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Antievolution.org Discussion Board > From the Panda's Thumb > After the Bar Closes... > Missing Shade of Blue Thread

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keiths Posts: 2195 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,12:08    Quote (Quack @ Dec. 22 2008,08:16) OK, so he isn't Dembski. But do we know that he can't be "Mike Gene"? From long experience commenting at Telic Thoughts, I can pretty much guarantee that it's not Mike Gene.  Mike is philosophically naive and less articulate than MSB. On a more intuitive level, MSB doesn't sound like Mike Gene to me.  His diction and prose style are just too different. -------------- And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF

keiths Posts: 2195 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,12:35    Quote (Louis @ Dec. 22 2008,10:08)   Quote (stevestory @ Dec. 22 2008,16:35) I don't know. But so far, MSOB's acting like he has a brain, which is more than you can say for Davetard, BarryA, Bradford, Salvador, Casey, etc. Come on guys, give the blue lad/ladette a break. Thus far he/she's been everything we could ask for: intelligent and polite. So he/she disagrees with/has some questions about evolutionary biology, hardly the end of the universe. It is at least possible he/she has arrived at this point honestly. I'm all for giving him/her the benefit of the doubt until such a time as he/she proves to be a turd, if indeed this happens. I know I'm resident Ultra-Meanie and purveyor of poor quality tasteless jokes, but dudes and dudettes, it's Christmas.... {runs and hides} Louis We're just curious, Louis.  Nobody's trying to run MSB out of town.  We've engaged him and responded to his arguments. Even if he were Mike Gene or Dembski, I'd be happy to have him around as long as he followed our very minimal rules. -------------- And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,12:54    Quote It's true that no search algorithm is better than any other, on average, on an arbitrary landscape. But we're not talking about an arbitrarily chaotic universe. Zachriel, you're right. Bill helped me realize that my question was much broader than I initially thought. It's something along the lines of "Why does the evolutionary learning algorithm have the sorts of inductive biases that allow it to be an efficient search strategy over the sorts of fitness landscapes we see in this world?" And while that question is interesting and may be worth pursuing, it's not the sort of showstopper I thought it was. What troubled me earlier was that one particular functional trait was apparently not explicable by selection. But that's just because I was perversely refusing to allow, in this particular case, that we could assume that our fitness landscape has certain properties that enable natural selection to perform better than say random search. I now recognize my perversity, and I'm in full agreement with everything you said in your post.

Louis Posts: 6436 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,13:19    Quote (keiths @ Dec. 22 2008,18:35) Quote (Louis @ Dec. 22 2008,10:08)   Quote (stevestory @ Dec. 22 2008,16:35) I don't know. But so far, MSOB's acting like he has a brain, which is more than you can say for Davetard, BarryA, Bradford, Salvador, Casey, etc. Come on guys, give the blue lad/ladette a break. Thus far he/she's been everything we could ask for: intelligent and polite. So he/she disagrees with/has some questions about evolutionary biology, hardly the end of the universe. It is at least possible he/she has arrived at this point honestly. I'm all for giving him/her the benefit of the doubt until such a time as he/she proves to be a turd, if indeed this happens. I know I'm resident Ultra-Meanie and purveyor of poor quality tasteless jokes, but dudes and dudettes, it's Christmas.... {runs and hides} Louis We're just curious, Louis.  Nobody's trying to run MSB out of town.  We've engaged him and responded to his arguments. Even if he were Mike Gene or Dembski, I'd be happy to have him around as long as he followed our very minimal rules. Oh sorry, didn't the "come on guys, it's Christmas" give the tongue in cheekiness away. I was only 50% serious. Louis P.S. The serious point was that he/she might not be an "old friend" he/she could be an entirely new friend. -------------- Bye.

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,13:20    Zachriel, The idea that the search algorithm and the landscape are matched because ultimately they're made of the same stuff following the same fundamental laws is interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way before.

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,13:29    The speculation about my secret identity is amusing. I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted. I guess I should be flattered that the prime suspects are Dembski and Mike Gene and not, say, Denyse O'Leary or bornagain77. So thanks for the compliments, and have a great Christmas!

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,13:51    And to allay your curiosity a little bit, I am but a humble grad student with a non-professional interest in both the scientific and cultural aspects of the evolution/ID debate. My degree is in physics, so I admit I am not even close to an expert on evolution, machine learning or information theory. I have studied philosophy of science quite a bit, so I feel slightly more comfortable pontificating in that area. I'm an atheist. I think common descent and evolution via natural selection are the best explanations for the origin, diversity and apparent design of species (and, thanks to you guys, that includes inductive biases ;) ). I think all ID hypotheses offered so far are untenable, but I don't think the ID project is deserving of the blanket scorn I sometimes see on this forum (although given the behavior of some of the ID adherents, I can see why one would be scornful). I like Thai food, mountain biking and noise music. Turn-offs include rudeness and scabies.

Lou FCD Posts: 5455 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,13:57    Quote (Missing Shade of Blue @ Dec. 22 2008,14:51) And to allay your curiosity a little bit, I am but a humble grad student with a non-professional interest in both the scientific and cultural aspects of the evolution/ID debate. My degree is in physics, so I admit I am not even close to an expert on evolution, machine learning or information theory. I have studied philosophy of science quite a bit, so I feel slightly more comfortable pontificating in that area. I'm an atheist. I think common descent and evolution via natural selection are the best explanations for the origin, diversity and apparent design of species (and, thanks to you guys, that includes inductive biases ;) ). I think all ID hypotheses offered so far are untenable, but I don't think the ID project is deserving of the blanket scorn I sometimes see on this forum (although given the behavior of some of the ID adherents, I can see why one would be scornful). I like Thai food, mountain biking and noise music. Turn-offs include rudeness and scabies. Yes, but what is your shoe size? -------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas? Linky“. ~ Steve Story, Legend

jeffox Posts: 671 Joined: Oct. 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,14:09    Louis wrote: Quote Come on guys, give the blue lad/ladette a break. Thus far he/she's been everything we could ask for: intelligent and polite. So he/she disagrees with/has some questions about evolutionary biology, hardly the end of the universe. It is at least possible he/she has arrived at this point honestly. I'm all for giving him/her the benefit of the doubt until such a time as he/she proves to be a turd, if indeed this happens. I know I'm resident Ultra-Meanie and purveyor of poor quality tasteless jokes, but dudes and dudettes, it's Christmas.... {runs and hides} Louis I concur.  Compare & contrast with, say, Daniel Smith.  Blue appears willing to read the literature and recognize if/when he's logically incorrect.  And he still has yet to quote TARDavison.   If nobody else has written so already, (and if I can take the place of doing so) welcome to ATBC, MSB. Who's your football team?

Sealawr Posts: 54 Joined: Feb. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,14:16    [quote=Missing Shade of Blue,Dec. 22 2008,12:54] Quote I now recognize my perversity, and I'm in full agreement with everything you said in your post. Now, how do you expect to survive on teh internets by admitting error!  Dembski woudl never stoop so low and Behe had to be cornered like a rat before he caved. Rational discussion and analysis--what a concept! -------------- DS: "The explantory filter is as robust as the data that is used with it." David Klinghoffer: ""I'm an IDiot"

Reciprocating Bill Posts: 4265 Joined: Oct. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,14:24    Quote (jeffox @ Dec. 22 2008,15:09) I concur.  Compare & contrast with, say, Daniel Smith.  Blue appears willing to read the literature and recognize if/when he's logically incorrect.  And he still has yet to quote TARDavison.  :) Even Daniel has conceded that important elements of his position are not tenable. Must be the season. -------------- Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be. "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." - David Foster Wallace "Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down." - Barry Arrington

jeffox Posts: 671 Joined: Oct. 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,14:50    R. Bill wrote: Quote Even Daniel has conceded that important elements of his position are not tenable. Must be the season. Ya ya, I just saw that.  I still think his "watered down" query is philosopical "fluff", but at least he was good enough to apologize for acting like a child. There may be hope for him, yet!

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,14:51    Quote Yes, but what is your shoe size? There is a reason I didn't mention this. I'm ashamed. I'm a size 18, which means I can only wear clown shoes. On the bright side, though, you know what they say about guys with big feet... That's right, if our arms fall off, we can still pick our noses.

stevestory Posts: 13407 Joined: Oct. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,15:48    Are you now, or have you ever been, affiliated with this sweater Just kidding. I don't think you're Dembski anymore. You seem to have some maturity and no obvious psychological issues. Edited by stevestory on Dec. 22 2008,16:48

stevestory Posts: 13407 Joined: Oct. 2005 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,15:54    Quote (stevestory @ Dec. 22 2008,16:48) :angry: Are you now, or have you ever been, affiliated with this sweater Just kidding. I don't think you're Dembski anymore. You seem to have some maturity and no obvious psychological issues. God, that sweater is so ghastly. It's so horrible it's good. I want to track down the corrupt Korean factory where it was made, by enslaved blind children, and order like 10 of them. I'm not sure we'll be able to recreate that haircut, though, since we're not sure what brand of rusty pocket-knife it was performed with.

Quack Posts: 1961 Joined: May 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,16:11    Quote (Missing Shade of Blue @ Dec. 22 2008,14:51)     Quote Yes, but what is your shoe size? There is a reason I didn't mention this. I'm ashamed. I'm a size 18, which means I can only wear clown shoes. On the bright side, though, you know what they say about guys with big feet... That's right, if our arms fall off, we can still pick our noses. My oh my, you even got humour! That bodes good, too bad I am too lazy or too dense to engage in the debate. A belated happy solstice to you too! -------------- Rocks have no biology.               Robert Byers.

Louis Posts: 6436 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,16:47    Quote (Sealawr @ Dec. 22 2008,20:16) [quote=Missing Shade of Blue,Dec. 22 2008,12:54]   Quote I now recognize my perversity, and I'm in full agreement with everything you said in your post. Now, how do you expect to survive on teh internets by admitting error!  Dembski woudl never stoop so low and Behe had to be cornered like a rat before he caved. Rational discussion and analysis--what a concept! Frankly I'm disgusted. Rational discussion of a technical topic? Whatever next? Consensus? Conviviality? Oh there will be amicable banter and debate next. It's this like this what cause unrest. Darn you Blue person, darn you directly to heck! {shakes fist} Louis -------------- Bye.

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,18:41    Wesley, I read the paper you cited. Thanks for pointing me to it. It was clear and informative. But I still don't see how the universal distribution shows I am wrong. I said that for any two finite strings, there is no language-independent means of determining which has the greater Kolmogorov complexity. Let's take strings s1 = 1010101010.... and s2 = 1000110111.... (where the ellipses indicate the strings are a billion digits long). I can construct a UTM for which the program to produce s1 will be shorter than the program to produce s2. In fact, my laptop is one such UTM. But I can also construct a UTM for which s2 can be produced by a shorter program. I merely make it part of the UTMs hardware that if the input begins with a 0, it immediately prints out s2 and halts. If its input begins with a 1 it moves on to the next symbol on the tape and proceeds to responds to the rest of the input the same way my laptop does. For this UTM s2 is less complex than s1. This is a completely general scheme. I can do it with any two finite strings. And it doesn't violate the Invariance Theorem. Now you suggested that the Universal Distribution would actually provide a language-independent way of deciding whether s1 is simpler than s2 or vice versa. But I don't see how this can be true. According to the paper you cited, the Universal Distribution assigns higher probabilities to strings with lower Kolmogorov complexities. So prior to figuring out what the Distribution will look like, we need to figure out what the complexities of the individual strings are. And there's no language-independent way to do that. Depending on what UTM we use to make our judgments about complexity, the Universal Distribution will look different. If we use my laptop, s1 will have a higher probability than s2. If we use the baroque computer I constructed, s2 will have a higher probability. Isn't this right? How does the Universal Distribution help me figure out whether s1 is simpler than s2 independent of the UTM used? I guess I was imagining some way of assigning a distribution not over the strings, but over the ensemble of all possible UTMs. Maybe if we moved up to that level, we can come up with some sense in which one of the strings is simpler (because its complexity is lower on "more" UTMs as determined by our measure). But that's not what the Universal Distribution is. Anyway, it strikes me that the correct way to approach this problem is not to attempt to articulate a language-independent notion of simplicity but to acknowledge that the particular inductive bias of the evolutionary process sets a natural language. It happens to be a language that works well for the kinds of fitness landscapes we see in nature. Maybe we can come up with a deeper reason for this match between learning algorithm and fitness landscape (I think Zachriel was suggesting that it has something to do with them being made of the same stuff) but I don't even know if that's the kind of thing that needs special explanation. I feel the same way about this phenomenon as I do about the alleged fine tuning of our fundamental constants: "What are the alternatives and how in the world did you get a probability measure over them?" So, as I said before, I'm satisfied.

keiths Posts: 2195 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,19:51    Quote (Missing Shade of Blue @ Dec. 22 2008,16:41) But I can also construct a UTM for which s2 can be produced by a shorter program. I merely make it part of the UTMs hardware that if the input begins with a 0, it immediately prints out s2 and halts. Then you haven't reduced the complexity, you've simply shifted it from the software to the hardware.  They're fungible, after all. How do you think this helps you, particularly if you're trying to establish an analogy with natural selection? -------------- And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,20:35    Quote Then you haven't reduced the complexity, you've simply shifted it from the software to the hardware. But this just begs the question. In what sense is the second UTM more complex than the first one? Is this sense language-independent? Quote How do you think this helps you, particularly if you're trying to establish an analogy with natural selection? I wasn't trying to argue from analogy here. I was trying to argue that in principle there is no description language-independent notion of simplicity. This was supposed to be an argument against those who were saying that green really is simpler than grue in some objective sense. I moved the discussion up to the complexity of the computers themselves in the first post I made on this thread. This was in response to those who were suggesting that although green may not be simpler than grue in purely linguistic terms, green-computers would be simpler than grue-computers.

keiths Posts: 2195 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,22:05    Quote (Missing Shade of Blue @ Dec. 22 2008,18:35) [In what sense is the second UTM more complex than the first one? In terms of the number of two-input NAND expressions required to describe a minimal Boolean implementation. -------------- And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,22:43    Quote In terms of the number of two-input NAND expressions required to describe a minimal Boolean implementation. OK, what you've done there is chosen a specific description language. I agree that once you do that you can straightforwardly quantify the complexity of your computer/string/whatever. But then this quantification isn't language-independent. It's relative to a choice of natural predicates. Maybe this is leading back to what you were initially arguing: we shouldn't be restricting ourselves to purely syntactic notions of complexity because there's a natural physical notion of simplicity when we're considering material objects. I offered a response to that on the first page and I still stand by most of that response more or less. Just to be clear though, I'm no longer interested in defending my argument about how inductive biases couldn't evolve. That argument is flawed. In so far as it's valid, I think it just collapses into a general Humean inductive skepticism, and that way leads to pointlessness. So yeah, nothing I say here from now on should be construed as a criticism of evolutionary biology. I do still stand by the claims I was making about the lack of a language-independent syntactic notion of simplicity. Wesley apparently disagrees. He suggested that the Universal Distribution provides such a notion. I don't see how that can work. Appealing to a measure of simplicity that relies upon a particular way of describing a UTM (the number of NAND expressions, in your case) is no help.

Nerull Posts: 317 Joined: June 2007 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,22:51    Quote (Missing Shade of Blue @ Dec. 22 2008,21:35) Quote Then you haven't reduced the complexity, you've simply shifted it from the software to the hardware. But this just begs the question. In what sense is the second UTM more complex than the first one? Is this sense language-independent? Quote How do you think this helps you, particularly if you're trying to establish an analogy with natural selection? I wasn't trying to argue from analogy here. I was trying to argue that in principle there is no description language-independent notion of simplicity. This was supposed to be an argument against those who were saying that green really is simpler than grue in some objective sense. I moved the discussion up to the complexity of the computers themselves in the first post I made on this thread. This was in response to those who were suggesting that although green may not be simpler than grue in purely linguistic terms, green-computers would be simpler than grue-computers. It seems to me you are falling subject to the "spherical cow" story - abstracting to the point there it becomes a hindrance and not a help. You are using binary sequences to claim that a color filter and a photon detector is not simpler than a color filter, a photon detector, a biological timer that is set to go off at some distant point in the future, and an input inverter. Think about it. -------------- To rebut creationism you pretty much have to be a biologist, chemist, geologist, philosopher, lawyer and historian all rolled into one. While to advocate creationism, you just have to be an idiot. -- tommorris

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,23:01    Keith, I made it sound in the last post that there is no workable notion of physical simplicity. But I don't think that's true. I think some things are made out of more basic parts (and types of parts) than other things. But whether or not the syntactic simplicity of our descriptions tracks the physical simplicity of objects depends on whether our language (more generally, our set of inductive biases) carves nature at the joints. While I'm usually happy to assume that it does, I was resisting the idea that we can make this assumption when we're trying to account for the origin of those biases themselves. This was why I thought your physical simplicity proposal was question-begging. Since then, I have come to accept that there's no special problem with assuming our inductive biases are accurate when attempting to explain them. So I no longer think your proposal is question-begging. However, the context of this discussion with Wesley is different. Here I'm responding specifically to his charge that I was wrong when I said that algorithmic information theory does not have the resources to adjudicate the relative simplicity of two finite strings without first assuming a natural language (which amounts to assuming a particular construction for the UTM). Appealing to the actual physical structure of the world we live in in order to privilege one sort of UTM over the other transcends algorithmic information theory, which is a purely syntactic measure of complexity.

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 22 2008,23:13    Nerull, If you look at my response to Keith here, you'll notice that I am not arguing that: Quote a color filter and a photon detector is not simpler than a color filter, a photon detector, a biological timer that is set to go off at some distant point in the future, and an input inverter What I was arguing in that post was that to assume that a grue detector would need that more elaborate construction is already to assume the correctness of your inductive biases. Without appealing to those biases, you do not know if a simple device made up of a filter and a photon detector detects green or grue. So the enhanced physical complexity of a grue detector is a red herring. A grue detector would only need to be more physically complex if grue were not a projectible predicate. But that is just to assume what needs to be proved. I find myself in the oddly schizophrenic position of going back and defending the few valid pieces of my argument which I now recognize is globally invalid. I think I still agree with most of what I wrote above except the last bit: "But that is just to assume what needs to be proved." In the context of the inductive bias discussion, I no longer think its out of bounds to begin with the assumption that green is projectible and grue isn't. I do however still object to the notion (if anybody is defending it) that one can show green to be projectible without taking for granted our (or, more appropriately, evolution's) inductive biases.

Reciprocating Bill Posts: 4265 Joined: Oct. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 23 2008,06:34    Quote (Missing Shade of Blue @ Dec. 23 2008,00:13) What I was arguing in that post was that to assume that a grue detector would need that more elaborate construction is already to assume the correctness of your inductive biases. Without appealing to those biases, you do not know if a simple device made up of a filter and a photon detector detects green or grue. So the enhanced physical complexity of a grue detector is a red herring. A grue detector would only need to be more physically complex if grue were not a projectible predicate. But that is just to assume what needs to be proved. MSB, I'm interested in hearing your response to this previous comment (very slightly modified for clarity): In your scenario, green-blue and grue-bleen sensory biases are equally adaptive prior to 2012. Both are adept at responding to the pre-2012 blue green world. Moreover, given how crucial vision is to survival, both mechanisms would be sustained over generations by brutal normalizing selection. Prior to 2012, however, only the components of the grue-bleen system that enable functioning in the pre 2012 blue-green world would be subject to that normalizing selection. Those components and/or computational resources - however simple the final system - that permit grue-bleen perception and hence enable continued success after 2012 would not be subject to normalizing selection prior to 2012 and, absent that selection, would deteriorate and become non-functional. Ultimately, in either world (blue-green or grue-bleen), only creatures with blue-green sensory functioning are predicted by current evolutionary theory. This solution does not require a potentially arbitrary "complexity" metric that can contain hidden assumptions regarding the "correctness" of a given inductive bias. And this solution does not require evolution to have been prescient regarding unprecedented future events (in the event that the world proves to be blue-green). -------------- Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be. "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." - David Foster Wallace "Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down." - Barry Arrington

keiths Posts: 2195 Joined: Jan. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 23 2008,12:52    Quote (Missing Shade of Blue @ Dec. 22 2008,21:01) Appealing to the actual physical structure of the world we live in in order to privilege one sort of UTM over the other transcends algorithmic information theory, which is a purely syntactic measure of complexity. My metric -- the number of two-input NAND expressions required for a minimal implementation of a particular UTM -- does not depend on the physical structure of the world.  It depends only on Boolean logic. Please tell me you're not asking us to consider worlds where Boolean logic doesn't hold. -------------- And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 23 2008,13:11    Bill, Your argument already assumes a particular inductive bias. You say that the grue-bleen perceptual system would have to have at least two components: one that allows it to detect blue-green in the current environment and another that somehow anticipates a switch in 2012. The first component would be subject to normalizing selection before 2012 but the second wouldn't and so it would become non-functional, leaving regular blue-green systems with no switch mechanism. The assumption here is that grue-bleen has to have this multi-component structure but blue-green does not. Why? Because grue-bleen involves a switch to different properties but blue-green does not. But that is only true in the blue-green basis. If you represent the situation using grue and bleen as natural predicates, then it is the blue-green system that is preparing for a switch. Prior to 2012 both systems are subject to normalizing selection to ensure that they can adequately track grue and bleen (and remember, in this basis, grue and bleen are not weird cross-temporal disjunctive properties but merely the properties things have at a particular time), but the blue-green system has an extra component that anticipates the switch in 2012 from grue to bleen and vice versa. This component is not subject to selection and will deteriorate. So the idea that grue-bleen is temporally disjunctive while blue-green isn't (which lead to the idea that grue-bleen requires multiple components, including some kind of timer) assumes that prior to 2012 evolution naturally works in the blue-green rather than the grue-bleen basis. And this is an appeal to a particular inductive bias. But again, I no longer thing appealing to evolution's own inductive bias in this matter is problematic, so your analysis does work. However, it would not work if we were actually refraining from privileging any particular inductive bias.

Missing Shade of Blue Posts: 62 Joined: Dec. 2008 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 23 2008,13:33    Quote My metric -- the number of two-input NAND expressions required for a minimal implementation of a particular UTM -- does not depend on the physical structure of the world.  It depends only on Boolean logic. Please tell me you're not asking us to consider worlds where Boolean logic doesn't hold. You misunderstand me. I was not suggesting that you needed to refer to the physical world to justify your appeal to Boolean logic. But you chose a specific basis in which to express Boolean expressions: the NAND basis. On this basis computer 1 will turn out to be simpler than computer 2. However, the NAND basis is not the only one that spans Boolean space. Or, to put it differently, the NAND gate is not the only universal logic gate. Trivially, there's also the NOR gate. So your choice to represent the implementation in terms of NAND rather than NOR (or for that matter, in terms of AND, OR and NOT) is a choice of description language. You might say, "So what? Computer 1 will be simpler on these other representations as well." But NAND and NOR are not the only two universal gates. They are merely the simplest ones (relative to our inductive biases). One could construct universal gates (or sets of non-universal gates that collectively span Boolean space) that would look extremely elaborate when translated into NAND representation. Can you guarantee that computer 1 is simpler in every one of these bases? I would be very surprised if it were. For instance, consider the entire Boolean description of computer 2. It might turn out that this whole description is a universal gate (unlikely, maybe, but not impossible). If that were the case, then on that representation computer 2 would be simpler than computer 1. So the choice of NAND as the preferred representation is a choice of a particular language. I assumed you were trying to justify the choice of NAND over NOR or the even more grotesque universal gates by appealing to the physical simplicity of constructing a NAND gate as opposed to one of these others. That's why I brought physical simplicity into the discussion. But as long as we're talking purely formally, I don't see why one should prefer NAND to one of the many other possible Boolean representations.

Reciprocating Bill Posts: 4265 Joined: Oct. 2006 (Permalink) Posted: Dec. 23 2008,13:43    Quote (Missing Shade of Blue @ Dec. 23 2008,14:11) The assumption here is that grue-bleen has to have this multi-component structure but blue-green does not. Why? Because grue-bleen involves a switch to different properties but blue-green does not. But that is only true in the blue-green basis. If you represent the situation using grue and bleen as natural predicates, then it is the blue-green system that is preparing for a switch. Prior to 2012 both systems are subject to normalizing selection to ensure that they can adequately track grue and bleen (and remember, in this basis, grue and bleen are not weird cross-temporal disjunctive properties but merely the properties things have at a particular time), but the blue-green system has an extra component that anticipates the switch in 2012 from grue to bleen and vice versa. This component is not subject to selection and will deteriorate. I've only a moment, but think about what you have predicted: You've predicted that just one of these variants will be evident.   Not because of evolutionary prescience, but because of the action of selection. -------------- Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be. "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you." - David Foster Wallace "Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down." - Barry Arrington

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