Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/

by ggreer • 9 years ago

98 20 9 years ago

slatestarcodex.com

andyjohnson0• 9 years ago

Scott Aaronson's post on Kolmogorov, mentioned in the post above, was discussed on HN a couple of months ago [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002

adiabatty• 9 years ago

But politically-savvy Kolmogorov types can’t just build a bubble. They have to build a whisper network.

The trouble with whisper networks, though, is that they breed poorly-supported misinformation (fake news?) that may or may not have anything to do with whether thunder or lightning comes first.

Seems like if you want to reduce the incentive to create fake-news-breeding whisper networks, you should do what you can to not incentivize whisper-network creation.

lmm• 9 years ago

Well, obviously the best thing is to ensure that all truths are politically acceptable. But given that we live in a society in which certain truths aren't acceptable, what's the best course that individuals can pursue on the margin?

dogruck• 9 years ago

Well said.

Said another way, society often prefers falsehood over truth, because many times the truth is more immediately painful. (I would argue that in the long term truth is always superior)

Symmetry• 9 years ago

I worry more that the problem isn't that certain truths aren't acceptable but rather that certain truths aren't generally representable. People in general don't understand probabilities and in political races this means that in practice predictions get simplified down to "Candidate A is certainly going to win" or "It's a toss up!".

nl4• 9 years ago

For such a smart person, it surprises me that he seems to have missed the point of what is going on in <insert politicized debate of the day here>.

In modern Western thought, voices aren't suppressed. Instead, they are politicized and used to put the speaker on a "side". Then the people on that side will defend their side (although not always the speaker) using that person as a proxy for their side.

We see this in global warming, in nuclear power, in gender equality, in free speech rights, in gun rights, in nurture vs nature.

I can think of only two examples where something similar to the behavior called out in this article occurs in the modern West. The first is the "neural network conspiracy" where CIFAR funded research for years, until they suddenly won. The other is cold fusion, where there are persistent rumors that this wasn't perhaps the dead end it was made out to be (I don't have the expertise to evaluate that and tell if it is crackpots or not though).

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

He didn't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past.

It's not true that voices aren't suppressed in the modern Western world, though. The original post by Scott Aaaronson, the one from which this post takes it title, was a response to present-day suppression of opinions. Both Scotts have opted to write their posts in a very general tone (even though they're obvious responses to some recent events), but I'll nevertheless spell it out in concrete terms: if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum, you risk losing your job to an angry Twitter mob.

empath75• 9 years ago

if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum, you risk losing your job to an angry Twitter mob.

"Free speech" doesn't and shouldn't protect you from facing personal consequences for your speech. If you publicly profess stupid and/or offensive ideas, other people have a right to form opinions of you because of them, and those people have a right to choose not to do business with you.

nl4• 9 years ago

He didn't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past.

Can you point to that?

if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum

While I agree that kind of behavior is what he is referring to, I'd note that is a perfect example of exactly what I said.

In the case of Damore specifically, yes, he lost his job but in return picked up numerous speaking engagements and is now a player in the culture wars. That's a long way from being executed!

He's suing Google, and being represented by Harmeet Dhillon, "a prominent San Francisco Republican who was considered for a post in the Trump administration" who is "a member of the Republican National Committee". Is it possible to be more entrenched in the mainstream culture wars than that?

Far from being Kolmogorov or Giordano Bruno, it seems to me he is closer to Kanye West circa the 2006 "Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" interview, or the Dixie Chicks anti-war comments, or Judith Miller's pro-Iraq war NY Times columns. All made some people really, really mad, and had some consequences for their authors, but long term just solidified their position for the other side.

quanticle• 9 years ago

In modern Western thought voices aren't suppressed

Well, "incorrect" voices are still suppressed. There are still things you can't say [1]. The first question is whether the number of things you can't say is greater today in the West than it is elsewhere or it was in the past. The second question is whether that number is increasing or decreasing over time.

In fact, the assertion that we don't punish speech is a pernicious one, because it puts the burden on the other person to prove you wrong... at which point you can punish them!

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

rocqua• 9 years ago

This talk of many people knowing the orthodoxy is wrong kinda reminds me of the predictability crisis as described in this HN post from a week ago [1]. Only here, people did eventually speak out against the orthodoxy and seemed to have some effect.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347

sanxiyn• 9 years ago

Lightning comes before thunder.

Sue me.

otakucode• 9 years ago

There is a very large problem with comparing these sorts of issues between pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment cultures. Prior to the Englightenment, all knowledge was religious knowledge. Astronomy was the study of how God arrayed the heavens. Geology was the study of the firmament and how God created it. Physics was the motion God gave to every object. Agriculture was when God wanted you to plant your crops. Biology was how Gods morality was reflected in the living things in nature. There was no difference between religious ideas and ideas about reality - there was no separation whatever.

The Enlightenment was significant because it gave us a wedge. It allowed us to say 'religion is about the spiritual, about the ephemeral and ineffable, and science is about material reality'. That is a difference larger than modern people can easily understand. If your religious beliefs are beliefs about your everyday life and the visceral world you live in, you see things very differently. You can't simply live next door to someone with a different set of beliefs from your own. That person is an agent of evil, a soldier fighting in the cosmic and Earthly war between Good and Evil which will either see an eternity of peace and paradise (here, on this planet, not somewhere else) or an eternity of suffering depending upon who wins the war.

While Kolmogorov might have been able to build a bubble, those before the Enlightenment could not. It was impossible to defer judgement to some never-to-come 'afterlife'. It was impossible to extend to others a tolerance for their differing views. It was impossible for considering different ideas about how reality worked to not have a moral and religious consequence. The Enlightenment was so profoundly and deeply successful that those who grew up in societies where it took root can't even conceive of how different it would be to believe that everything which occurs in the world is the direct and immediate expression of the will of a god which suffuses all things and which the material world is but a slim skin over.

Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning

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