Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

[Huinesoron]

(Or, in other words: why does thinking you can think make you better at making more humans?)

One answer: it gives rise to ideologies and a desire to propagate them by making more humans.  Catholicism succeeded compared to other religions in part because it encourages reproduction of more Catholics.

Another answer: Thinking we can think isn't necessarily relevant.  It just came along for the ride as an accidental result of the ability to think about fashioning tools and cultivating crops.  Correlation but not causation.  Indeed Yang says we don't need the ability and with the Genejacks removes it.

Ah, accident - the #1 explanation for all the stupid stuff that's ever evolved.    I can actually accept this, provided 'consciousness' is limited to humans.

If it isn't - and I don't know either way - then you'd need to explain why it has repeatedly been a good strategy. There's a world of difference between 'opposable thumbs' (pretty much a one-off evolutionary glitch that ended up being useful for manipulation) and 'tail fins' (an adaptation to aquatic life which has cropped up at minimum in mammals, reptiles, and fish, and is therefore clearly heavily selected for).

Sure, and Yang himself would say so.  That's no argument against the position.  Calling something stupid doesn't refute it.

  But more seriously, it does make Yang look like a hypocrite. If his stance really is 'life is just particle interactions no different from any other', then why is he running a government at all? The particles don't care if they're humans, reactors, or rocks. Unless SMAC includes technology for turning energy into matter, nothing he does can actually change anything he considers significant. In fact, given that human civilisation uses energy to do work, and given the second law of thermodynamics, all he's really doing is pushing the universe slightly faster towards its entropic ground state. I have trouble believing that's what he's driving for?

I suppose I'm asking a bit much of a 20 year old strategy game, aren't I...?

hS

[ipecac]

  But more seriously, it does make Yang look like a hypocrite. If his stance really is 'life is just particle interactions no different from any other', then why is he running a government at all? The particles don't care if they're humans, reactors, or rocks. Unless SMAC includes technology for turning energy into matter, nothing he does can actually change anything he considers significant. In fact, given that human civilisation uses energy to do work, and given the second law of thermodynamics, all he's really doing is pushing the universe slightly faster towards its entropic ground state. I have trouble believing that's what he's driving for?

You forget that there's no conscious Yang willing and 'driving' for anything, it's all particles acting impassively according to physical laws.

Same for yourself, of course: there was no conscious mind of yours curiously asking these questions, it's all particles and particles is all there is.

[ipecac]

Calling something stupid doesn't refute it.

Will you get around to addressing my refutations of your position?

[Huinesoron]

You forget that there's no conscious Yang willing and 'driving' for anything, it's all particles acting impassively according to physical laws.

Same for yourself, of course: there was no conscious mind of yours curiously asking these questions, it's all particles and particles is all there is.

Entirely fair. In fact, forget 'conscious' - there's no Yang at all! It makes no sense to treat the atoms located approximately 1m below the particles involved in the electrical currents which drive various molecular motors to ultimately product speech as being part of 'the same person' - after all, they're all just particles! The fact that the speech - wait, dangit, the longitudinal motion of air, no, of nitrogen and oxygen, no, protons and... no, quarks... whatever - emanates from a denser concentration of particles than the low concentration prevalent between the near-vacuum above and the... dense concentration below... is irrelevant. It's not like those particles even stay a part of the same concentration!

Good grief.

More reasonably: there is a continuous entity which we label Chairman Yang. He takes in matter (air, food, water) and gives off matter (air again, waste, skin cells, etc). But that doesn't stop him being best characterised as a single, continuous entity. It may be the case that if we research Laplace Demonology, we would be able to model Yang and his entire environment, and predict his future actions with pinpoint accuracy. But that doesn't mean the concept of 'Chairman Yang' has no meaning.

In fact, there is a clear distinction, entirely physical, between (say) 'Yang' and 'Yang's chair': Yang is an object held together by a combination of molecular bonds and Vvan de Waals forces, but his connection with the chair is purely gravitational. If you transport them into deep space, Yang will float off the chair, but his fingers won't float away from his hands.

I would say that last ['dolphins and sharks share phenotypical characteristics despite very divergent genotypes because of convergent evolution'] is so, within the scope of most human perception.  It may be drastically incorrect otherwise: like from the perceptions of the prey that the sharks eat but the dolphins don't.  And even from some human perception, maybe you're somehow allergic to shark meat but not dolphin meat.

On the contrary: if you're shark-prey, then the fact that dolphins look a bit like sharks is exceptionally relevant to you, because it means you have to devote processing power to recognising the differences, rather than assuming any torpedo-like shape is a predator. This is essentially the premise of camoflague: a hoverfly avoids being eaten because its black-and-yellow pattern is very significant to creatures that would eat hoverflies but not wasps.

Everything is made of particles, their energy states, and the forces between them (though precisely what a 'particle' is depends on your model, and not everything about them can currently be measured); large-scale phenomena are emergent behaviour from these, rather than indicating some influence beyond the material.

There are actually three independent statements here, and it's really worth prising them out:

-- Everything is made of particles, their energy states, and the forces between them (I take this to be a special case of a statement along the lines of "The entirety of the actual world can be described through some physics, if we are lucky the current one". We of course know that the latter isn't the case, at the moment even the entirety of physics can't be described through a physics, we need at least two, one for general relativity, and one for all the other physical forces. Some future physics may have no particles at all, but fields, general relativity style, so in all our discussion here were using 'particles' really as a placeholder for 'fundamental objects of a physical ontology')

-- Large-scale phenomena are emergent behavior from these (This appears a straightforward extension of the above, but it isn't. It first postulates that there are large-scale phenomena, so already the premise that the entirety of the world is well-described by a narrow physical model is thrown away, the assertion then draws an arrow of definition from physical behaviors to all these other ones in the hope of collapsing them back to physics. But why that direction? Why not both ways, the other way, or indeed no way at all? A set of Standard Model equations certainly has nothing to say about whether some quarks add up to 'carbon' or the other way around, because carbon isn't a part of the Standard Model ontology. In an attempt to reduce the world to physics you've had to step out of physics, and make some metaphysical calls, but these need to be separately justified)

-- Rather than indicating some influence beyond the material (The unspoken assumption is that we only have two options: either the arrow of definition runs one way, from physics 'upward', or something immaterial has to be brought in. But that's just a non-sequitur. I can accept that the material is all there is, and have no position whatsoever on whether all the well-studied properties of carbon and its reactions are ultimately reducible to a set of properly parametrized Feynman diagrams. Maybe they are, but just as likely we'll find that they aren't. Overall, the achievements of chemical physics, which aims to do just that, have been... modest. I can even assert that it's combustion that entails particular movements of particles, not the other way around. For me personally, I would say that combustion is movement of particles and movement of particles is combustion, and these are just two human-made ways to look at a single fact. There are no two separate things that could possibly 'emerge' from one another, there is a single piece of material reality we happen to be looking at, and we come up with different interpretive tools depending on what the purpose at hand is. Where does 'some influence beyond the material' appear in this view?)

I wanted to distinguish the three because subscribing to the first does not entail subscription to the second and especially the third. But even the first has plenty of problems. "Do objects of mathematics and geometry exist" is the obvious one, from which immediately follows -- do empirical relationships, arrangements, patterns or regularities of any kind? If they don't, whichever physics you've chosen to identify the fundamentals of reality is an illusion, but if they do, we either we need to admit a different mode of existence than a particle-based one, or start coming up with things like 'exponentions' -- particles which transmit an exponential relationship between two other types of particles.

This is an amazing reply (and you're right that 'the structure of space-time' also needs to be added to the list of things that Stuff Is Made From (And Influenced By)), but I think you've taken some of my words differently to how I meant them.

For your first point: general relativity and the Standard Model are both pieces of our model of physics. They describe different phenomena, and require different equations, but I can't see how that makes them somehow 'two different physics', any more than the flow of water and nuclear fission are 'two different physics'. Particle physics still works under general relativity; general relativity still works when atoms exist. They are compatible. (In contrast, Newtonian physics and relativity are not; Newtonian physics is a low-velocity special case of relativity.)

Your second point is... odd. To work in a very simple universe for a second: Langdon's Ant is a world that is 'well-described by a narrow physical model'. You can write out the laws of physics there in under a minute. But it still produces large-scale phenomena (the 'highways'). Those phenomena don't reverse-influence the rules of the 'universe' - those rules are set.

You could argue that a Langdon highway 'builds itself', in that the state of the highway as a whole causes the highway to continue being built, and you'd be right. But at the same time, the reason that happens is that its structure causes the cells to flip the way they need to. The highway is emergent behaviour from fixed laws.

Your third point: if the properties of carbon don't come from the physics that underlies them - Feynman diagrams or otherwise - then what do they come from? You seem to be arguing for a non-heirarchical physics, wherein there are no fundamental laws, just things we can study and the data we can learn from them. Is that right? A sort of purely empirical model of physics, where any rules and patterns we claim exist are just structures overlaid on an essentially random reality?

...

As a professional chemist, that's a really disturbing thought. 

hS

[ipecac]

Your third point: if the properties of carbon don't come from the physics that underlies them - Feynman diagrams or otherwise - then what do they come from?

There could be rules that fundamental particles behave a certain way, but new and different rules for certain collection of particles.

As an aside, I don't favour the use of the term 'emergent behaviour'. It tacitly concedes the primacy of the lowest-scale perspective. 'Higher-order' or 'higher-scale' behaviour is a more neutral alternative.

[Bacchus]

In fact, there is a clear distinction, entirely physical, between (say) 'Yang' and 'Yang's chair': Yang is an object held together by a combination of molecular bonds and Vvan de Waals forces, but his connection with the chair is purely gravitational. If you transport them into deep space, Yang will float off the chair, but his fingers won't float away from his hands.

Note that you must have a prior account of which connections between 'particles' are constitutive for 'Yang' and which aren't. In this case, that the gravitational connection (which still exists!) is not considered relevant, but the (electromagnetic?) connection that stops bits of body of flying off is considered relevant. This differentiation of relevancy is not grounded in particles.

Overall, your demonstration that at the level of particles and forces 'Yang' doesn't exist (and can't even be picked out) is entirely correct as far as I can tell, though. I think this is something that T-Hawk and I actually agree on.

They describe different phenomena, and require different equations, but I can't see how that makes them somehow 'two different physics', any more than the flow of water and nuclear fission are 'two different physics'.

I would say flow of water and nuclear fission are indeed normally described by different physics. A particular physics, for me, is a physics with a particular ontology (the range of objects it models) and a particular relational schema (the laws that govern the behavior of said objects). If that's the case, one can be developed completely independently from another -- conceptually, theoretically, experimentally. Now, some of these physics can sometimes be shown to follow from one other. For example, you might show that molecular interactions of a certain kind amount to some collections of molecules behaving closely enough to rigid bodies, so that rigid body physics can be considered an "aggregation" of some lower-order physics. This does two things -- it validates the higher-order ontology, and it shows that the conclusions of the higher-order physics properly apply to some collections of lower-order objects because, in some circumstances these objects do start behaving like objects of the higher-order ontology. Put enough dirt together, and you can start modelling interactions between them with orbital mechanics.

I would say that even in this case the physics remain distinct, but I see the argument for the claim that they are different ways to talk about the same thing. Let's call such physics 'reconcilable'. Standard Model and general relativity, as far as we know, are NOT reconcilable. The general relativity ontology (mass-energy, gravitational fields, space-time) and relational schema do not flow out from the interactions of the Standard Model. We'd have to have a physicist to guide us, but as far as I'm aware, quantum field theory reconciles the Standard Model and only special relativity, so maybe mass-energy is reconcilable, but not graviational fields and spacetime.

You could argue that a Langdon highway 'builds itself', in that the state of the highway as a whole causes the highway to continue being built, and you'd be right. But at the same time, the reason that happens is that its structure causes the cells to flip the way they need to. The highway is emergent behaviour from fixed laws.

I don't think that I understand your point, because what you say seems to reinforce exactly what I was saying -- that it's perfectly possible for a high-level structure to guide low-level behavior. Here, the higher-order phenomenon with real causal import are the rules, which we know exist for a fact because we set them. Conversely, the cell flipping has no causal import at all, and nor do highways -- they are just two ways of looking at how the rules get expressed. We could get into a discussion of whether in Langdon's Ant the statements "rules flip cells" and "rules build highways" are equally true, or is there some sense in which "rules flip cells" is more fundamental, but that discussion is beside the point, because...

The problem with our world is precisely that we don't know whether universal rules exist and if they do, at which ontological level they are set. It's like we are in Langdon's Ant and we are trying to figure out whether there are rules that guide individual cell behavior, and whether those rules are best expressed at cell-level or some kind of pattern level (imagine a version of Langdon's ant where the "ant" looks at the state of several cells at once, and flips several too). Except we don't even know what the "cells" in our world are, what is the fundamental quantum of reality, and indeed if there is such a quantum at all.

Is that right? A sort of purely empirical model of physics, where any rules and patterns we claim exist are just structures overlaid on an essentially random reality?

First thing to note, is that T-Hawk is arguing precisely for this position, with respect to everything but fundamental physics. To me, it makes sense to either go all the way, and say that yes, all human knowledge is a mind-produced overlay (that's the instrumentalist position); or go the other way, say that our scientific knowledge at ALL levels truly expresses the structure of reality, or at least strives to (that's the realist position). I don't see a good reason for according just one branch of human knowledge special status, whichever way we go -- that's my problem with T-Hawk's argument, that it lacks consistency on this front. His caveat is of course that well, to the extent that higher-order sciences are sciences at all, they will get reduced to particle physics, and the rest will be discarded, but I don't even see how that could work (see above for requiring a concept of Yang before we can give an intepretation of Yang in terms of particles). Also, to the extent that it could work, it means that the higher-order sciences are quite real already (wherever they are correct), just perhaps not expressed in a language to a reductionist's liking, but certainly not 'illusory'.

As to where I stand myself -- "there are just things that we study and data we learn from them" is, I think, an excellent starting point. I used to be a fairly pure instrumentalist: we select the scope of study for our human purposes, we start with objects which our minds pick out naturally, we develop models which are understandable to us. Nothing in that is necessarily descriptive of reality "as it really is", except we discard models which result in predictions that don't bear out. On such an account, there is no need at all for our models to have any kind of unity among them, at some level they are all ad hoc, and that's ok. This does not at all mean than the world is random, as it patently isn't. It just means that whatever structures there are in the world, they don't map neatly onto our models. What has grown to worry me, though, is a very abstract consideration that I don't even know how best to express -- it relates to the discussion immediately above: if our models are expressed in the abstract language of mathematics, and these seem to work, this seems to suggest that mathematics is somehow reflective of the structure of the world. It seems that there has to be a way for something like mathematics, or at least mathematical relationships to exist in matter. But if so, then our models aren't really just instrumental.

[T-hawk]

Nihilism, ladies and gentlemen: never a good path to go down.
...
Will you get around to addressing my refutations of your position?

If I can find something that's actually a refutation.  You're not refuting materialism, you're talking past me.  The result of nihilism or disproving Yang's own consciousness aren't counterarguments, they are exactly what the position does lead to.  Pointing out the position's own conclusions in aggressive disparaging language isn't a debate.  Nothing you've said is any argument against physical determistic materialism.  You've said why you don't like it, not why it wouldn't be true.

You've only given reasons you don't want to believe it.  That's not at all the same thing.  I can't do anything about that except point back to the Intellectual Integrity quote about "man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true".

On the contrary: if you're shark-prey, then the fact that dolphins look a bit like sharks is exceptionally relevant to you, because it means you have to devote processing power to recognising the differences, rather than assuming any torpedo-like shape is a predator. This is essentially the premise of camoflague: a hoverfly avoids being eaten because its black-and-yellow pattern is very significant to creatures that would eat hoverflies but not wasps.

You're agreeing with me - the differences matter, we're each illustrating perspectives from which they do.

But more seriously, it does make Yang look like a hypocrite. If his stance really is 'life is just particle interactions no different from any other', then why is he running a government at all?

Yang's relevant quote here is "life's only purpose is life itself".  The chemical patterns of life exist to reproduce themselves.  A government is machinery towards that end.  Life can organize into higher-order patterns; it is advantageous for reproduction to develop things like economies of scale for resource production and extraction.  It's the same as how living cells create and use intermediate machinery that isn't actually cells, like blood fluids, because it's an organizational pattern that helps reproduction in a larger scale.

In fact, given that human civilisation uses energy to do work, and given the second law of thermodynamics, all he's really doing is pushing the universe slightly faster towards its entropic ground state. I have trouble believing that's what he's driving for?

The one who actually says this in-game is not Yang but Morgan: "life is merely an orderly decay of energy states."

It's unclear in-game what Yang's ultimate end actually is.  He seems to want to advance humanity somehow - he creates the Genejacks in service of industry, not because he wants to get rid of consciousness as an end in itself.  His arguments are against placing foolish ethical obstacles on what he sees as advancement and progress, not that progress doesn't matter.  The other factions seem to think he's engineering humanity to serve his own consciousness like 1984-style totalitarianism.  But Yang is never clear on what his personal endgame role would be - whether he would subsume his own consciousness like the rest of his collective, or maintain it while exploiting others, or if he's really seeking transcendence with Planet and everything else is just means to that end.

It's also not established within SMAC's universe that thermodynamics is inevitable.  Morgan says that early on, but the technology becomes fantastic enough to postulate an ultimately renewable source of negentropy, something like vacuum energy or creating more Big Bang singularities.  If that's the case, then Yang's sole principle of growth and reproduction does become perpetually tenable.  At the very least his pattern would seek to propagate itself rather than be overtaken by competing ones.

Back to the real world, the general answer to the question of "if materialism, why do anything?" is "follow the illusion".  I have no problem accepting that I'm a deterministic collection of particles that creates its own illusion of perceptions.  Free will in defiance of materialism is one of those perceptions.  I can seek sensations of pleasure and happiness.  That those results are just more chemical patterns in the brain does not stop my patterns from seeking them.  There is no objective meaning to anything, but that means the answer to life is to find your own subjective meaning that your perceptions create for yourself.  Here I follow Morgan, and in real life, Kurt Vonnegut as a leading thinker.  Ultimately nothing matters because it's all the heat death of the universe, but I can have what I perceive as fun along the way.

[Bacchus]

I actually really like introducing Langton's Ant to facilitate thinking. It shows how higher-order concepts can be quite real, even if 'everything is just cells turning black and white'. Namely, the ant can be guided by as complicated rules as we want, and those rules can explicitly incorporate multi-cell patterns, but whatever those rules are, everything an observer from within that universe would see is cells switching on and off. So he could proclaim "everything is just cells" and be both entirely right -- cells really are how anything at all happens in that universe, and completely wrong in dismissing any multi-cell pattern as an illusion or asserting that cells switching on and off is why anything happens.

[Bacchus]

Back to the real world, the general answer to the question of "if materialism, why do anything?" is "follow the illusion". I have no problem accepting that I'm a deterministic collection of particles that creates its own illusion of perceptions. Free will in defiance of materialism is one of those perceptions. I can seek sensations of pleasure and happiness. That those results are just more chemical patterns in the brain does not stop my patterns from seeking them. There is no objective meaning to anything, but that means the answer to life is to find your own subjective meaning that your perceptions create for yourself. Here I follow Morgan, and in real life, Kurt Vonnegut as a leading thinker. Ultimately nothing matters because it's all the heat death of the universe, but I can have what I perceive as fun along the way.

Thing is, don't you want to say that if everything we have access to are illusions, and they are what enables us to exist meaningfully, then there's no sense at all in calling them 'illusions'? Take 'what I perceive is fun' -- isn't the fact that you perceive it as such sufficient to say that it really is fun? And isn't that in turn a constituent part of your reality? Much more so than 'chemical processes' which, at best, are a highly abstract attempt at trying to explain where fun 'comes from' to satisfaction of our own minds.

[T-hawk]

Thing is, don't you want to say that if everything we have access to are illusions, and they are what enables us to exist meaningfully, then there's no sense at all in calling them 'illusions'?

The sense is when looking past the illusion can serve to your benefit.  Yang talks about this in one of the quotes: pain is merely information fed to the computer of the mind.  To ignore pain is to remove one obstacle to achieving your purposes.

You mentioned before how you were envious of the certainty of my position.  It really does help in daily life.  I don't get agitated to deal with a difficult or hostile person (hi ipecac ), they're just following their own illusions.  I don't complain about things like weather, it is what it is and my reaction can be entirely practical.  It feels like convergent evolution isomorphic to Buddhist enlightenment.