One True Morality, log, anatta draft

content/references/definitions.mkd

@@ -175,3 +175,4 @@
 [unsupervised universe]: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Unsupervised_universe
 [ジャックと豆の木]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_and_the_Beanstalk_%281974_film%29
 [秒速5センチメートル]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Centimeters_Per_Second
+[_why]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff

content/references/references.mkd

@@ -72,6 +72,7 @@
 [xkcd fitocracy]: http://xkcd.com/940/
 [xkcd lego]: https://xkcd.com/659/
 [xkcd rocks]: http://xkcd.com/505/
+[trivialist]: http://www.paulkabay.com/
 
 <!-- LessWrong -->
 [LW bipolar]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/6nb/ego_syntonic_thoughts_and_values/4igy
@@ -99,9 +100,11 @@
 [LW date]: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/980/singularity_institute_executive_director_qa_2/
 [LW minecraft]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/8n9/rationality_quotes_december_2011/5dal
 [LW leverage]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9ar/on_leverage_researchs_plan_for_an_optimal_world/5n74
+[Pluralistic Moral Reductionism]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/5u2/pluralistic_moral_reductionism/
 
 <!-- Hanson -->
 [Hanson smile]: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/poor-folks-do-smile.html
+[Hanson exist]: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/04/morality-should-exist.html
 
 <!-- software -->
 [Creative Commons]: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/de
@@ -111,6 +114,8 @@
 [f.lux]: http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/
 [fuzzyfinder]: http://codeulate.com/2010/02/installing-fuzzyfinder_textmate-textmates-cmdt-in-vim/
 [nanoc]: http://nanoc.stoneship.org
+[wcheck]: http://emacswiki.org/emacs/WcheckMode
+[Awesome]: http://awesome.naquadah.org/
 
 <!-- gwern -->
 [Gwern URL]: http://www.gwern.net/Archiving%20URLs

content_blog/consciousness/anatta.mkd

@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+---
+title: Those Things You Don't Have
+alt_titles: [Anattas, No-Selves]
+date: 2012-04-19
+techne: :wip
+episteme: :speculation
+---
+
+No-self arguments are fairly common those days. Buddhists, eliminative materialists, new-age hippies alike argue that "you" don't exist.
+
+Problem is, there's a lot of different positions out there, all subtly different about what self is, and to improve future discourse, I wanted a way to make those arguments less ambiguous.
+
+I also wanted to understand how "no-self" and "rebirth" can exist in the same belief-system that is Buddhism. I think my guess is a pretty good reconstruction of a not unreasonable position.
+
+Generally speaking, I'm merely *presenting* positions here, not *endorsing* them. I think there's some useful insight or intuition behind all of them. Neither am I giving any decent arguments for or against any of them, merely quick overviews. The point is not to explore them, but to show ways in which the word "self" can refer to very different things, and that it's important to be clear about what level one is thinking about.
+
+So here's a catalogue of all[^all] the things that may be called a "self", and ways how one might not have it.
+
+[^all]: All positions that I could think of, that is. The only missing thingy might be a kind of essentialist soul, but I don't understand what that really means, beyond the concepts already described.
+
+# Psychology
+
+Construction from psychological traits. "I am a 
+
+That way, someone on a mood stabilizer might not "be themselves". They are still the same human, have the same name, but their emotional and psychological states have changed, and they act in a-typical ways.
+
+These attributes, however, are tied to a specific person. If someone is strongly defined by their narcissism, for example, then that doesn't mean that they identify with *all* narcissism out there in the world. Therefore, this view overlaps somewhat with the Value and Narrative category.
+
+# Values
+
+Values, i.e. preferences about the world. This way, you'd think of the self as a specific optimization pressure on the world. Alternatively, you might look at decision theory and identify with certain decision algorithms, and basically say that a complex set of things like "choosing vanilla over strawberry ice cream" is the self.
+
+One rejection might try to argue that there is no coherent or consistent set of values in humans. Our preferences could be largely random or contradictory, for example.
+
+From the value perspective, there is no inherent reason to limit a self to one specific human. The same value might easily be shared be large groups, or even very un-person-like processes like evolution itself, and one might choose a more inclusive identity. In that sense, one might say that there is no simple "individual" self living in only one brain, but a complex and changing self, one that might not even be alive in the usual way.
+
+# Narrative
+
+
+
+Nihilism is a common criticism, the rejection of any meaning in the world, including in stories. 
+
+# Sensations
+
+There are basically four different conceptions of how sensations relate to the self. And because images improve everything, here's a quick drawing made beautiful through the magic that is Instagram.
+
+<%= image("anatta.jpg", "Anatta Sensations") %>
+
+The geometric shapes are sensations, the eye-like thingies are observers, and time flows from left to right.
+
+The first view is the Cartesian Theatre (sequence 1). Basically, there is a continuous observer or fundamentally connected series of person-moments, and as a separate kind of thing, there are connected sensations which are observed.
+
+Conceptually, this is a fairly intuitive view. "You" are like an empty theatre, something persistent that can become aware of various things over time.
+
+One way to reject this view is to take away the connectedness (sequence 2). Things are still observed, but there is no flow of time. This is straight-forward [B-Theory][] of time. This idea may arise as a consequence of taking parallel worlds seriously (e.g. through the [Many-Worlds Interpretation][MWI]) or by thinking of time as [concrete][], not continuous. Additionally, many meditation techniques, especially [vipassana][], lead to flickering experiences during which reality seems fundamentally disconnected.
+
+In that sense, there is no "you" because "you" is not continuous and any extended self is an additional construction.
+
+An additional criticism would be to reject a separate observer (sequence 3). There is no thing-which-observes sensations, they are in a sense self-observed, they just happen. One common intuition behind this idea is to simply try to "find" an observer, but failing to do so. Wherever you look, there will be sensations[^neither], but you won't observe an observer, the argument goes.
+
+[^neither]: Although it is problematic to say that there are always sensations in consciousness. Highly [jhanic][Jhana] states, especially the appropriately named Neither Perception Nor Yet Non-Perception, don't seem to have any sensate experience any more, no objects at all, yet are still conscious. 
+
+In this view, it is difficult to see how there can be any coherent persons. Sensations are not inherently connected, they share no content, no observer, so at best, persons are narrative devices, agreed-upon constructs, but not in any way fundamental. From a sensate level, this is a strong eliminative no-self position.
+
+However, if one brings back the connectedness of sensations in some non-observer way (sequence 4), one arrives at what I believe is the traditional Buddhist view. There is still an objective flow of time, but nothing beyond the sensations themselves. In that sense, one can have a conception of rebirth (by expanding this connection between human lives) without having to assert some shared psychological traits. Past lives were you (from an experiential level) and not you (from a psychological, narrative level). Or without the mystical mumbo-jumbo, one might simply assert the [A-Theory][] of time and identify sensations with brain-states, for example, so that they don't need an additional observer or location to happen in.
+

content_blog/morality/one-true-morality.mkd

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+---
+title: One True Morality
+date: 2012-04-22
+techne: :done
+episteme: :believed
+---
+
+When a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Depends on what you mean by "sound" - a sensate experience or a wave through air.[^sound]
+
+[^sound]: Although you shouldn't make the mistake and think that the answer to the tree in the forest is obvious once you have unambiguous terms. After all, if panpsychism or certain forms of functionalism are right, then the wave through air *is* a sensate experience.
+
+Luke has made some progress towards this problem already in his [Pluralistic Moral Reductionism][]:
+
+> Is morality objective or subjective? It depends which moral reductionism you have in mind, and what you mean by 'objective' and 'subjective'.
+> 
+> Here are some common uses of the objective/subjective distinction in ethics:
+>
+> - Moral facts are objective\_1 if they are made true or false by mind-independent facts, otherwise they are subjective\_1.
+> - Moral facts are objective\_2 if they are made true or false by facts independent of the opinions of sentient beings, otherwise they are subjective\_2.
+> - Moral facts are objective\_3 if they are made true or false by facts independent of the opinions of humans, otherwise they are subjective\_3.
+
+That's nice, but not enough, so I'll try a different breakdown. I'll also give each idea a different name so I can stop talking in misleadingly ambiguous terms (and because it's time I pull a Heidegger and invent my own strange vocabulary). The terms are deliberately somewhat unusual to avoid unfortunate connotations. Additionally, the ideas aren't generally mutually exclusive, but capture certain features meta-ethics might have.
+
+The most universal form of a theory would be one that all agents share. Literally everyone agrees with it - in fact, it is impossible to find any kind of disagreement to it. Let's call this **Water Morality**. (Just like fish are blind to water.[^fact])
+
+[^fact]: Statement not based on facts or reason.
+
+Water Morality seems like a true lost cause. As the saying goes, for every philosopher there is an equal and opposite philosopher. No matter what statement you want to pick, we already know someone who disagrees with it.[^formal]
+
+[^formal]: Formal proof: There is at least one [trivialist][]. Trivialism entails that every statement is true, including its negation (if it exists). Therefore, for every statement there is at least one person who believes it, and at least one person (the same, in fact) who believes its negation.
+
+We could divide morality further into a statement about **actual** and **potential** agents. We might not care that some hypothetical philosopher disagrees with us, but we could hope that all the actually existing people don't. Some arguing for *Actual Morality* wouldn't be bothered if somewhere out in mind-space there is reasonable dissent, only if that mind really exists in our universe. (And of course, in Modal Realism the actual and the potential are identical.)
+
+Furthermore, I think no one really expects complete agreement already in place. Rather, agents should *become* moral after applying some ethical procedure, say moral philosophy or some ritual. Let's call this (broad) category of ideas **reachable**. You may not be moral right away, but you can *become* moral.
+
+When talking about *Reachable Morality*, it matters a lot under what circumstances and for whom morality is actually doable.
+
+If *every* mind under *every* initial condition can refine itself, we speak of **Unrestricted Morality**. This seems to be a common assumption, but we have to wonder about how this would work in practice. How does, say, a Demon in Hell (or something equivalent) figure out the right thing to do, even assuming it cares about it? Where does it get this moral guiding light *from*? Especially considering the vastness of mind-space, there will be (potential) agents in sufficiently screwed-up situations that will find this an incredibly hard task.
+
+Of course, an *Unrestricted Morality* might still exists. For example, the algorithm "do what muflax would do in your place" would lead everyone to the same place, but it highlights another important feature: how built-in into the fabric of reality is this algorithm?
+
+It could be **circumstantial**, in the sense that a sufficiently shitty hell-hole would prevent you from morality. Cultural relativists affirm this possibility - if you're born an Aztec priest, you won't come to the conclusion that human sacrifice is wrong. Within a culture there might be agreement, but there is still a component of luck. (Of course, if this *circumstantial* is only hypothetical, not *actual*, then you're effectively also denying this position.)
+
+Or it could be **predestined**, the way the Calvinists understood it - some agents are blessed with some kind of moral grace, but other agents, no matter how good their circumstances, just can't be good. 
+
+This shows how "become muflax" isn't really *unrestricted*, but more accurately *predestined*. If you don't know what muflax would do, you can't *become* muflax, so under sufficient ignorance, you're just screwed. But certain agents (namely muflax themselves) would always do right, no matter what.
+
+A milder form of **restricted** moral theories would only be concerned with the **majority**. Sure, *some* agents might be a lost cause, but at least *most* aren't.
+
+I think this is why many forms of utilitarianism (particularly preference utilitarianism) can seem simultaneously "objective" and "subjective". Sure, if you already know that e.g. pain is bad, then anyone can act accordingly. But get born under (maybe fairly plausible!) circumstances and you wouldn't figure it out, even if you really tried to do the right thing and were perfectly rational. (That's a distinction overlooked by Luke and one big reason his (and similar) meta-ethical approaches still get called "subjective", even though they match all his definitions of objectivity.)
+
+Beyond just discovering morality, circumstances may also affect its implementation. If morality is **referential**, then you'd have something of the form "whatever muflax *currently* thinks is right", and you could just change my mind (if necessary via neuro-surgery) and *make* things right that way. With *Referential Morality*, [wireheading][] is effectively always the right thing to do.
+
+Finally, morality might require participants. Or as Robin Hanson said it:
+
+> [L]et me suggest a moral axiom with apparently very strong intuitive support, no matter what your concept of morality: [morality should exist][Hanson exist]. That is, there should exist creatures who know what is moral, and who act on that. So if your moral theory implies that in ordinary circumstances moral creatures should exterminate themselves, leaving only immoral creatures, or no creatures at all, well that seems a sufficient reductio to solidly reject your moral theory.
+
+Let's call that **Active Morality**. Is morality about a certain state of affairs (in a broad sense), or does it need *active* agents who actually *do* something? If I pressed the Big Red Button That Wipes Out Everyone, or maybe if I look at the universe before the evolution of life, does it still make sense to speak about morality? Is there still a definite state of affairs that makes the universe moral or not?
+
+For example, if morality is a certain set of interactions between agents, then it might get called "subjective" because without those agents, suddenly the whole theory would be meaningless.
+
+Finally, assuming *Reachable Morality*, are there multiple optima or just one, in other words, is morality **unique**? If you and I applied reason correctly, maybe the order of arguments would change our conclusions. The results might still be both correct (like two different but equally efficient routes), but would fundamentally differ.
+
+Alright, that covers all the distinctions *I* care about. So what's possible? How "objective" is morality?
+
+*Water Morality* is obviously false, but I still think that morality itself exists.[^nihilist] Furthermore, because I think that all potential worlds are real[^modal realism], morality is definitely *actual*. I'm strongly convinced that it is *predestined* and *not circumstantial*, i.e. good agents can always figure out the right thing (and will do so in all worlds), but some agents[^noevil] are irredeemably evil. (In fact, the fear that morality would be *circumstantial* was the worst thing about meta-ethics for me.) Also, I agree with Hanson that morality is necessarily *active*. It is inherently tied up with agents - no agents, no morality. (But also no evil. This wouldn't necessarily a *bad* state of affairs, merely a *not good* one.) Lastly, I'm unconvinced that morality is necessarily unique. *Multiple* One True Moralities might exist.
+
+And because I'm a horrible tease, I won't actually present any further argument for my beliefs (yet). But at least it should clarify what I mean when I say that One True Morality exists, and how some theories fail to meet it.
+
+[^noevil]: Although there exists a delightful argument that evil agents are imaginable but don't actually exist, but the argument is inherently unverifiable (think p-zombies). I still give it some credibility, but it has little effect on me.
+
+[^nihilist]: Moral nihilism, i.e. morality doesn't exist, heavily depends on those distinctions. Depending on what features you want, some theories to fulfill them might or might not exist. Nihilists should be clear about *what* they think doesn't exist. For example, if you think that, hypothetically, one could be moral, but actual humans can't pull it off (say because we aren't living under Utopian Communism), then you're an Actual Nihilist, but a Potential Realist.
+
+[^modal realism]: Modal realism can be true in two ways. Either, there are different possible worlds, which are all real. "Actual" is a purely indexical marker. Or, there are *no* possible worlds except ours. We are necessarily the only world. Any other setup (aka "arbitrary subset realism") strikes me as deeply absurd. I currently assume the existence of different possible worlds, but mostly out of methodological modal realism. If an idea works with *all* worlds, then it will always work with our world as well. No need to be unnecessarily restrictive.

content_daily/log/30.mkd

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+---
+title: Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam
+date: 2012-04-22
+techne: :done
+episteme: :log
+---
+
+So yeah. Transition seems to have worked, though the DNS change took longer than I wanted. Also, comments are *finally* because because Disqus was fucking with me. Sorry about that. But everything is fine now, I think.
+
+At least the site's down to a whopping 12MB now. (Previously almost 100MB due to several WP installs.) I'm currently paying about 2-3 cents a day. That's acceptable.
+
+Another advantage: I can finally do all my writing in Emacs. Much nicer than the stupid WordPress editor. Even hooked up a [spell-checker][wcheck]. Fancy shit.[^footnote]
+
+[^footnote]: And I can finally put proper footnotes in blog posts so I don't have to use parentheses so much. Soon I'll write my articles as pseudo-code and you'll all be forced to adapt my exact thinking style! Then I'll rule the world!
+
+I also merged all my various mail accounts, filters etc. into one Gmail account and finally uninstalled Thunderbird. So it's all Webmail (+ local backup). 2006, baby, here I come!
+
+Unfortunately, that leaves me without mail notification 'cause I don't have a system tray (or taskbar or any of that other fancy "desktop environment" crap). So I decided to bite the bullet and finally began the switch from [Xmonad][] to [Awesome][] (again). Porting over all my configs will take ages, but oh well, it's time. Worked some hours (literally) on that.
+
+I started a short overview of several conceptions of "self", mostly so that I can use it as a kind of checklist in the future for the various no-self arguments. "Please show me in this list what it is you think I don't have.", basically. (Of course, I also believe that most of those conceptions are wrong.) Also, because it finally clicked how rebirth in (Theravada) Buddhism works, and  how the use of anatta by certain Neo-Buddhists is quite misleading.
+
+Then wrote a [overview about "universality" of morality][One True Morality]. That's not really ground-breaking, but should be helpful once I get around to claiming some things "are" and "aren't" universal, as I understand it. I want to just introduce a bunch of new terms 'cause "objective" and "universal" are horribly overloaded, but I feel makes me sound unnecessarily cranky. Introduced them anyway, fuck signalling, yay understanding.
+
+<%= image("hanson_writing.jpg", "Hanson on Writing") %>
+
+Then I read the kind of stuff I didn't want to engage for a while (oh well), then thought for a long time about it.
+
+It's not so much the topics that worry me these days, but arguments about them. I'm increasingly getting entangled in discussions (including indirectly by getting quoted / read), and I feel that everything I ever wrote is vastly inadequate, and that I really wish I could first a clarify a hundred things before anyone ever even thinks about me or those topics again.
+
+I feel simultaneously responsible for any kind of misinterpretation/misunderstanding, and stupid for talking about stuff I don't understand nearly as well as I wished. Then I thought even longer about whether I should continue, and under what circumstances, and even wrote a long-ish post, and for the first time in like ever, I decided to *not* share it, and remain silent about certain ideas, at least for a while. (He who knows Aumann, let him update!)
+
+I'm also wondering how much my inexperience with strategy games and "if I do X, they'll do Y"-style thinking is hurting me. However, Will Newsome keeps on recommending it, and I reached much the same territory almost entirely without it, so maybe sufficiently strong narrative (as in tropes) / elegant (as in Lisp) thinking makes it obsolete (because the multiverse is optimized), but dunno. Might try getting into a serious strategy game for practice, though not sure which. Don't want to solve Go with Anki, for example. (Though that seems easily doable.)
+
+(Also, really liking the Beeminder-induced habit of "minimal effort, on average", and the new habit, "only increase the average if you have 20 safe days". Has prevented me from several regression-to-the-mean screw-ups already.)