Detective and judicial work is a great example of logic. The aspect of needing multiple contexts to prove worthing is an inherently logical process. Just a weapon and an injured person is not proof of anything. You need other kinds of evidence. Articles or remnants of fabrics or clothing that can be linked to the weapon or the injured person by various means. I think detective stories and mysteries are so engaging because they exercise the rational process, that is so rarely exercised by humans. Unfortunately the ability do this in a crime scene does not at all indicate whether a person will be able to use such systematic approaches in other erase of their life. Such as what kind of food to buy. Or purchases of any kind are likely not going to make by such reasoning. They are going to made by the irrational contextualizations of society and its media programmers. This system will be guiding the rest of the persons life, relationships and communication.
There are so many examples of people incorrectly charged with a crime because there is always the possibility that you have missed a condition of innocence. That is one of the problems with western judicial systems. Besides the fact that they focus on motivation as a factor, when similarly the likelihood that missed a factor in motivation is absolutely certain. That is why most other cultures historically just focuses on developing an understanding of loss and gain. This is the perennial human drama reference by Asians classically as; loss gain, pleasure pain, fame ill fame, praise and blame and has been further elucidated by more modern developments of those kinds of pairs. Others, such as power and vulnerability, altruistic and narcissistic and so on, can be reduced to the previous contexts, but they might also have some added value of understanding though modern life depictions.
The poorly constructed mis representations of what constitutes more or less understanding creates errors when describing what constitutes more understanding, whereas what constitutes less understanding is the proper context for elucidating understanding. People focus on proving they are right rather than the actual method that yields understand which is showing what is insufficient. It is the insufficiency that gives context to the sufficiency, not the other way around. Sufficiency is business a usual. There are endless expels of this kind of misconstrued information. The empale of applied chemistry we call medicine is to me the most mis applied knowledge today. That is because its effects are so severe and obvious to those taking medication. But not to those who prescribe, for they live in a highly selective environment that excludes the information they would need to identify where their mistakes are being made. They are not only made in the drug applications themselves, but also in the mis-prescribing of drugs. These two areas are directly related by selective mis-information. Thus introducing a number of different concepts and showing how they relate or do not relate is thinking. Not showing subsets of information in one domain. That leads to the world wide confusion and obfuscation of today, such as peoples mis understanding of computing. These problems are so all perverse that there is no way we are ever going to address them at a societal level. We are too addicted to “business as usual.” Just look that 2024 surgeon generals report and the way they contextualize the problem of communication. The result is more and more misleading. Exactly by the kinds of renderings that Stephen Pinker is advocating.
This system of exclusion which is by the recognition of “basic facts.” As Mr. says at www.lesswrong.com points out in terms of apples, that according to Stephen Pinker logic, apples can only be referenced in terms of apples. They can not include things like, other cultural references and other understandings of apples that are outside of idealistic models of what constitiutes apples. Such as mythological references to apples. Basic facts are only basic facts by the context they are constituted in and defined by. If you remove this limitation and include other ways of referencing, you have a more functional understanding of basic facts than the one produced by the more limited context. The limited context argues that it’s basic facts are correct by way of more and more limitations. The "breaking down of the context by its smaller sub-contexts." (sense of style) Not by larger more inclusive contexts. These more inclusive contexts also reveal intrinsic properties left out by the less inclusive context. These are left to be discovered by people who are interested in alternative views. Not conspiracy theory or Aliens. I’m talking about critical thinking. Analytical thinking. Logic. Decision making as revealed by rationality and empirically derived methodologies. Stephen Pinker is a modern Plato. With idealist unsubstantiated opinions. Like Platos idea of value, and everything else in the Republic. It's familiar. It seems to descirbe things that we see. That doesn't make it meaningful. That is, that doesn't make it a functional understanding. It operates in terms of ideal models. Not functional thinking and analysis. Not something that is going to lead to a skill in terms of changing outcomes. It leads to more exploitative outcomes, which is popular with Stephens supporters, so called friends. People in other domains than literature have done a better job of criticizing Mr. Pinker than those in the area of literature. Until now.
Nassim’s book “The Black Swan” turned me onto a great database. The Society of Judgement and Decision Making. That operates the website The Journal of Judgment and Decision Making. It is a very rigorous study and area of research. It is empirically based.
Onto computing.
Isn’t recorded music great? You can listen to it anytime. You can stop and start it and listen to little segments over and over if you want to. Does a recoding of music hear itself? Does the recording know if its playing or not? Does a recoding know if you are listening, or know what you think of it?
A computer code A.I. is a complex recording, of zero’s and one’s. It is programmed like a recording. It is processed now by increasingly complex arrangements of microprocessors. These long stings of code to two results and compares them. It does this by determining if the outcome of the code is “halt, or not halt.” That is how a computer “thinks.” Not in terms of ideas, emotions, perceptions, visceral responses such as gag reflexes to what constitutes human environments today.
This computing A.I. processing can arrange, (taxonomize,) index, cross reference, put together many, many strings of code very, very fast. (A true understatement.) These iterated productions of code the processors can selectively play and mix to produce all kinds of musical arrangements. It does not know if it’s playing music or not. It does not know what kind of music it is playing.
Very few people are going to engage is such conversations. Most of them would have to spend a great deal of effort to get around their addiction to their small domains. They likely do not have the logistical and analytical skills to know what I am trying to say. Much like a piece of selectively iterated code. More and more people succumb to the more and more selectively reduced scopes and capacities of communication, knowledge, perception and humanism every second. That has become the dominant mode of human consciousness. It has been thus reducing humans for many hundreds of thousands of years. Resulting in language and everything else known as human. Which is not saying much. Thankfully, consciousness is just a small amount of preferred attention out of the far larger arenas of perception. On the boundaries of perception exist real ideas. Unique perceptions from all kinds of signaling that is not based on the isolated so called brain functions, thus falsely rendered, and called cognitions, and executive functions. Then assumed to be the essence of communication processes. These selectively produced idealistic reductions have been guiding human development since the early origins of human existence. Slowly and steadily producing the smaller and smaller versions of knowledge people call intelligence. While I can produce all kinds of examples of this process in all areas of human activity, if you can not relate to this, it is unlikely that you will ever relate to any wider understanding of human function. You will remain in your self interested preferences forever. Without contacting wider methods of relating, logic and analysis. It does not come naturally. It is not in the idealistic reductions of virtue, upon which Plato based Friendship, freedom, justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation. Using such a model based on ideal forms is highly mis representational. As are the ideas of soul, essence, spirit, etc. Most intelligent people avoid talking about such things. Knowing that the capacity of most people is based on such idealistic and unrealistic foundations. They say they would rather focus on other principals, rather than attempt to directly address peoples most basic forms of delusion that interrupt wider capacities of relating.
Many discussions of so called A.I. which is only computing, and never will be anything more, occur around the idea of computers making decision. This shows the human tendency to mis-contextualize by excluding essential intrinsic data. Before one can discuss if computers will make decisions for humans, one needs to invest significant research into human decision making. The trends in decision making would also be a good idea to have some working knowledge of. This would help contextualize processes of human decision making. I hope the above gives some basic starting points.
This would at least start to promote a more informed discussion of how computers might or might not be able to make decisions. Just as this is an example of how people mis contextualize their inquiries and outcomes by insufficient contexts and conditions, so do computers.
Human decision making is dependent on the scopes and inclusions or exclusions of different contexts. Computers then are also informed by similar inclusions and exclusions of data. However they are not the determinants of these things outside of the domains of zero’s, one’s, halt’s and not halt’s. Their outputs are and always will be solely dependent upon the codes in which they are programmed, of which, like humans they can index, arrange, piece together different contexts. They will never make up their own contexts as humans do. To the people who have no knowledge of these contexts computers appear to make up contexts, and make decisions. They do not make decisions like humans. Just as they do not process math like humans. They do not process communication like humans. They do not process things in terms of ideas, perceptions, emotions, ideas, values, meanings or visceral responses, such as the gag response I get from being exposed to what modern humans call intelligence and communication. Which is mostly only repetitive copy cat behavior like the way they understand genetics without the ideas of complex multi system interactions. The second most popular method is to explain things in terms of their own things. To explain concepts in terms of sub concepts within the same concept domain. Computers do not do anything like humans do them. Contrary to on google’s gemini platform propaganda claims. Seen just before three minutes into the new Gemini platform misleading presentation.
To the people who have no knowledge of these contexts com puters appear to make up contexts, and make decisions. They do not make decisions like humans. Just as they do not process math like humans. They do not process communication like humans. They do not think, or process things in terms of ideas, perceptions, emotions, visceral responses, such as the gag response I get from being exposed to what modern humans call intelligence and communication, but is only repetitive copy cat behavior like the way they understand genetics without the ideas of complex multi system interactions. Computers do not do anything like humans do them. Contrary to google’s gemini platform claims. Humans have always lived in the very small human domain and thus ascribe human traits to non human things. Few humans can see things in other ways. Thus also the uniformed humans mistake computer outputs as creations of new contexts. Which they are not. They are complex iterations of text. Unbeknownst to the majority of causally observant humans. For example computers did not create child sex trafficking. They certainly enhance it or help to eliminate it by data storage and retrieval. Computers do not make the inclusion of some ideas and the exclusion of others. The certainly enhance it. Computers did not make predictability and unpredictability. They enhance those. Computers do not make ideas of right and wrong. They enhance those. They enhance those things according to their programmers. According to societies different conclusions about these issues. Computers do not make literature. They can enhance or degrade it. Computers do not make science. They can enhance or degrade it. Computers do not make semantics, they can enhance or degrade it.
Computers can not “do” any of these things, and can not do many more things, because they are simply a data storage and retrieval system. They can identify words. They can not identify non-words. The more exhaustive the programming of words, the better the approximation of words. Not the approximation of non-words. Such is the limited domain of computing. This shows they follow human logic principals accordingly to program of such principals. But not human perception. They can at an increasing rate, qualitatively and quantitatively rearrange, reconstruct in many fascinating new arrangements of data. That is all they will ever do. This is because computers are limited the computers domain. They will never included the domains of humans. Few people understand the human domain because they only understand the human domain from human-centric perspectives. This is insufficient. Humans are the most reductive organic life form. Language is a special application of experience. It is a reductive form of experience. Not an elaboration of greater contexts of experience. It is only a more and more selective way of rendering experience. While language can be wider and narrower, it only exits within the contexts of language. A human identified selective method. The problems of language started long before language. The process of specialization and narrowing of concepts may have started with the genetic anomaly, the genetic mistake that produced a more symmetrical brain. This would explain why humans function in accordance with the principals of conformity, predicability, regularity, basically properties of symmetry and for most humans have such a problem with irregularity, unpredictably, unusual-ness etc. which is the operating principal of the universe, i.e. randomness. Which humans try to eliminate arriving at the disastrous conditions of today. Simply planting trees is not going to solve this problem. Conserving fossil fuels and regulating methane production from farm animals is not going to solve this problem. Computers are not going to solve this problem. They can enhance it by further misleading people by their mis informed programmers.
Humans have always lived in the very small human domain and thus ascribe human traits to non human things. Few humans can see things in other ways. Thus also the uniformed humans mistake computer outputs as creations of new contexts. Which they are not. They are complex iterations of text. Unbeknownst to the majority of causally observant humans. For example computers did not create sex trafficking. They certainly enhance it or help to eliminate it by data storage and retrieval. Computers do not make the inclusion of some ideas and the exclusion of others. The certainly enhance it. Computers did not make predictability and unpredictability. They enhance those. Computers do not make ideas of right and wrong. They enhance those. They enhance those things according to their programmers. According to societies different conclusions about these issues. Computers do not make literature. They can enhance or degrade it. Computers do not make science. They can enhance or degrade it. Computers do not make semantics, they can enhance or degrade it.
They can not do any of these things, and can not do many more things, because they are simply a data storage and retrieval system. They can identify words. They can not identify non-words. The more exhaustive the programming the better the approximation of words. Not the approximation of non-words. This shows they follow human logic principals accordingly to program of such principals. But not human perception. They can at an increasing rate, qualitatively and quantitatively rearrange, reconstruct in many fascinating new arrangements of data. That is all they will ever do. This is because computers are limited the computers domain. They will never included the domains of humans. Few people understand the human domain because they only understand the human domain from human-centric perspectives. This is insufficient. Humans are the most reductive organic life form. Language is a special application of experience. It is a reductive form of experience. Not an elaboration of greater contexts of experience. It is only a more and more selective way of rendering experience. While language can be wider and narrower, it only exits within the contexts of language. A human identified selective method. The problems of language started long before language. The process of specialization and narrowing of concepts may have started with the genetic anomaly, the genetic mistake that produced a more symmetrical brain. This would explain why humans function in accordance with the principals of conformity, predicability, regularity, basically properties of symmetry and for most humans have such a problem with irregularity, unpredictably, unusual-ness etc. which is the operating principal of the universe, i.e. randomness. Which humans try to eliminate arriving at the disastrous conditions of today. Simply planting trees is not going to solve this problem. Conserving fossil fuels and regulating methane production from farm animals is not going to solve this problem. Computers are not going to solve this problem. They can enhance it by further misleading people by their mis informed programmers.
This leads to a more technical discussion of computing. Computing is based on the number theory known as set theory. This underlies a similar problem of computing. The mathematical technicalities of proofs are similar to other domains of proofs. For an introduction to these ideas I recommend the you tube video Maths Fundamental Flaw. This goes over some basic contributions to mathematical proofs of Hillel, Godel, Wang andTuring are discussed in simple language with technical examples. These are fundamental to understanding some of maths basic applications such as set theory, quantum fields, and computing. Once you get familiar with these kinds of proof rendering, you will understand a lot about what math and computing are, and what they are not. The what they are not being most imporatant. This video, and it's comments lead to many, many other more recent developments of these early ideas. I have found them most intriguing.
Computers only use one kind of signaling. While life does not. The only signaling computers operate by is zero’s, one’s, halt and not halt. That is their functional domain. We might technically say these are subsets of computer code. We will never know all the kinds of signaling in the real world. Humans do not functionally live in the real world at all. That’s why one of the ways I refer to my project as Reality Vs. Humans. The real world is made up of properties that we avoid. Irregularity, the unknown and the unknowable, the random, etc. More closely related non intrinsic human properties that we don’t like are unfamiliarity, non-conformity, the unusual, the unpredictable. It is hard to distinguish human realms from less human realms.
We live in smaller and smaller references. Often subsets of the same set same context, same condition, and it is unnatural to produce other kinds of sets or contexts. It does not come easily to anybody. It takes work. I think Nassim said he spent ten or twenty years on his white swan project. He’s probably still working on it.
We are not moving in the other direction, away from smaller human subsets of ideas. Humans and human society is based on some simple processes. Not the wider more inclusive processes of the real world. Society tends to produce people who want to be around people like them. People who think like them and who do not challenge them in any significant way. Society needs conformity more than diversity to operate in its mode of control, exploitation, and oppression. See discussions on control elsewhere. Considerations other than this are again the stream. Certainly against the empire of humanity.
As Nassim Taleb so elegantly, simply and with great elucidation points out in his second book, seeing another white swan is not more information pertaining to white swans, and equally no information about all swans being white. In order to understand conditions of white swans, you have to have information about kinds of birds, kinds of birds that are white and not white, what constitutes a white swan in terms of an etymology of birds, types of birds, what is a swan, different types of swans and so on. The conditions are endless. That is why you can only prove what white swans are not. Because you are never going to have all the conditions that constitute a white swan.
There are always possibilities that you have missed a condition of what a white swan is.
How is the misrepresentation of the term A.I. going to lead to more problems than the ones commonly presented. Simple, the same way all misrepresentations get mis-applied to things they shouldn’t and in ways they shouldn’t be applied. A great example is the applied chemistry domain called modern medicine. One example the exploitation of enzymes. Very popular trend is in the exploitation of kinase family enzymes. Which is huge. A good example is the CPK enzyme, creatinine protein kinase. The problem is incurred by the method of exploitation. That is, to only recognize one property out many known properties. Doing this is the same as mis representing a concept, like A.I. computing. The examples are endless because this is how humans function. Eliminate properties in the service of ones preferred perception, other wise known as consciousness.
The one important application to remember about these processes is how human value is recognized or not recognized.
When people are degraded we are excluding contexts that they intrinsically have. When we are depressed we can not see the properties that we have when we are not depressed. It is the same selective process. Thus value is found by identifying and including more contexts intrinsic to human nature. As we lose those recognitions and capacities through excluding them, we narrow the context of humans. This has been going on since the early origins of human beings. We began with wider, more inclusive and more general understandings of relating. We have been selectively reducing them. The scientific method is about finding more contexts for understanding. Sometimes the applications of those understandings get used in selective ways. They also get applied in terms of selective interventions that exclude properties that have been identified. This is the essence of human folly.
