Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality

"Libertarianism secretly relies on most individuals being prosocial enough to tip at a restaurant they won't ever visit again. An economy of genuinely selfish human-level agents would implode."

Perhaps.

A thoughtful article about this and related issues is:

http://www.depressedmetabolism.com/jan-narveson-gauthier-and-libertarianism/

"Or do you think you're smarter than that?"

No?

ZMD, is that the answer you think I'm looking for, your personal answer, or the correct answer?

Eliezer, why are you concerned with untestable questions?

Statistically it would seem unlikely that I am anything near approaching "rational".

Gray Area: Eliezer, why are you concerned with untestable questions?

Questions you can easily test experimentally are hard for Science to get wrong.

There are numerous questions that are hard to test experimentally right this minute but are extremely important because of their future consequences. I bet you can think of one or two.

I chose quantum physics as my point of departure because the case is mathematically clear-cut.

Incidentally, it looks to me like you should be able to test macroscopic decoherence. Eventually. You just need nanotechnological precision, very low temperatures, and perhaps a clear area of interstellar (intergalactic?) space.

Has anyone tried to actually DO Solomonoff induction against the real world? If I understand, it's incomputable, and even the idea of encoding reality as a program... well, it would be a very big program. So except as a pointer to and clarification of Occam's razor, does it have a real world use?

Generalizing: is it actually possible to use pure Bayesianism in any non-contrived, non-trivial context? And if purity can't be attained, is there an optimal impure approximation?

I always tip because it's the convention and I'm afraid of being confronted about not doing it. If I didn't have that fear I most certainly would tip far less.

You should drop the stuff about selfishness. It's self-interest. Everyone agrees if you define "selfish" as not doing anything that could possibly aid anyone else then human society wouldn't work. Clearly you'd live in a cave and have a subsistence existence until you're dead at 15. I don't know anyone who actually advocates that. So the definitions must be off.

Or do you think you're smarter than that?

Yes I do, since you're asking. Is that correct? Probably not. But that doesn't bother me. I have to trust my rationality before I can get anything out of science, right? As far as I'm concerned, my own, personal, internal logic is The King.

Still not convinced that Science (capital S) wants me to believe in anything it can't provide evidence for though. Logic and induction might postulate certain unprovable beliefs, but there's no reason why Science should flat out disagree with them. Still not feeling the dilemma.

There is a problem here that you do not seem to recognize. If any meta-level approach is better, i.e., will yield a more correct model of the universe than the current scientific method, then the scientific method will, over time, devour it, make it a part of itself. This is, because in the end, the "better" alternative approach will at some point yield a theory, no matter how small, but still, perceptibly better prediction. It may not do so for QM - it may yield only a different "interpretation", but it will, somewhere along the line, make an indisputably better theory, one that has to compete with theories that could not have been discovered without it, and people will start using it.

In essence: if it beats the scientific method in its own game, it will become mainstream scientific method.

A lot of people have a problem with Kolmogorov complexity and Solomonoff induction being "ideals". Sure, you can't build a working perfect compressor in order to compute the Kolmogorov complexity of a binary string. The best you can do is to approximate it. Furthermore, the ways in which your compressor fails to achieve the perfect compression of Kolmogorov complexity are weaknesses of your compressor that a more powerful compressor could overcome... and so on and so on. It's only in the limit that you get a completely general compressor that can't be beaten, but by that point your compressor is requiring infinite amounts of computation in order to work perfectly. The solution is not to redefine the "perfect compressor", indeed that wouldn't work because anything less than Kolmogorov complexity can be beaten by some computable compressor. Instead, accept that the ideal can only be approximated in reality and that the better we can approximate it the better we are doing. The same goes for Solomonoff induction.

Eli: In your previous post you write about Copenhagen vs. MWI as if we have to decide on one of them. However, that's a somewhat un-Bayesian thing to do! A strict Solomonoff-Bayesian would simply accept that there is a posterior distribution over a space of infinitely many theories and interpretations. When this strict Bayesian goes to make a prediction about the outcome of an experiment he will take all of these interpretations into account according to their posterior probabilities - including interpretations far more insane than anything you have described.

Incidentally, it looks to me like you should be able to test macroscopic decoherence. Eventually. You just need nanotechnological precision, very low temperatures, and perhaps a clear area of interstellar (intergalactic?) space.

Short of that, building a scalable quantum computer would be another (possibly easier!) way to experiment with macroscopic coherence. The difference is that with quantum computing, you wouldn't even try to isolate a quantum system perfectly from its environment. Instead you'd use really clever error-correction to encode quantum information in nonlocal degrees of freedom, in such a way that it can survive the decoherence of (say) any 1% of the qubits.

Science is built around the assumption that you're too stupid and self-deceiving to just use Solomonoff induction.

Now you appeal to our pride, and our vanity.

If it bothers you to be accused of trying to start a cult, why do you persist in trying to start one?

we are talking about the idealized form of Science, not just the actual social process of science.

What is the point of this ideal if it is not actually implemented to a substantial degree? And of course the answer to the bottom question is that most us think we personally are too smart to need this ideal constraint, even if we think most others are not that smart. Of course most of us must be wrong to think ourselves so much smarter than the rest.

Libertarianism secretly relies on most individuals being prosocial enough to tip at a restaurant they won't ever visit again. An economy of genuinely selfish human-level agents would implode. Similarly, Science relies on most scientists not committing sins so egregious that they can't rationalize them away.<<

Libertarianism rarely exists as a dominant paradigm, except when certain religions, with Protestantism as an example, are dominant, and when religion is fading in strength, such that material concerns become greater than spiritual ones.

An economy of genuinely selfish human-level agents would implode.

Wouldn't the implosion leave all the selfish agents worse off? If they were even rudimentarily rational, wouldn't they then act in a way to prevent that inward collapse?

Of course I think I'm smarter than that. Anyone who actually contributes does, or they wouldn't bother to contribute. And sometimes they are right, which is why our knowledge keeps moving forward. Of course, sometimes we're wrong, and the structure is what keeps everything from moving backwards.

The core argument for libertarianism is historically motivated distrust of lovely theories of "How much better society would be, if we just made a rule that said XYZ." If that sort of trick actually worked, then more regulations would correlate to higher economic growth as society moved from local to global optima.

Only if economic growth was the only indicator of "how good a society is."

But when some person or interest group gets enough power to start doing everything they think is a good idea, history says that what actually happens is Revolutionary France or Soviet Russia.

I invite you to Somalia or Western Sahara. That's what the real world says about libertarianism.

Libertarianism secretly relies on most individuals being prosocial enough to tip at a restaurant they won't ever visit again. An economy of genuinely selfish human-level agents would implode.

In other words, libertarianism could only ever work with real people. It would never work with the fictional creatures that people both for and against libertarianism philosophize themselves into imagining.

Where are the witty critical posters? I'm surprised to be the first to observe that this post (favorably comparing Science with Libertarianism) reads kind of like a self-parody of the OvercomingBias blog. Is one libertarian if one holds up each claim of libertarianism and says "Well, that's an empirical question. Let's look at the data". Because that's the scientific, empirical approach, it seems to me. I think libertarianism starts to look sill when viewed in that light. To be fair, so do the claims of any political party that size or larger, of which I'm aware.

Caledonian - not sure if this is what was originally alluded to, but the Prisoner's Dilemma / Tragedy of the Commons scenario is one where agents acting in their best interest get screwed. Of course, that is why we have governments in the first place (i.e. to get around those problems).

M - How do you figure Somalia is libertarian? Libertarianism requires a stable government (i.e. a monopoly on force) which Somalia definitely does not have.

H.A. - I don't think the point was that Libertarians are more scientific than others, but that Libertarianism and Science are similar in the sense that they put more faith in processes than in people.

Of course, that is why we have governments in the first place (i.e. to get around those problems).

It doesn't get around those problems, DaveInNYC, it just changes the conditions under which the problems arise. Having one, really powerful actor that can dominate the Commons doesn't solve anything - if there aren't enough reasonable and enlightened people to maintain control of the government, it begins abusing the Commons itself, and anyone not completely controlled by the government lose any disincentives to act for their immediate short-term interests.

Who guards the guardians? Who watches the watchers? Ultimately integrity cannot be maintained by force. Governments only act as a solution to the problems of society as long as their integrity remains, and history shows us that it doesn't last very long.

I will further note that Libertarianism does not require a stable government, it simply requires that force is not used. That can be because force isn't a viable short-term strategy, or because an enlightened power has a monopoly on it. There is need of enforcement only when dealing with non-Libertarians.

Added small-'l' to "libertarianism" to hopefully make it clear that I'm talking about pragmatic distrust of governmental solutions, not the American political party. Also added: "People who see Libertarianism as the perfect solution for perfect people, strike me as kinda missing the point of the "pragmatic distrust" thing."

"Libertarianism and Science are similar in the sense that they put more faith in processes than in people."

Science doesn't seem to me to need or benefit from a "libertarian" connection. It's more reputable than libertarianism, and for good reason, in my observation. If one wants to bring science into the public policy space, then one should scientifically determine what we want to do with public policy (maximize HA's persistence odds, of course), and scientifically determine the best way to accomplish that (an empirical question). Not sure what role is left for libertarianism, socialism, republicanism, fascism, etc. except in the coincidences where their policy prescriptions happen to overlap with that scientific determination.

I am not smarter than that. But you might (just might) be. "Eliezer says so" is strong evidence for anything. I'm too stupid to use the full power of Bayes, and I should defer to Science, but Eliezer is one of the few best Bayesian wannabes - he may be mistaken, but he isn't crazily refusing to let go of his pet theory. Still not enough to make me accept MWI, but a major change in my estimate nonetheless.

As a side note, what actually happens in a true libertarian system is Europe during the Industrial Revolution.

As far as I can see the main problem with libertarianism (versus any variety of freebie-ism for any favored group, left or right) is the classic monkey trap problem. Freebie-ism delivers you a candy now. Libertarianism lets you work like stink and pass it on to the kids. It gives you industrial revolutions, which blacken the air - and result in modern communication, travel, medicine, computers, materials, and an upraised middle class to appreciate them. The trouble is that the "jam tomorrow" of libertarianism is quite obvious from an theorist's armchair overview but is too far into the future for the monkey mind to feel it as personally relevant.

Of course it helps when your culture is long-termist, like the Victorians, not short-termist, like today.

I don't see libertarianism as being able to jump outside the (legal/social) system in quite the way described here. It is not an escape from "how much better society would be if we just made a rule...". It is, rather, a very specific implementation of that principle: how much better society would be if we just lived by libertarian ideals, private property, courts where we can sue for fraud and coercion, etc. And then, due to its failure to jump outside the limitations of systems composed of imperfect humans, it fails for the same reasons. People do not tolerate libertarian societies; they are not consistent with human nature. The extremes of wealth that tend to result, for example, are incompatible with human emotions of envy. People stuck in a libertarian society will soon try to change it to become less libertarian. This is the lesson of history.

Actually, I was kind of joking; sorry.

Regarding Somalia, it actually improved under anarchy.

HA, you may be interested in the "post-libertarianism" of Jeffrey Friedman.

I don't think this was yet encompassed by the discussion or post: Another similarity between Science and libertarianism is that they both follow Bayes "usually, but not always":

-Science rejects late-coming simpler theories that offer no new predictions. -libertarianism rejects certain government interventions proposed by a superintelligent FAI that follows Bayes and values what humans do.

Or am I off the rails here? ;-)

Science and Eliezer both agree that evidence is important, so let's collect some evidence on which one is more accurate.

Echoing Hal Finney...

It seems like you (Robin Hanson) are arguing that Libertarianism (small or big L) is some kind of alternative to rule making, or as I would say it 'believing in your theory'. But my impression -- not extravagantly well informed theoretically, but fairly informed by looking at actual, self styled libertarians -- is that Libertarianism is precisely an anti-theory theory. Terrified of the failures of other rules/models/belief systems, they create a new rule which says that all rules are wrong. The obvious tail chasing is well, what about your rule? They don't like that game.

Unfortunately, in practice it turns out that trying to decide ahead of time what rules are going to be valid and what rules aren't, is just as hard a problem, if not harder, than just deciding rules on a case by case basis. So the decision to once and for all make up a minimal rule set, and then disallow all future data and all future questions of rule making, turns out to fail just as badly, if not worse, than making bad rules to begin with. Thus for example, we see free market fundamentalists trying to prove that what has really gone wrong in the american housing market is too much government intervention, even though anybody willing to allow new data (new relative to their decision about how the world works that is) recognizes that the last 7-20 years (depending on how hard core you are) have been all about 'letting the market decide'.

In other words, libertarianism is just as much a religion as communism, and appeals to exactly the same psychology -- the need for easy answers, and the urge to push others around when your easy answers don't work. One of it's biggest problems is that it does not handle incremental acceptance well -- you have to drink the kool aid, or stay out of the party, no two ways about it. In the real world this requirement effectively kills the theory.

the fact that I have a visceral agreement with Scott Aaronson's claim that there is something similar about science and libertarianism says something about how down on science I am these days. The fact that I agree for exactly opposite reasons, says something about the relationship between outputs (objects) and processes (rules). Less opaquely: I agree there is something similar about Libertarianism and Science (big S) -- and it is not good at all if you are a fan of science (little s)

Science is built around the assumption that you're too stupid and self-deceiving to just use Solomonoff induction.

We can't use Solomonoff induction - because it is uncomputable.

We don't have any good quality computable approximations to it either. That is indeed because we are too stupid. That is more fact than assumption, though.

Hi,

I've been reading LW sequences sine a few months, and I find them very interesting, but I think you made a mistake in mixing politics (libertarianism, french/american revolutions, ...) into this post.

I won't go into explaining why I think economical libertarianism is deeply flawed and not similar at all to the process of Science (for once, I don't think it degrades well at all), but above that, by calling into very complicated and very debated concepts, you're just making following your core reasoning harder to follow.

I also think you make some factual errors : saying the "american revolution" is a success but the french one a collapse is a great mistake. Most of the progress of the French Revolution lasted for very long and still last. The whole concept of "Human Rights", both the "first generation" rights, like the freedom of speech, and the "second generation" rights like universal access to education, come mostly from the French Revolution (the Declaration of Humans and Citizen Rights, to my knowledge, predates the 1st Amemendement). Most countries of Europe and South America use a civil code derived from it. The abolition of slavery by the French Revolution in 1793 was temporarily undone afterwards by Napoleon, but it was a firm stone on which the abolitionist have built afterwards.

And some very fundamental measures of the French Revolution, that were totally opposite to economical libertarianism, like the "taxation du prix du pain" (state-fixed price of bread to block speculation on breads and flour (the "Accapareurs")) lasted for almost two centuries, protecting France from famine, and making the "french baguette" a world-renewed food (because, to the contrary of what economical libertarianism predicts, the fixed price of bread leaded to a massive development of the bread industry in France, making bread the fundamental food, and forcing the bakery to compete on quality since they couldn't compete on price). That's just a few examples among many. Wiping the jump forward in humanism that represented the French Revolution and its continuing consequences nowadays in a few words as you did is, in my opinion, just not true.

Anyway, thanks for those very interesting posts.

Science first came to know itself as a rebellion against trusting the word of Aristotle.

Digressing, this is PC history.

Science first came to be as Roger Bacon writing up the scientific method. His approach was to not trust anyone, but to trust Aristotle more than most. Unsurprisingly, he was put in solitary confinement on bread and water. The Church then issued a list of forbidden thoughts, with Aristotle prominently on the list. That science started with a revolt against Aristotle is a whitewash of the conflict between the theocratic state and Science. Science, science in the sense of the scientific method, not science in the sense of a state anointed priesthood ceremonially wearing labcoats as white robes, is inherently revolutionary, a defiance of authority, but it was not the authority of Aristotle that they were revolting against. Rather, all beliefs were subject to empirical scrutiny, including the beliefs of the authorities of Roger Bacon's day, which was revolt against present authority, not Aristotle.

We do not know what the charges were against Roger Bacon (most likely the nominal charges were irrelevant, and the real charge was having a bad attitude), but it was more likely he was imprisoned for respecting Aristotle, than disrespecting him.

Libertarianism secretly relies on most individuals being prosocial enough to tip at a restaurant they won't ever visit again.

I'm puzzled that you gave that specific example, given that it's obviously wrong. Most countries do not have a culture of tipping, and their economies don't implode. They just have less headaches at bill time. And in many cases (a long way from libertarianism) their wait staff get paid a living wage.

I'm also not sure what it means for libertarianism to rely on something, since libertarianism is not an actual functioning thing in existence. But if it did exist and function, it would not rely on tipping.

EDIT: Seeing this comment 5 years later, I see I was misunderstanding the point.