Toolbelt of Knowledge: Practices
Skepticism
Listening
Deconstruction
Rationality
Mindfulness
Steel Manning
Common Sense
On this blog, we have not treated common sense too kindly. “Common sense” is what we use to mean “you just know,” without having to go through all of the tedium of proving something. In general, it is a catch-all term for mental shortcuts that get us to answers quickly without getting bogged down in confusion. Because of this, common sense can be incredibly idiotic. However, there are also times when it is wise and practical. Today, we’re going to look at how to use common sense well, so that you come to conclusions that have high probabilities of being correct and useful.
The first type of common sense is a reality check. After you have gone through a process of deduction and calculation, does the answer you get make sense? For instance, suppose you are doing a homework problem to calculate the speed of sound, and the answer you get is 30 miles per hour. Do you turn it in? You may not know what the real answer is, but you do know you don’t hear a sonic boom every time a car speeds up nearby! Common sense says you better check your calculations.
Not considering the consequences of the choices we make or put off making can be considered a breach of common sense. If you’re making rice and you fill the pot with grains, it will overflow as it absorbs the water. If you have a pain in your wisdom tooth, waiting to see if it goes away on its own is not worth the risk that it’s infected. When you vote for politicians and leaders, you might want to avoid the ones who like to beat people down. Actions and consequences. Common sense.
Our next use of common sense is to accept true statements that are extremely difficult or impossible to prove. There is a form of argument called the syllogism, which is two premises and a conclusion. An example would be, “All men are human, Frederick Douglass was a man, therefore Frederick Douglass was human.” In the abstract, the syllogism looks like this:
A: If B, then C.
B: B.
C: Therefore, C.
It is obvious that if someone accepts both A and B, they must conclude C to be true as well.
But think about the statement in bold. It is a premise in itself, a hidden premise of the argument. So let’s bring it out of its hiding place, and add it to the syllogism as a premise Z.
Z: If A and B, then C.
A: If B, then C.
B: B.
C. Therefore, C.
There we go. Now we know the whole truth: if someone accepts A, B, and the hidden premise Z, they must conclude C to be true as well.
Oh no! In bringing out the hidden premise to prove the syllogism, we have discovered yet another premise! X: If Z, A, and B, then C. It becomes clear that there is a pattern: for every hidden premise we find, there is yet another premise hidden behind it. Rather than two premises and a conclusion, the syllogism in its true form has an infinite number of premises!
This is an interesting puzzle for the philosophy of logic. But for our everyday problem solving, the two-premise syllogism is good enough, and it is fine to act as if it is absolutely proven to be true. This is our next use of common sense: to take the improvable foundations of logic as if they are proven to be true.
Even when an argument is logically sound, common sense can sometimes veto one or more of its premises. For instance, we can go to the classic example of a faulty syllogism, “All men have beards. Socrates was a man. Therefore, Socrates had a beard.” Our common sense says wait a minute, only some men have beards, not all of them! Despite the argument being formally valid, the first premise is false, meaning the conclusion is invalid, and we can’t know if Socrates had a beard without more information.
However, we must remember, just because something is common sense doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. At first glance, quantum physics seems to go against common sense, with photons and electrons behaving sometimes as particles and sometimes as waves, and seeming to teleport from place to place. But there is an enormous amount of theoretical and experimental evidence pointing to quantum physics being true, and we have a large amount of technology, such as the laser, that would not function otherwise. Therefore, despite quantum physics going against common sense, we have every reason to believe it is true.
This illustrates the problem with common sense: sometimes it is wrong. If we hear an idea that goes against our common sense, it is important to hear the arguments supporting it, and to give those arguments a good mull over, with the attitude that we might allow ourselves to be convinced to let go of our common sense belief.
Perhaps the worst danger of invoking common sense is to avoid looking at a question in its full complexity, and make out anyone who disagrees with us as fools. We all know of people who have defended their religious or political beliefs by saying, “it’s common sense,” brushing us off, and sending the message that because we don’t agree with their “common sense” view, our thoughts on the matter aren’t worth hearing. That’s not common sense, it’s stubbornness, and we must keep ourselves accountable not to fall into that kind of behavior.
Like rationality, common sense is not something we automatically have. In order not to cause more problems than it solves, common sense must be trained, and a great way to do that is to practice all of the other skills in the Toolbelt of Knowledge.
Friday, December 27, 2019
Friday, December 13, 2019
Why I Write about Things I Don't Believe
Toolbelt of Knowledge: Practices
Skepticism
Listening
Deconstruction
Rationality
Mindfulness
Steel Manning
Common Sense
On this blog, I write about all kinds of philosophical ideas. One of the major goals is to help me think about all of these interesting topics, and to figure out what I believe. But I also write about things I don’t believe, like Dualism, Idealism, and the creation solutions to the fine-tuning problem. Why do I do this? There are a few reasons. Firstly, taking the time to think through ideas I don’t believe helps me understand the ideas I do believe. Secondly, when I write fantasy, I want my alternative philosophy to be coherent. And thirdly, thinking about all kinds of philosophical ideas is fun, whether I think they correspond to the real world or not.
We will begin by discussing something called the Steel Man technique. A good competitor always wants their opponent to be at their best, because only then can the competition truly reveal who is stronger, faster, more cunning, or whatever. Although I don’t like to think of intellectual discussions as competitions, the same principle applies: the only way to know whose ideas are truer is if the very best arguments are made for all sides.
There is a fallacy often committed during debates or arguments, when one person sets up a weak caricature of the other’s position and knocks down that caricature, acting as if this means they have knocked down their opponent’s argument. This is called the Straw Man fallacy. Most open-minded individuals will usually be able to spot one, and the person who makes the fallacy will lose credibility.
But if someone does the opposite, and builds up their opponent’s position to be at its very best, such that their opponent would agree wholeheartedly at how it is put, they have made a Steel Man. Knocking down a straw man is a cheap and dirty trick. Knocking down a steel man is a well-earned and noble victory.
In a less competitive setting, such as when two people are having a friendly conversation, a steel man can keep things positive by letting the other person know you understand where they’re coming from. It is also helpful to you, whether you are with someone or thinking on your own, because understanding what you don’t believe helps you better understand what you do believe.
When world-building fantasy stories, I strive for philosophical coherence. We all know of science fiction and fantasy stories where the authors throw in whatever they feel like without worrying about how much sense it makes. Sci-fi realism, on the other hand, is when a writer takes scientific ideas and language seriously, and uses them appropriately to craft a story that might plausibly take place in the future. Similarly, medieval realism is an idea applied to fantasy such that the geography, economics, politics, armor and horses and all of that stuff, make sense. Philosophical coherence is like sci-fi and medieval realism, but with philosophy. For instance, in The Mentor, the Hero, and the Trickster, there is a magical world the main characters can go to called the Unconscious Realms, which are built according to my conception of what a world based on Berkelian Idealsim world would be like.
When I write about things like idealism and dualism, I am building up my skill in philosophical coherence. In my fantasy books, philosophical coherence will help me give them the depth and richness I strive for.
In order to further grow my skills of philosophical coherence and steel manning, I am going to start a new series called “Best Arguments Against,” where I present the arguments against my beliefs that I find the most compelling. We’ll talk about God and quantum physics and all kinds of awesome stuff. So make sure to check back regularly, because it’s going to be a fun time.
Skepticism
Listening
Deconstruction
Rationality
Mindfulness
Steel Manning
Common Sense
On this blog, I write about all kinds of philosophical ideas. One of the major goals is to help me think about all of these interesting topics, and to figure out what I believe. But I also write about things I don’t believe, like Dualism, Idealism, and the creation solutions to the fine-tuning problem. Why do I do this? There are a few reasons. Firstly, taking the time to think through ideas I don’t believe helps me understand the ideas I do believe. Secondly, when I write fantasy, I want my alternative philosophy to be coherent. And thirdly, thinking about all kinds of philosophical ideas is fun, whether I think they correspond to the real world or not.
We will begin by discussing something called the Steel Man technique. A good competitor always wants their opponent to be at their best, because only then can the competition truly reveal who is stronger, faster, more cunning, or whatever. Although I don’t like to think of intellectual discussions as competitions, the same principle applies: the only way to know whose ideas are truer is if the very best arguments are made for all sides.
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| image attribution |
There is a fallacy often committed during debates or arguments, when one person sets up a weak caricature of the other’s position and knocks down that caricature, acting as if this means they have knocked down their opponent’s argument. This is called the Straw Man fallacy. Most open-minded individuals will usually be able to spot one, and the person who makes the fallacy will lose credibility.
But if someone does the opposite, and builds up their opponent’s position to be at its very best, such that their opponent would agree wholeheartedly at how it is put, they have made a Steel Man. Knocking down a straw man is a cheap and dirty trick. Knocking down a steel man is a well-earned and noble victory.
In a less competitive setting, such as when two people are having a friendly conversation, a steel man can keep things positive by letting the other person know you understand where they’re coming from. It is also helpful to you, whether you are with someone or thinking on your own, because understanding what you don’t believe helps you better understand what you do believe.
When world-building fantasy stories, I strive for philosophical coherence. We all know of science fiction and fantasy stories where the authors throw in whatever they feel like without worrying about how much sense it makes. Sci-fi realism, on the other hand, is when a writer takes scientific ideas and language seriously, and uses them appropriately to craft a story that might plausibly take place in the future. Similarly, medieval realism is an idea applied to fantasy such that the geography, economics, politics, armor and horses and all of that stuff, make sense. Philosophical coherence is like sci-fi and medieval realism, but with philosophy. For instance, in The Mentor, the Hero, and the Trickster, there is a magical world the main characters can go to called the Unconscious Realms, which are built according to my conception of what a world based on Berkelian Idealsim world would be like.
When I write about things like idealism and dualism, I am building up my skill in philosophical coherence. In my fantasy books, philosophical coherence will help me give them the depth and richness I strive for.
In order to further grow my skills of philosophical coherence and steel manning, I am going to start a new series called “Best Arguments Against,” where I present the arguments against my beliefs that I find the most compelling. We’ll talk about God and quantum physics and all kinds of awesome stuff. So make sure to check back regularly, because it’s going to be a fun time.
Friday, December 6, 2019
NaNo Results 2019
November is over, and I happily stand on top of 50,000 words of extreme future science fiction! The immortal Maki Tanaka First Spring has been wandering along on his million-year journey across the Milky Way. The story is not finished yet, with perhaps another 10,000 words left to go in the first draft, which I plan to finish this month.
After the first draft is finished, my wonderful friends in my new writing group and I will swap stories and critique each other. We will trade advice on what is going well, what needs work, and what to focus on. If any of you are reading this, thanks for being absolutely amazing!
The next step in my book will be to develop the characters, so they are more than props for the main character’s journey. In November’s last days, I didn’t even give the supporting characters names, going instead for placeholders like Leaderman, Otherguy, and Cap2. So they will be the first priority in preparation for draft 2.
After that, I will revisit the structure of the story, taking into account the advice from the alpha readings. Some scenes need to be scrapped, others fleshed out. When I write a first draft, I have to include the transitions between scenes, such as car rides and time spent in waiting rooms, so that I know how the characters are feeling when the interesting parts happen. These transition scenes have very little importance, and can be reduced to a few short sentences, or cut completely.
As happens in NaNoWriMo, I was rushed every day to get my word quota on the page. Because of this, the story jumps from scene to scene, and characters were made up on the fly. Some of the sections feel more like heavy outlines than immersive stories, and not one of the characters other than Maki himself is interesting. Draft 2 will probably be at least 100,000 words, putting it in the normal range of adult science fiction. After that, it may require further structural drafts, and then a prose draft, where I edit each paragraph and sentence to be the best it can be in terms of wordcraft. And after that, it will be time for query letters and publisher submission!
When will it be published? Probably not for a long time. I would be surprised if it takes less than a year. But I can guarantee that sometime in the hopefully not too distant future, you will see the name Christian Horst on the spine of a book in the sci-fi section of a bookstore.
After the first draft is finished, my wonderful friends in my new writing group and I will swap stories and critique each other. We will trade advice on what is going well, what needs work, and what to focus on. If any of you are reading this, thanks for being absolutely amazing!
The next step in my book will be to develop the characters, so they are more than props for the main character’s journey. In November’s last days, I didn’t even give the supporting characters names, going instead for placeholders like Leaderman, Otherguy, and Cap2. So they will be the first priority in preparation for draft 2.
After that, I will revisit the structure of the story, taking into account the advice from the alpha readings. Some scenes need to be scrapped, others fleshed out. When I write a first draft, I have to include the transitions between scenes, such as car rides and time spent in waiting rooms, so that I know how the characters are feeling when the interesting parts happen. These transition scenes have very little importance, and can be reduced to a few short sentences, or cut completely.
As happens in NaNoWriMo, I was rushed every day to get my word quota on the page. Because of this, the story jumps from scene to scene, and characters were made up on the fly. Some of the sections feel more like heavy outlines than immersive stories, and not one of the characters other than Maki himself is interesting. Draft 2 will probably be at least 100,000 words, putting it in the normal range of adult science fiction. After that, it may require further structural drafts, and then a prose draft, where I edit each paragraph and sentence to be the best it can be in terms of wordcraft. And after that, it will be time for query letters and publisher submission!
When will it be published? Probably not for a long time. I would be surprised if it takes less than a year. But I can guarantee that sometime in the hopefully not too distant future, you will see the name Christian Horst on the spine of a book in the sci-fi section of a bookstore.
Friday, November 29, 2019
The Doomsday Argument
Series on the Anthropic Principle:
The Anthropic Principle
The Doomsday Argument
65 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth. Then, all of a sudden, they were gone. Something happened, we think it was a meteor strike, that made the earth uninhabitable for them. 251 million years ago, a major volcanic eruption and the ensuing global climate change killed most of the life on the planet. In total, there were 5 major extinctions in Earth’s history.
Human stories are full of tales of the end of the world. In Norse mythology, there is Ragnarok. In the Bible, Armageddon. In modern times, we have the Terminator, Galactus, disaster movies. We have fears of climate change, asteroid strikes, nuclear war, and uncontrollable artificial intelligence. It’s clear we have a question deep within our psychology: is humanity about to end?
The astrophysicist Brandon Carter thought so 35 years ago. The argument went like this: assume human population continues to grow exponentially until some cataclysmic event reduces our numbers to near or total extinction. If the population doubles every 50 years, then by the Anthropic Principle, you had a 50% chance of living in the final 50 years of human civilization, and a 50% chance of dying sometime in the entirety of human history before then.
This seems crazy, but it isn’t immediately obvious why. When I argued against it way back in the day, I was completely wrong. The first thing I said was that because you and I are you and I, we are not randomly selected from human history. This is nonsense. If we choose randomly from all humans who ever have or ever will live, you and I are among the possible choices. It’s a perfectly valid framework for asking questions, and that’s what the Anthropic Principle does.
The other bad argument I had against it was this: “Pick a point in history between the dawn of agriculture and the end of time, and the Doomsday Argument will give the same result: humanity is about to end.” This is true, but it is not a counter to the Doomsday Argument. The fallacy was that I switched from a random sampling of humans to a random sampling of time. And because population increases over time, a random sampling over time gives the earlier times undue weight.
So then what is the counter-argument? There are a few. The first one that jumps out to me is the fact that it is really hard to think of a scenario that will make humanity go totally extinct. Think of your favorite existential disaster: catastrophic global warming, nuclear annihilation, super-virus, supervolcano, autonomous weapons that decide they want to destroy all humans. If any of these were to wipe out the vast majority of the human species, it would be a terrible, tragic event unparalleled by anything in human history. However, we only need a small number to survive, and they will be able to repopulate the planet and restore civilization.
A big enough asteroid strike could make the Earth uninhabitable, but we have the technology to see asteroids that big years before they would hit us, sometimes decades, plenty of time to nudge them off-course. There are no supernova or gamma ray burst progenitors close enough to harm us with their explosions, nor alien civilizations close enough to invade. And the sun won’t get hot enough to turn Earth into another Venus for another few hundred million years.
What could cause humanity to go extinct? There is only one realistic example that I can think of: superintelligent AI that wants to exterminate humanity. How likely is this? Well, that deserves a discussion of its own. We can rest assured that there are many extremely intelligent people thinking about this topic, and working hard to foresee the possible risks and dangers of developing artificial intelligence. Of course, there is always a possibility that we will miss something, but the more we think about it and work on it, the more likely we are to spot the dangerous paths and go around them.
The other thing that could cause humanity to go extinct lies in the unknown unknowns. It may be that some technology will be invented that is extremely easy to make, and can wipe out humanity. This is sometimes called a “black ball technology.” If such a potential technology exists, then anyone with the right equipment, materials, and recipe would be able to destroy humanity, and given that there are billions of people on the Earth, we would be in serious trouble.
However, the very thing that makes us vulnerable to black ball technology also guards us against it: technological progress and expansion. Once we are able to leave our home planet and start new civilizations on other planets and moons and giant artificial space habitats, then we will be able to survive even something that destroys all life on Earth.
A second problem with the Doomsday Argument is that it assumes humanity will continue to grow exponentially, and then be cut down to a level so low it cannot recover. We already know this model is incorrect, because the rate of human population growth is slowing. If we apply the anthropic principle to another function, say, a linear increase, we find that we have a slightly more than 50% chance of living within the final third of human history. That final third could have a range of anywhere between 100,000 years and 150,000 years. And 50% means there is an equal probability of living outside of that time. So with linear growth, the Doomsday Argument doesn’t tell us much of anything at all!
The final problem with the Doomsday Argument is that it assumes the growth of civilization will stop with some catastrophic event. There are plenty of other models of human population that work perfectly fine with the anthropic principle. For instance, if it looks more like a bell curve, we would be more likely to find ourselves near the top. If it levels off, we would be equally likely to find ourselves anywhere along the level period. If it looks bumpy and wavy, we are more likely to find ourselves near one of the peaks. It’s very difficult to say what the human population curve will look like in the future, because every model carries with it plenty of assumptions.
There is one sense in which the Doomsday Argument seems to get things right. When we look out into the universe, we see a vision of a possible future where life, humanity’s descendants, and perhaps alien species, thrive and live around every star and in the spaces between. The number of people in such a multitude of societies astronomically outnumbers the number of humans who have ever lived. Therefore, regardless of what the population curve looks like, the odds of living on such a civilization’s planet of origin before it spreads out into the galaxy is astronomically small. It’s like winning the lottery, and the reward being another lottery ticket, which wins again, and is rewarded with a third lottery ticket, which wins yet again.
Yet here we are. And we have two options. One, we can look at the staggeringly improbable odds that we would find ourselves at this time in such a universe, and hang our heads in despair, declaring that these odds mean such a civilization is doomed never to happen. The other option is to accept that the future has not happened yet; it depends on what we do now. So since we have already won the cosmic lottery, let’s do our part to build the machine that generates our winning tickets. The world hasn’t ended yet, so as Samuel L. Jackson says, let us act as though it intends to spin on.
The Anthropic Principle
The Doomsday Argument
65 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth. Then, all of a sudden, they were gone. Something happened, we think it was a meteor strike, that made the earth uninhabitable for them. 251 million years ago, a major volcanic eruption and the ensuing global climate change killed most of the life on the planet. In total, there were 5 major extinctions in Earth’s history.
Human stories are full of tales of the end of the world. In Norse mythology, there is Ragnarok. In the Bible, Armageddon. In modern times, we have the Terminator, Galactus, disaster movies. We have fears of climate change, asteroid strikes, nuclear war, and uncontrollable artificial intelligence. It’s clear we have a question deep within our psychology: is humanity about to end?
The astrophysicist Brandon Carter thought so 35 years ago. The argument went like this: assume human population continues to grow exponentially until some cataclysmic event reduces our numbers to near or total extinction. If the population doubles every 50 years, then by the Anthropic Principle, you had a 50% chance of living in the final 50 years of human civilization, and a 50% chance of dying sometime in the entirety of human history before then.
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The other bad argument I had against it was this: “Pick a point in history between the dawn of agriculture and the end of time, and the Doomsday Argument will give the same result: humanity is about to end.” This is true, but it is not a counter to the Doomsday Argument. The fallacy was that I switched from a random sampling of humans to a random sampling of time. And because population increases over time, a random sampling over time gives the earlier times undue weight.
So then what is the counter-argument? There are a few. The first one that jumps out to me is the fact that it is really hard to think of a scenario that will make humanity go totally extinct. Think of your favorite existential disaster: catastrophic global warming, nuclear annihilation, super-virus, supervolcano, autonomous weapons that decide they want to destroy all humans. If any of these were to wipe out the vast majority of the human species, it would be a terrible, tragic event unparalleled by anything in human history. However, we only need a small number to survive, and they will be able to repopulate the planet and restore civilization.
A big enough asteroid strike could make the Earth uninhabitable, but we have the technology to see asteroids that big years before they would hit us, sometimes decades, plenty of time to nudge them off-course. There are no supernova or gamma ray burst progenitors close enough to harm us with their explosions, nor alien civilizations close enough to invade. And the sun won’t get hot enough to turn Earth into another Venus for another few hundred million years.
What could cause humanity to go extinct? There is only one realistic example that I can think of: superintelligent AI that wants to exterminate humanity. How likely is this? Well, that deserves a discussion of its own. We can rest assured that there are many extremely intelligent people thinking about this topic, and working hard to foresee the possible risks and dangers of developing artificial intelligence. Of course, there is always a possibility that we will miss something, but the more we think about it and work on it, the more likely we are to spot the dangerous paths and go around them.
The other thing that could cause humanity to go extinct lies in the unknown unknowns. It may be that some technology will be invented that is extremely easy to make, and can wipe out humanity. This is sometimes called a “black ball technology.” If such a potential technology exists, then anyone with the right equipment, materials, and recipe would be able to destroy humanity, and given that there are billions of people on the Earth, we would be in serious trouble.
However, the very thing that makes us vulnerable to black ball technology also guards us against it: technological progress and expansion. Once we are able to leave our home planet and start new civilizations on other planets and moons and giant artificial space habitats, then we will be able to survive even something that destroys all life on Earth.
A second problem with the Doomsday Argument is that it assumes humanity will continue to grow exponentially, and then be cut down to a level so low it cannot recover. We already know this model is incorrect, because the rate of human population growth is slowing. If we apply the anthropic principle to another function, say, a linear increase, we find that we have a slightly more than 50% chance of living within the final third of human history. That final third could have a range of anywhere between 100,000 years and 150,000 years. And 50% means there is an equal probability of living outside of that time. So with linear growth, the Doomsday Argument doesn’t tell us much of anything at all!
 |
| Since the area under the curve is about equal in each section, we would be about equally likely to find ourselves in either of them. |
There is one sense in which the Doomsday Argument seems to get things right. When we look out into the universe, we see a vision of a possible future where life, humanity’s descendants, and perhaps alien species, thrive and live around every star and in the spaces between. The number of people in such a multitude of societies astronomically outnumbers the number of humans who have ever lived. Therefore, regardless of what the population curve looks like, the odds of living on such a civilization’s planet of origin before it spreads out into the galaxy is astronomically small. It’s like winning the lottery, and the reward being another lottery ticket, which wins again, and is rewarded with a third lottery ticket, which wins yet again.
Yet here we are. And we have two options. One, we can look at the staggeringly improbable odds that we would find ourselves at this time in such a universe, and hang our heads in despair, declaring that these odds mean such a civilization is doomed never to happen. The other option is to accept that the future has not happened yet; it depends on what we do now. So since we have already won the cosmic lottery, let’s do our part to build the machine that generates our winning tickets. The world hasn’t ended yet, so as Samuel L. Jackson says, let us act as though it intends to spin on.
Friday, November 22, 2019
Why are Some Things Impossible?
Impossible. We’ve all heard this word. Sometimes it is used as an excuse to give up. Sometimes as a reason to pursue other things with our time. Sometimes in the context of science and technology. When we want to encourage imagination, we tell our kids (and sometimes adults) that nothing is impossible.
If something is impossible, it can’t be done. Seems straightforward enough. But what makes the difference between whether something is possible or impossible? In asking this question, we find there is not one single answer, but several tiers, each nested within the one before.
Logically impossible
At the most bedrock level, we have logical impossibilities. These are things that cannot exist or cannot be done because they contradict themselves. These include mathematical contradictions, as well as things that contradict their own definitions.
For example, suppose among the men in a certain town, there is a barber who shaves those, and only those, who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself? If so, he is not the barber. Does he not shave himself? If so, then he shaves himself. Therefore, a barber who fits this description cannot exist.
Other things that are logically impossible: A square circle in cartesian coordinates. A solution to a 2x2 sudoku puzzle with a 1 in the top left and a 2 in the bottom right. A legal crime. A dry ocean.
Physically impossible
We don’t live in a universe where everything logically consistent is possible. Everything that exists has a nature, described by laws of physics, and these natures render a whole host of things impossible.
I should pause to mention the distinction between the true nature of reality and our current theoretical understanding of it. Science is very much a work in progress, so there are many things we don’t know yet, and many we think we know but are wrong about. Nevertheless, there are things that are logically possible, but impossible within the true laws of physics, whatever they turn out to be at perfect resolution.
With that in mind, we can talk about what would be impossible if our current understanding were correct, and let it be a proof of concept. Some things that are impossible in our universe, but logically acceptable, are perpetual motion, going faster than light or backward in time, getting out of a black hole, and reducing the total entropy of a closed system.
Technologically impossible
Even within the laws of physics, many things are not possible to us yet, because we do not have the technology to do them. This tier is vast and rich, and in considering what is inside it, we can imagine mind-bogglingly bizarre futures.
In the near term, we have things like mind-computer interfaces, autonomous cars, and quantum computers. A little further out, we might expect to invent nuclear fusion power plants, space elevators, superconducting power lines, weather control, conscious artificial intelligence, biological immortality, revival of extinct species, human colonies all over the solar system, and so much more.
These may seem like science fiction magic to untrained ears, but the difference between them and magic is that people can envision a path toward inventing them that makes sense in the context of modern science.
Economically impossible
Even when we know how to do things, we still need the will and the resources for them. As humanity finds new ways to harness energy and resources, especially in space, more and more things become possible. These include things like space ships with spin gravity, particle accelerators that dwarf CERN, interferometer telescopes the size of the solar system, and buildings tens of thousands of meters high.
But when we’re talking about the merely economically impossible, we don’t have to limit ourselves to such small scales. We could build an orbital ring around the Earth’s equator, orbiting just outside the atmosphere, with launch platforms for shuttles and rockets. We could mine asteroids and use their materials to build giant ships in space. We could envelop the sun entirely in solar energy collectors, a Dyson sphere. We could build giant reflectors to direct all of the sun’s light in one direction, effectively a rocket thruster that could move the solar system. All under known science, and with technology that has already been invented.
Cognitively impossible
Here we come to the last, most easily surpassed level of impossibility. These are things which are impossible only because people believe they are. As soon as people put their minds and efforts toward it, it becomes possible. Many of the great inventions of history came about because someone or some group of people decided they were going to do what everyone else assumed to be impossible, from the Wright brothers inventing the airplane, to the USSR sending a man to space, to the US putting boot prints on the moon.
Today, the biggest example of someone challenging the cognitively impossible is Elon Musk. From SpaceX building bigger and better rockets, to the Boring Company digging tunnels under Los Angeles to solve traffic congestion, to Neuralink connecting people’s brains with computers. He, those who work for him, and many other entrepreneurs, bring the cognitively impossible into existence.
Other things that seem cognitively impossible: World peace. Meeting the basic needs of everyone on Earth. Tolerance and good will across political and religious divides. Governments that work for everyone. A business culture that cares about the poor, the workers, and the environment. Cultures where there are no social minorities or majorities. Cities floating on the ocean. Powering civilization and the global economy with sustainable resources.
All of these things are possible and doable given the technology and economic infrastructure we have now. Why don’t we? Well, there are a million reasons, all of which are unique to their particular challenge. But many of them can be overcome if enough people or the right few see through the curtain of the way things are, and aim their sights on achieving what many brush off as impossible. Not everything is possible. But the number of things that are is vast.
If something is impossible, it can’t be done. Seems straightforward enough. But what makes the difference between whether something is possible or impossible? In asking this question, we find there is not one single answer, but several tiers, each nested within the one before.
Logically impossible
At the most bedrock level, we have logical impossibilities. These are things that cannot exist or cannot be done because they contradict themselves. These include mathematical contradictions, as well as things that contradict their own definitions.
For example, suppose among the men in a certain town, there is a barber who shaves those, and only those, who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself? If so, he is not the barber. Does he not shave himself? If so, then he shaves himself. Therefore, a barber who fits this description cannot exist.
Other things that are logically impossible: A square circle in cartesian coordinates. A solution to a 2x2 sudoku puzzle with a 1 in the top left and a 2 in the bottom right. A legal crime. A dry ocean.
Physically impossible
We don’t live in a universe where everything logically consistent is possible. Everything that exists has a nature, described by laws of physics, and these natures render a whole host of things impossible.
I should pause to mention the distinction between the true nature of reality and our current theoretical understanding of it. Science is very much a work in progress, so there are many things we don’t know yet, and many we think we know but are wrong about. Nevertheless, there are things that are logically possible, but impossible within the true laws of physics, whatever they turn out to be at perfect resolution.
With that in mind, we can talk about what would be impossible if our current understanding were correct, and let it be a proof of concept. Some things that are impossible in our universe, but logically acceptable, are perpetual motion, going faster than light or backward in time, getting out of a black hole, and reducing the total entropy of a closed system.
Technologically impossible
Even within the laws of physics, many things are not possible to us yet, because we do not have the technology to do them. This tier is vast and rich, and in considering what is inside it, we can imagine mind-bogglingly bizarre futures.
In the near term, we have things like mind-computer interfaces, autonomous cars, and quantum computers. A little further out, we might expect to invent nuclear fusion power plants, space elevators, superconducting power lines, weather control, conscious artificial intelligence, biological immortality, revival of extinct species, human colonies all over the solar system, and so much more.
These may seem like science fiction magic to untrained ears, but the difference between them and magic is that people can envision a path toward inventing them that makes sense in the context of modern science.
Economically impossible
Even when we know how to do things, we still need the will and the resources for them. As humanity finds new ways to harness energy and resources, especially in space, more and more things become possible. These include things like space ships with spin gravity, particle accelerators that dwarf CERN, interferometer telescopes the size of the solar system, and buildings tens of thousands of meters high.
But when we’re talking about the merely economically impossible, we don’t have to limit ourselves to such small scales. We could build an orbital ring around the Earth’s equator, orbiting just outside the atmosphere, with launch platforms for shuttles and rockets. We could mine asteroids and use their materials to build giant ships in space. We could envelop the sun entirely in solar energy collectors, a Dyson sphere. We could build giant reflectors to direct all of the sun’s light in one direction, effectively a rocket thruster that could move the solar system. All under known science, and with technology that has already been invented.
Cognitively impossible
Here we come to the last, most easily surpassed level of impossibility. These are things which are impossible only because people believe they are. As soon as people put their minds and efforts toward it, it becomes possible. Many of the great inventions of history came about because someone or some group of people decided they were going to do what everyone else assumed to be impossible, from the Wright brothers inventing the airplane, to the USSR sending a man to space, to the US putting boot prints on the moon.
Today, the biggest example of someone challenging the cognitively impossible is Elon Musk. From SpaceX building bigger and better rockets, to the Boring Company digging tunnels under Los Angeles to solve traffic congestion, to Neuralink connecting people’s brains with computers. He, those who work for him, and many other entrepreneurs, bring the cognitively impossible into existence.
Other things that seem cognitively impossible: World peace. Meeting the basic needs of everyone on Earth. Tolerance and good will across political and religious divides. Governments that work for everyone. A business culture that cares about the poor, the workers, and the environment. Cultures where there are no social minorities or majorities. Cities floating on the ocean. Powering civilization and the global economy with sustainable resources.
All of these things are possible and doable given the technology and economic infrastructure we have now. Why don’t we? Well, there are a million reasons, all of which are unique to their particular challenge. But many of them can be overcome if enough people or the right few see through the curtain of the way things are, and aim their sights on achieving what many brush off as impossible. Not everything is possible. But the number of things that are is vast.
Friday, November 1, 2019
NaNoWriMo 2019
It’s November again! That means I, along with hundreds of thousands of other writers, will be jamming out a 50,000-word novel in 30 days.
I’ve done NaNoWriMo three times before, and each time, I upped the ante. In 2016, my goal was just to finish a story, which ended up less than 30,000 words. In 2017, I made myself write no less than 1,000 words every day. In 2018, I aimed for and reached 50,000 with a junk novel, using the sense of fun to motivate myself to meet the daily goal. And now in 2019, I’m going all in. This year, not only am I aiming for 50,000 words by the end of the month, I am writing the first draft of a story that I want to continue to work on afterward, and aim to get published.
That’s right, I’m about to start my first book that I’m aiming to publish. Goodbye fanfictions and practice stories, the real game is beginning!
This book’s working title is Earthbound: A Galactic Odyssey. It’s a hard science fiction story taking place a million years in the future. Inspired by Isaac Arthur’s video, “Hitchhiking the Galaxy,” humanity’s first gardener ship has seeded colonies to the edge of the Milky Way, and is ready to head off for the Large Magellanic Cloud. One of its citizens, an augmented, immortal human, decides he would really like to see Earth again. The story follows him as he travels back across the galaxy at slower-than-light speeds, revisiting some of the civilizations that have grown out of the colonies he helped plant. There will be space ships, AI, technology, speculative societies, and all kinds of futuristic stuff, almost all grounded in known science and realistic speculation.
Since it is intended to be a full-on adult sci-fi novel, chances are high it will end up much longer than 50,000 words, and take longer than one month to finish a full draft.
The writer’s group I was in last year didn’t work out, but I found a new one, which looks promising. Hopefully, this group can stick together, and we can give each other the feedback and energy we need in order to succeed as authors. If any of you from NaNo and Beyond are reading this, hi! Here’s to realizing our dreams!
I’ve done NaNoWriMo three times before, and each time, I upped the ante. In 2016, my goal was just to finish a story, which ended up less than 30,000 words. In 2017, I made myself write no less than 1,000 words every day. In 2018, I aimed for and reached 50,000 with a junk novel, using the sense of fun to motivate myself to meet the daily goal. And now in 2019, I’m going all in. This year, not only am I aiming for 50,000 words by the end of the month, I am writing the first draft of a story that I want to continue to work on afterward, and aim to get published.
That’s right, I’m about to start my first book that I’m aiming to publish. Goodbye fanfictions and practice stories, the real game is beginning!
This book’s working title is Earthbound: A Galactic Odyssey. It’s a hard science fiction story taking place a million years in the future. Inspired by Isaac Arthur’s video, “Hitchhiking the Galaxy,” humanity’s first gardener ship has seeded colonies to the edge of the Milky Way, and is ready to head off for the Large Magellanic Cloud. One of its citizens, an augmented, immortal human, decides he would really like to see Earth again. The story follows him as he travels back across the galaxy at slower-than-light speeds, revisiting some of the civilizations that have grown out of the colonies he helped plant. There will be space ships, AI, technology, speculative societies, and all kinds of futuristic stuff, almost all grounded in known science and realistic speculation.
Since it is intended to be a full-on adult sci-fi novel, chances are high it will end up much longer than 50,000 words, and take longer than one month to finish a full draft.
The writer’s group I was in last year didn’t work out, but I found a new one, which looks promising. Hopefully, this group can stick together, and we can give each other the feedback and energy we need in order to succeed as authors. If any of you from NaNo and Beyond are reading this, hi! Here’s to realizing our dreams!
Friday, October 25, 2019
The Anthropic Principle – Toolbelt of Knowledge
Toolbelt of Knowledge: Concepts
Algorithms
Equivalence
Emergence
Math
The Anthropic Principle
Substrate-Independence
Significance
Today’s topic is something I’ve long struggled to wrap my head around. In fact, I’ve gotten it wrong in previous blog posts, and only recently have I come to really understand it. This topic is called the Anthropic Principle, and it’s a method for inferring knowledge about our surroundings by observing that we are there.
Suppose you wake up in a locked room. There is a note on the ground, telling you that you are in an experiment. There are a thousand rooms just like this one. Nine hundred ninety-nine of them have their doors painted red, and one has its door painted blue. You look up, and notice your door is blue.
Before the experiment began, the researchers flipped a coin. If it landed heads, a thousand people would be drugged and each put into one of the rooms. Nine hundred ninety nine would find themselves in rooms with red doors, and one in a room with a blue door. If the landed tails, only one person would be drugged and wake up in the room with the blue door.
The note says you must guess whether the coin landed heads or tails. If you get the answer right, you get a hundred dollars. Which do you bet, heads or tails?
On the surface, it seems like the odds are equal, 1:1. After all, a coin can either land heads or tails, and each possibility has one person behind a blue door. However, we’re ignoring part of the story, so let’s look at the probabilities of each possibility.
If the coin landed heads, you would only have a probability of 1/1000 of landing in the room with the blue door, and a 999/1000 chance of landing with a red door. If the coin landed tails, you would be in the room with a blue door, and have 0 chance of a red door.
Let’s put these together. The chances of you getting a red door, written as heads:tails, is .999:0. The chance of you landing at a blue door is .001:1. This means, if you wake up in a room with a blue door, it is a thousand times more likely the coin landed tails than it landed heads!
Wait a minute, you say. If the coin landed heads, someone would have to be with the blue door. How do you know that’s not you? The answer is, we don’t have absolute certainty. However, the fact remains we have a thousand to one odds against it, so the reasonable bet by far is to choose tails.
Now that we’ve gone through that example, let’s take a step back and remember the big picture of what we did. We were given a little bit of information, and based on the fact that we were there, deduced more information. That is the Anthropic Principle.
There are many applications of the Anthropic Principle, and we will talk about some of them in future posts. For now, let’s apply it to the situations most people turn to first: life on Earth and in the universe.
The history of science has shown us that we are not nearly as significant in the grand scheme of the universe as we might like to think. The sun and planets do not go around the Earth, the Earth goes around the sun. Neither the sun nor the Earth is a special feature of the cosmos; there are trillions of stars in each galaxy, and trillions of galaxies in the universe. A significant fraction of the stars are sun-like, and a significant fraction of stars have Earth-like planets. There is nothing special about the sun or the Earth.
This idea, that we aren’t special in the universe, is called the Mediocrity Principle (also known as the Copernican Principle). Because the Mediocrity Principle applies to so many things we know about, it is easy to assume it applies to things we don’t know about too. Perhaps, for instance, life like us exists all over the universe.
But in the realm of the unknown, the Anthropic Principle steps in and says, “not so fast.” We don’t live on a random planet, we live on a planet where the conditions were right for life to emerge, and continued to be right for life to evolve, until intelligent life appeared. Regardless of whether life is common or rare in the universe, this observation would be the same; we are in a place where the conditions are right and have been right for intelligent life. Thus, even if it turns out Earth is the only planet in the entire universe where intelligent life exists, we should not be surprised.
Just like there are people who want us to occupy a special place in the universe, there are people who want everything about us to be commonplace. Both of these beliefs are fallacious. We know our planet and our star are not special, but we don’t have nearly enough evidence to determine how common life is. Given only the information we have, there is roughly the same probability that there are a billion trillion civilizations in the universe as there is that we are the only one.
On a larger scale, the Anthropic Principle can be applied to the universe as a whole. The laws of physics, as we currently understand them, have a bunch of parameters that don’t seem to follow any pattern. However, it seems as though if any of them were slightly different, life could not exist at all.
Let’s apply the Anthropic Principle to this question. Assume we don’t know whether life exists or not. If the physical constants must be what they are, and every other combination is impossible, we would bet against life existing without hesitation. After all, the number of permutations that allow life are vastly dwarfed by the number of permutations where life is impossible. So if there is only one combination, it would be vastly more likely to be one where life is impossible.
However, if the physical constants could have been different, we have another story. It would mean they could be tuned to allow for life to exist, making a universe that allows life vastly more likely.
The fact that we are here, that we observe ourselves to exist, is evidence via the Anthropic Principle that the physical parameters of the universe could have been different. And we know this without even knowing how they were set!
So then, what are the possible explanations for why the parameters of the universe allow life to exist? It could be that there are many universes, each with their own physical constants, most of which don’t have life. It could be that the universe was created for life, either intentionally or unconsciously. See the Multiverses post for more discussion on these. And finally, it may be that if something is unobservable, it is the same as not existing. If this is true, then even if there is a multiverse, all universes have life, because if a universe cannot be observed, then it doesn’t exist. We’ll talk more about that in the next installment of the Consciousness series.
If the Anthropic Principle still confuses you, that’s okay. I’ve been thinking about science and philosophy for years, and I’ve only come to understand it a few months ago. Still, it’s worth spending the time to understand, because it opens up new paths by which to explore deep and interesting questions.
Algorithms
Equivalence
Emergence
Math
The Anthropic Principle
Substrate-Independence
Significance
Today’s topic is something I’ve long struggled to wrap my head around. In fact, I’ve gotten it wrong in previous blog posts, and only recently have I come to really understand it. This topic is called the Anthropic Principle, and it’s a method for inferring knowledge about our surroundings by observing that we are there.
Suppose you wake up in a locked room. There is a note on the ground, telling you that you are in an experiment. There are a thousand rooms just like this one. Nine hundred ninety-nine of them have their doors painted red, and one has its door painted blue. You look up, and notice your door is blue.
Before the experiment began, the researchers flipped a coin. If it landed heads, a thousand people would be drugged and each put into one of the rooms. Nine hundred ninety nine would find themselves in rooms with red doors, and one in a room with a blue door. If the landed tails, only one person would be drugged and wake up in the room with the blue door.
The note says you must guess whether the coin landed heads or tails. If you get the answer right, you get a hundred dollars. Which do you bet, heads or tails?
On the surface, it seems like the odds are equal, 1:1. After all, a coin can either land heads or tails, and each possibility has one person behind a blue door. However, we’re ignoring part of the story, so let’s look at the probabilities of each possibility.
If the coin landed heads, you would only have a probability of 1/1000 of landing in the room with the blue door, and a 999/1000 chance of landing with a red door. If the coin landed tails, you would be in the room with a blue door, and have 0 chance of a red door.
Let’s put these together. The chances of you getting a red door, written as heads:tails, is .999:0. The chance of you landing at a blue door is .001:1. This means, if you wake up in a room with a blue door, it is a thousand times more likely the coin landed tails than it landed heads!
Wait a minute, you say. If the coin landed heads, someone would have to be with the blue door. How do you know that’s not you? The answer is, we don’t have absolute certainty. However, the fact remains we have a thousand to one odds against it, so the reasonable bet by far is to choose tails.
Now that we’ve gone through that example, let’s take a step back and remember the big picture of what we did. We were given a little bit of information, and based on the fact that we were there, deduced more information. That is the Anthropic Principle.
There are many applications of the Anthropic Principle, and we will talk about some of them in future posts. For now, let’s apply it to the situations most people turn to first: life on Earth and in the universe.
The history of science has shown us that we are not nearly as significant in the grand scheme of the universe as we might like to think. The sun and planets do not go around the Earth, the Earth goes around the sun. Neither the sun nor the Earth is a special feature of the cosmos; there are trillions of stars in each galaxy, and trillions of galaxies in the universe. A significant fraction of the stars are sun-like, and a significant fraction of stars have Earth-like planets. There is nothing special about the sun or the Earth.
This idea, that we aren’t special in the universe, is called the Mediocrity Principle (also known as the Copernican Principle). Because the Mediocrity Principle applies to so many things we know about, it is easy to assume it applies to things we don’t know about too. Perhaps, for instance, life like us exists all over the universe.
But in the realm of the unknown, the Anthropic Principle steps in and says, “not so fast.” We don’t live on a random planet, we live on a planet where the conditions were right for life to emerge, and continued to be right for life to evolve, until intelligent life appeared. Regardless of whether life is common or rare in the universe, this observation would be the same; we are in a place where the conditions are right and have been right for intelligent life. Thus, even if it turns out Earth is the only planet in the entire universe where intelligent life exists, we should not be surprised.
Just like there are people who want us to occupy a special place in the universe, there are people who want everything about us to be commonplace. Both of these beliefs are fallacious. We know our planet and our star are not special, but we don’t have nearly enough evidence to determine how common life is. Given only the information we have, there is roughly the same probability that there are a billion trillion civilizations in the universe as there is that we are the only one.
On a larger scale, the Anthropic Principle can be applied to the universe as a whole. The laws of physics, as we currently understand them, have a bunch of parameters that don’t seem to follow any pattern. However, it seems as though if any of them were slightly different, life could not exist at all.
Let’s apply the Anthropic Principle to this question. Assume we don’t know whether life exists or not. If the physical constants must be what they are, and every other combination is impossible, we would bet against life existing without hesitation. After all, the number of permutations that allow life are vastly dwarfed by the number of permutations where life is impossible. So if there is only one combination, it would be vastly more likely to be one where life is impossible.
However, if the physical constants could have been different, we have another story. It would mean they could be tuned to allow for life to exist, making a universe that allows life vastly more likely.
The fact that we are here, that we observe ourselves to exist, is evidence via the Anthropic Principle that the physical parameters of the universe could have been different. And we know this without even knowing how they were set!
So then, what are the possible explanations for why the parameters of the universe allow life to exist? It could be that there are many universes, each with their own physical constants, most of which don’t have life. It could be that the universe was created for life, either intentionally or unconsciously. See the Multiverses post for more discussion on these. And finally, it may be that if something is unobservable, it is the same as not existing. If this is true, then even if there is a multiverse, all universes have life, because if a universe cannot be observed, then it doesn’t exist. We’ll talk more about that in the next installment of the Consciousness series.
If the Anthropic Principle still confuses you, that’s okay. I’ve been thinking about science and philosophy for years, and I’ve only come to understand it a few months ago. Still, it’s worth spending the time to understand, because it opens up new paths by which to explore deep and interesting questions.
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