Questions

With this essay it is the plan to answer the following questions.

  • How to convince Socrates, regarding modes Ponens?

  • How to convince a smart dog, regarding south Sudan?

  • What do you mean by the solution inside your head, Value system, rules? How are they different from each other?

  • What are H&B’s? How are they related to the solution inside your head? Why do they

The beginning

First, we establish that everything is a feeling. What I mean by that is, all your thoughts, your pain and happiness springs from feelings. For example, you feel like shit; You feel great; You feel like you ought to help that man; You feel happy having bought food to a gentleman in need; You don’t feel like helping people in south Sudan; you feel like helping people in south Sudan etc…

We tend to act based on these feelings for the most part I assume, as going against feelings requires a lot of resolve. For example, I am not stupid enough, to give away as much money as I can, say to some organization like GiveWell that can make the most out of my money and save lives, because I don’t feel that shit. Nah mean! I have a better purpose for my money. For example, spending it on clothes (that might hopefully get girls), xbox, a kick ass gym membership, traveling back an forth to India etc…

We have circular preferences as a result of these feelings. Sometimes they want X and sometimes they want Y. and hence they seem to be not consistent). You will see yourself going round and round. They seem to have a lot of flaws via Heuristics and Biases, which result in these inconsistencies. How do we know which feeling to trust?

Fundamental question of rationality

We would like to understand why we are doing what we are doing, and what we should be doing in life. For that we first start by asking some fundamental questions, involving logic, reasoning and beliefs.

“I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?”
-HPMOR

Understanding magic

Achilles: All humans are mortal. Socrates is a human. This implies Socrates is mortal.

Socrates: What? How did you get that? What magic is this?

Achilles: ‘All humans are mortal’ is a rule. ‘Socrates is a human’ being a fact. Now substituting ‘Socrates’ in the rule, you get Socrates is mortal.

Socrates: It appears that you’re using a third rule, “if All humans are mortal, and if Socrates is a human then Socrates is mortal”. What magic is this?

Achilles: Try stabbing yourself, and you will die. Try stabbing any human and he will die. Look at the evidence bro!

Socrates: Ah what is this new rule that you have launched now. “ If all humans are mortal, and if Socrates is a human, then Socrates is mortal, if we stab many humans and they die”. What magic is this? What is the culture?

And so it happened that anything that Achilles said, Socrates genuinely asked, “What magic is this?” and how he got to the new rule, that was a ‘putting-together’ of what Achilles said until now.

This could go on forever, unless there was some magic that Achilles says, which Socrates accepts without questioning. In essence, Socrates can never be convinced, unless he accepts one of the magic statements made by Achilles.

People might say Socrates was not smart enough, to understand this. By ‘smart’ if they meant that Socrates doesn’t know this by himself, then yeah Socrates was not smart enough. He didn’t have this from birth. If they meant that Socrates couldn’t derive this himself and hence he is not smart, then there is a problem.

Consider another thought experiment, where we have a really smart dog, with infinite computation power and is really smart, it can make the calculations no one else can make. It can talk, it can think fast etc… Now convince this dog that people are suffering in south Sudan and that it needs to help them?

You: People are suffering and dying in south Sudan. We should help them.

Smart dog: Fact- “People are suffering and dying in south Sudan”. Magic- “We should help them”

It appears that you cannot convince it, as it is lacking something that you have, which it doesn’t. It seems like it’s not about computation power (or smartness), but about the actual rules you somehow have.

Corollary: You cannot convince a rock, you cannot convince an infinitely powerful computer about south Sudan

Understanding the rules

If A => B is accepted, then if A happens, then B can be inferred. (intellectual rule) Look at evidence to decide what the reality will be like (intellectual rule) When people are suffering we should help them (value rule)

Socrates asks,”What magic is this? How did you conclude this?”.

We seem to know some wague rules which need no convincing. These are intellectual rules, value rules etc… which we use to understand reality, make predictions on the future, decide our actions etc… We also use these above listed ‘basic/primary rules’ to derive other rules. Until last week, I didn’t know many things I explained in this post. For example, I didn’t know that Socrates couldn’t be convinced, regarding modes Ponens. But now I know. I had the same set of rules at least for the last 4 weeks. What changed?

I actively went on a discussion with an STM. So, it appears that you can change the rules. More like changing our current understanding of the ‘True/actual rules’, using the current rules. One rule that I updated in the past is my belief in religion. It appears that I believed in religion rather naively. I just started believing in religion because a friend told me about it and it felt like it was right. At that time I probably had in my current set of rules that I should follow someone seeming intelligent. The ‘reason, reflect and ask for evidence for everything’ rule had probably not yet formed fully.

So it is possible to update and modify the current understanding of the rules, with the help of the current rules. Reflecting, reasoning and evidence are somethings we use to update our rules, our beliefs.

Whether we are updating our understanding of the rules, or just changing them at will? Well, it seems clear to me, that apart from the basic/primary rules (the ones that need no convincing), I find myself going in a circular manner, not knowing what I want in life (not clear what my true rules are or what they want). One moment I am crying about South Sudan, the other moment I am not motivated enough to do anything about it. That’s one instance where I try to understand what I want for myself, based on the evidence I see and my current understanding of the rules. Thereby, I seem to be attempting to understand my rules and not make up new ones at will. Unfortunately, the link between us and our rules seems to be some H&B’s, which we will get into a little later.

I saw this example explanation in this website. “It’s like a fuzzy map not to scale. you know that there are some mountains here and there, some water here and there. You explore regions and make your map more clear, more to scale.” This seems to be the analogy for rules. The primary rules marking just the basic territory, nothing to scale, ‘Be good, Don’t kill’ kind of a thing. They need to be updated and reflect reality say somewhat to scale. In that said random website, these rules are called the ‘solution inside the head’.

It is like a rough map of some terrain. Initially, it just marks out some hills and a river (“Don’t kill me, I won’t kill you. Let’s hunt together”). Nothing is to scale. There are vast parts unmarked (“how to treat women, blacks, gays, etc.”). Then, as we gain more and more knowledge, we fill in the vaguer parts of the map (“Ah! Black people are basically just like me. It is wrong to treat them like slaves”)

We reflect, reason, look at evidence, use science, to understand more of our true rules, with the current rules we have

We seem to have a billion of these rules (too many to count), and a billion of these facts. It seems not possible to reflect and understand each and every rule. This would probably have lead to the Heuristics and Biases, the shortcuts that via feelings guide us to “what we really want”, except that they don’t do that . Circular as they may be, we still use them, unfortunately not the best of tools to help us get what we want.

Feelings and rules

So, we have a set of true rules, and our current understanding of the rules. We are capable of updating our understanding of these rules. As there are a billion of these rules and a billion of these facts, we seem to have these things called H&B’s, which via feelings attempt to guide us to “What we really want” except they do a very bad job of it [citation needed]. Our H&B’s are shortcuts, that help us quickly get to a result as though we were using the true rules, but they fail. This we know looking at our circular preferences, or our indecisiveness, or the fact that we vacillate about what we actually want 400 times a minute.

Everything is a feeling. We also feel is a rule of right/wrong. That’s how we know regarding modes Ponens and the other primary rules.

Where do you get these rules from fam?

Modes Ponens is such an obvious statement (to us humans). As seen in the previous section there are many other rules, But where is this coming from? how did we learn about this?

We just saw that it is not possible to get convinced about modes Ponens. We just feel it is true or not. And we can only go as far as using other basic rules to explain this in the hope of convincing someone. As humans, I suspect we just know it. we just feel it is true. I am probably using some other rules to come to this conclusion even. ;)

But isn’t there a possibility that my parents/teachers somehow got me into believing this? I mean by using social proof or social conditioning? After all I am the kind of person that believed in religion for a long time. But religion and modes Ponens are on a different scale. Religion is a derived rule. Modes Ponens is a primary rule that needs no convincing. Religion can be derived wrong. For example: I just started believing in religion because a friend told me about it and it felt that it was right. At that time I probably had in my current set of rules that I should follow someone seeming intelligent. The ‘reason, reflect and ask for evidence for everything’ had probably not yet formed fully.

Let’s say I was somehow forced to believe and that I accepted ‘2+2 is 5’, ‘God exists’, and ‘modes Ponens is true’. The first two I can test with the rule on evidence (rule that needs no convincing) and debunk them off. The things that they taught to me in school are pretty refutable based on evidence now. But Modes Ponens seems different. I cannot be convinced about it now, and that I should already have it or not by now. And I do have it. I can’t debunk it.

If you cannot be convinced or de-convinced now about modes Ponens no matter what, or even for that matter the other basic/primary rules defined in this essay, I suspect that the only time it could have entered by body is at birth (it was always there in you), that I was born with it, just like I was born with genes or other smaller parts that made me in the first place. Evolution gave it to me [citation needed]. Also more reasoning?

As these rules cannot be taught, they should have been there right from the beginning, somehow (evolution?) we got them since birth.