Open Thread

http://volokh.com/2010/10/11/is-procrastination-rational/

It seems that our brains sometimes aren’t wired for a world in which events far into the future are actually pretty predictable, leading us to procrastinate on things like exams, papers, doing our taxes, and the like.

I wonder if there are ways to make future events feel more certain.

I feel like I need to post this somewhere. This is the most ridiculously broad journal article I've ever seen. The paper is Categorical Ontology of Complex Spacetime Structures: The Emergence of Life and Human Consciousness, and here's the abstract:

A categorical ontology of space and time is presented for emergent biosystems, super-complex dynamics, evolution and human consciousness. Relational structures of organisms and the human mind are naturally represented in non-abelian categories and higher dimensional algebra. The ascent of man and other organisms through adaptation, evolution and social co-evolution is viewed in categorical terms as variable biogroupoid representations of evolving species. The unifying theme of local-to-global approaches to organismic development, evolution and human consciousness leads to novel patterns of relations that emerge in super- and ultra-complex systems in terms of colimits of biogroupoids, and more generally, as compositions of local procedures to be defined in terms of locally Lie groupoids. Solutions to such local-to-global problems in highly complex systems with ‘broken symmetry’ may be found with the help of generalized van Kampen theorems in algebraic topology such as the Higher Homotopy van Kampen theorem (HHvKT). Primordial organism structures are predicted from the simplest metabolic-repair systems extended to self-replication through autocatalytic reactions. The intrinsic dynamic ‘asymmetry’ of genetic networks in organismic development and evolution is investigated in terms of categories of many-valued, Łukasiewicz–Moisil logic algebras and then compared with those obtained for (non-commutative) quantum logics. The claim is defended in this essay that human consciousness is unique and should be viewed as an ultra-complex, global process of processes. The emergence of consciousness and its existence seem dependent upon an extremely complex structural and functional unit with an asymmetric network topology and connectivities—the human brain—that developed through societal co-evolution, elaborate language/symbolic communication and ‘virtual’, higher dimensional, non-commutative processes involving separate space and time perceptions. Philosophical theories of the mind are approached from the theory of levels and ultra-complexity viewpoints which throw new light on previous representational hypotheses and proposed semantic models in cognitive science. Anticipatory systems and complex causality at the top levels of reality are also discussed in the context of the ontological theory of levels with its complex/entangled/intertwined ramifications in psychology, sociology and ecology. The presence of strange attractors in modern society dynamics gives rise to very serious concerns for the future of mankind and the continued persistence of a multi-stable biosphere. A paradigm shift towards non-commutative, or non-Abelian, theories of highly complex dynamics is suggested to unfold now in physics, mathematics, life and cognitive sciences, thus leading to the realizations of higher dimensional algebras in neurosciences and psychology, as well as in human genomics, bioinformatics and interactomics.

I can't tell whether these guys solved science or are just really, really confused.

Yes -- I remember having an idea recently that I thought was worth posting as an open thread comment, but didn't seem worth making a post on, even here on the discussion section.

Unfortunately, I don't remember what the idea was!

But this experience does suggest that open threads may continue to be useful.

I made it to the third round of The Great Designer Search 2!

Wish me luck.

You are never too cool to draw a picture.

-- SarahC

Awesome pair of blog posts by Terence Tao:

• The "no self-defeating object" argument
• The "no self-defeating object" argument, revisited

In the first post he examines such arguments in set theory, logic, computability, game theory, and physics. In the second post he casts these "counterfactual" arguments into more constructive ones.

Are the Sequences collected anywhere in a format that allows for offline reading?

Here's a couple comics the folks here might find amusing:

http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1777

http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1780

Sometimes in my weak moments, I'm really scared about what output the collective volition of all humanity will actually produce.

http://bamber.blogspot.com/2010/10/sick-systems.html

Is it me or has everybody stopped thinking about molecular nanotech risks in the last couple years?

I was hoping to learn quantum mechanics, what are the recommended text books on the subject? (I can cope with the maths.) I'm sure someone has asked this here before, but my searches were unsuccessful.

This blog post by John C. Wright (atheist-turned-Catholic author of the AI-centric sci-fi trilogy The Golden Age) compares evolution (or fiction's idea of it) to the god Azathoth. It's unclear whether he got the meme from LW, but he's been a click away from it at least once.

Yesterday's Dinosaur Comics discusses extreme brain-dumping, and today's news posts links to an article about Lion Kimbro, someone who tried it (and wrote an online book, How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think).

Last year [2003] he spent three solid months writing down everything that came into his head. He got so immersed in making notes that the rest of his life was put on hold while he sorted them and understood them.

(...) "It may feel that for the first time in your life, you really have a clear idea of what kinds of thoughts are going through your head."

(...) Lion emerged from his experiment a changed man. As a result of spending months thinking and writing down his thoughts with a pen, his brain had started to work in new ways.

It sounds similar to what one might do to stage a crisis of faith, without necessarily knowing at the start what beliefs they'll question.

The article was partly condensed from this interview (note same author, Giles Turnbull).

"What I *didn't* antipicate was the freezing effect. That's where your mind re-hashes old things and sort of unconsciously avoids new things. (It's real, I've come to understand why it happens much better, through work in wiki, where it can happen as well.)

One reason I love Alloy

Now, my former W3C colleague Dan Connolly pointed out to me a long, long time ago that one can use specification languages like Alloy not just to check software designs, but to test our understanding of things we read. Dan told me once that when he really wanted to understand something, he tried to model it using a specification language and prove at least a few trivial theorems about it.

This is a request for advice. (I hope this is the right place for this. Decided against the discussion area.)

Hello LessWrongers! Well, this is more for those who do/dig AI in particular.

I do an BSc Hons degree in AI at the University of Edinburgh, and I'm in 2nd year. Recently because I have been requesting concessions to take math courses not usually permitted, I have been offered an opportunity to switch my degree to one of AI & Maths (BSc Hons).

Before I entered university, when I decided on BSc AI, I was mainly concerned with course structure. But after reading much Robin Hanson, I realize the importance of signaling. This is not to say it is all signaling of course. There is also the question of signaling what and to who.

The course structure of AI&Maths does look moderately more interesting and fun, now that I have had first hand experience of the math courses for BSc AI students. But how do I weigh this up against signaling considerations?

So what do I want to signal? I'm not entirely sure, but my first choice is to do research, though not necessarily in academia. I want to give off the impression that I can bring deep theory out into hard practice. So perhaps signaling unconventionalism is not too detrimental to my hoped-for prospects, maybe even beneficial. But I also don't want to signal my head being lost in the clouds. First choice of research area is of course AI, but I'm OK with anything that has leverage into increasing our collective problem solving ability.

Should I consider an entirely different degree altogether? Physics for instance, because it conveys ability to just solve any damn problem?

If you have any experience/knowledge that are relevant to this decision, I kindly request your advice! Thanks.

The case of this comment makes me a bit worried about LW's sanity. As such, I'm escalating the issue by also linking to it from here. Discuss.

The brain boxes and the university like no other - Video

Anyone want to read some anti-libertarian propaganda?

www.governmentisgood.com

Today's XKCD is particularly relevant to LW in several ways.