operations of the computer. But there are some important connections.

We can interpret his metaphor to cast the conscious mind in the role of the user, reality as the computer hardware, and the unconscious mind and perceptions as the GUI. Some aspects of what we perceive correspond indirectly to reality, others result from processes within the unconscious. Does this get us to agreement with Hoffman, or did he overstate his case?

Hoffman does not explain his work in a way that makes it easy to agree with him. But we should keep in mind what we are agreeing with and what we are disagreeing with.

Hoffman presents some very provocative results. He describes them verbally in absurd terms. I would summarize his conclusions as "evolution favors deluded agents over agents who perceive reality correctly" and "consciousness is the foundation of reality". These both seem ridiculous at first glance.

But Hoffman does not give us sufficient information to judge him fairly. These conclusions summarize the results of a computer simulation and a mathematical theory. We must understand those before we can give Hoffman a charitable interpretation. Does Hoffman interpret his models and his application of their terms to our reality accurately? Without the details, we can't know, and Hoffman does not provide much detail in his interviews for the popular press.

Does the following example parallel Hoffman's idea? Humans evolved a response to danger in our ancestral environment. Evolution favored strategies that may generate more non-fatal errors so long as they tend to avoid fatal errors more reliably. So we respond to dangers that do not actually exist more often than we ignore real dangers (in the ancestral environment). The costs of the two sorts of error differ; and heuristics that sacrifice one measure of accuracy to avoid the more costly sort of error can make sense. We can imagine simulating this idea and having nervous nellies outcompete others who more accurately predict danger but who make fatal mistakes more often.

Now imagine that Hoffman's simulation does something similar, but only allows perception to vary. All agents use the same strategy for avoiding danger, but have different abilities to perceive reality accurately. The perceptions that evolve may also reflect the difference in the cost of error. Hallucinating danger more often would be an acceptable cost, if it is counterbalanced by a sufficiently lower chance of ignoring potentially fatal danger.

I found this counterintuitive at first. I was tempted to think that more accurate perception always gives us an advantage over less accurate, and we should analyse any difference in strategy separately. But this artificial distinction misleads us. Scientists no longer think the brain works that way; The line between unconscious thought and perception is fuzzy. (E.g. the sensitivity of the rods and cones in the eye respond to our emotional state.) 

 

Even if we assume a separation between perception and strategic response, the speed and cognitive cost of perceptions could impact fitness in addition to their accuracy. Increases in accuracy may trade off with these other factors. We can't just assume that more accuracy always improves fitness. We have to count the cost of the accuracy in terms of other factors sacrificed.

So I can't be sure that I agree with Hoffman, but I am not sure I disagree either. Can we interpret what happened in his simulation unambiguously to support his conclusion? How far from accuracy could this process lead? I don't know.

Hoffman's mathematical model of a consciousness-based universe seems even more difficult to criticize from a simple verbal summary. He seems to say that he has some math that derives quantum reality from more primitive entities that can be interpreted as consciousness. It is up to mathematical physicists to say whether the math works. Can we interpret the math without understanding it?

Is the math correct? Does the interpretation work? We can view Hoffman's argument as a reductio ad absurdum. This gives us a choice; If the intervening logic works, we either accept the result or criticize the assumptions. Which assumptions specifically must we reject? Hoffman has not really made this clear in his popular summaries. We would need to read Hoffman's serious papers to find out what he assumes.

Dogmatism grooming

We're not supposed to like dogma, dogmatists or dogmatism.

I think murder is bad. It's kind of built into the definition. If it wasn't bad, we would call it "killing in self defense" or "accidental death" or something else. Murder is what we call it after a judgement has been made that a wrongful killing took place. We can doubt individual judgements, but can we doubt the principle?

What sort of situation or argument should make me want to consider that murder might be a good thing? So, am I being dogmatic? You must admit that the world might be a better place minus some of its most disagreeable persons. So, should I switch to a consequentialist frame on murder? I don't like that sort of consequentialism.

How about rape? I can't think of any credible scenario where rape is going to make the world a better place. So, shall we endorse dogmatism on this topic? Rape is bad.

So if we can justify dogmatism in some circumstances, how do we explain the distinction between justifiable and unjustifiable dogmatism? What sorts of justifications work?

Usually when someone accuses me of dogmatism, their position seems just as dogmatic to me. How can we tell which one, or niether, really fits the costume?

I think we can find good reasons for using caution about dogmatism. If the dogmatists must shield their dogma from criticism, that's probably a mistake. What else makes dogma into dogma?

I'm willing to listen to all sorts of criticisms about my ideas that murder and rape are bad. If I changed my mind, that would surprise me, but changing my mind usually surprises me. Such surprises are hardly surprising. If I expected to change my mind, I would have changed it already.

So, does a feeling of comfortable certainty qualify me as a dogmatist, assuming I'm willing to think seriously about rival hypotheses and the reasons people give for them?

Meta-libertarian criticism of anarcho-capitalism

• Meta-libertarianism: Don't force anyone to accept a particular system. Let each choose for themselves. This does not contradict the ancap idea directly, but ancaps tend to overstate their position, as if history will end and everyone will agree on one best solution.
• Ancaps criticize the moral justification for the state's special status (there is none). But a moral critique does not advise us when choosing between reform and abolition. Arguably, just abolishing slavery should have been sufficient (and practical problems transitioning from slavery to something else would not excuse hesitation). But even in that simpler case, complications occurred. The state has intertwined itself into our lives in a much more complicated way than slavery did. We can't destroy society in order to save it. We need to cultivate it, to heal it.
• The innovations they support are not the only ones that might eliminate the problems they criticize. Not everyone agrees that their solutions will work, or would improve our lives compared to some other possible change. As bad as they may be, things can always get worse. 
• Ancaps declare reform of the government to be impossible, but the evidence they have for this makes it seem unlikely but not impossible. If reform is merely difficult, that undercuts the urgency of the more extreme suggestions.