I think the important point made there is about the relation between entropy and the direction of time ("the arrow of time"). Time on the global scale owes its existence to the fact that the entropy of the universe on a large scale increases, and the forward direction of time tracks the direction of that entropy increase. If the universe did not expand after the Big Bang, it would have stayed as it was shortly after the Big Bang: a hot, dense, uniform plasma. There would be no large-scale changes - only microscopic, time-symmetric changes as particles bump into each other. (Well, there would be helium synthesis for a while, but eventually that process would saturate and reach equilibrium.) Therefore, time arrow as a global direction of change would not exist; time would not have a preferred direction. Things would look pretty much the same if you rolled time forwards or backwards.

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/complexity/2022/9956885/ — Pantagruel

This is an interesting paper - thanks!

Yeah, I had a look, but as one might expect from such a vid, it has just a short soundbite concerning the topic under discussion here.

Yes this I don't understand then I suppose, because isn't equilibrium necessarily maximum entropy... If entropy always increases, it can only be in equilibrium if max entropy has been reached no? — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, entropy reaches its maximum at equilibrium. But the universe was never actually at equilibrium, because it was and still is quickly expanding. ("Quickly" has a technical meaning here: if it was expanding slowly enough - quasi-statically - then the maximum entropy would stay the same. Expansion as such does not increase entropy, but irreversible expansion does.) Still, if you consider very short timespans at which expansion can be neglected, then you could say that the early universe was indeed at its maximum entropy.

The space that is currently occupied by the observable universe was at a much lower entropy 14 billion years ago — SophistiCat

The space or the matter in that space is at lower entropy? That is what is confusing to me. How can space itself be measured entropically. Isn't that just the condition that sets the degrees of freedom for matter in that space to be in, determining the range of entropy? — ChatteringMonkey

Sorry, yes, I meant the matter encompassed by that space.

Yes unlikely by definition maybe isn't true for initial conditions, I can see the reasoning there. It still is an observation (and a condition for our universe to like it is) that the universe was in a low entropic state, it could have been otherwise I suppose... — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, but could have been otherwise can mean many things. It could have been a bowl of petunias, for all we know! There is just no sensible way to ask a question in ignorance.

The relationship with the Past Hypothesis is that it is exceedingly combinatorically unlikely to have a low entropy universe. Borrowing Penrose's math, to observe a universe with our level of entropy is to observe a system that is occupying 1/10^10^123 of the entire volume in phase space (possible arrangements of the universe). It's like standing in a room full of coherent texts in the Library of Babel.

https://accelconf.web.cern.ch/e06/papers/thespa01.pdf

Or also relevant for the summary: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0701146.pdf — Count Timothy von Icarus

I read the Penrose paper up to that oft-quoted 10^10^123 number and the discussion of gravitational degrees of freedom; I don't know enough to understand the rest. (The Banks paper is too advanced for me to follow.) I don't get Penrose's point. He is comparing the entropy of a region in the early universe with the entropy of a black hole with the same number of baryons. Why? How is this comparison relevant? The universe in the first few minutes after the Big Bang was a hot, dense plasma, so energetic as to preclude gravitational clustering. Lumping a gigantic black hole into the same macrostate makes no sense: that state was not accessible to the early universe (indeed, to the best of our knowledge, it is not a possible state of the universe at any time after the Big Bang). The same goes for the so-called gravitational degrees of freedom, which he infers prospectively from the later emergence of stars and galaxies. To treat those clumpy states, which only become available after the universe has cooled and expanded, as unused gravitational degrees of freedom in the early universe, one must treat the entire block universe as one timeless macrostate, which also makes no sense.

More to the point - and this is the question to which I keep returning - what is the meaning of whatever magic number that you calculate for the initial state of the universe? What does it mean to say that it was special or improbable? For it to be special there has to be some generic way for it to be. Whence the idea of the generic initial state? For it to be improbable there has to be a stochastic model of the initial state, which for the present purposes we do not consider.

By contrast, here is an example where such notions make good sense. The generic state for the air in your room is to be uniformly distributed throughout the room, as opposed to, for example, being condensed in one corner. That is easy to understand, given that in a stable environment air molecules have plenty of time to cycle through myriads of configurations. Only a tiny fraction of those configurations correspond to special states, which means that seeing those special sates is generically unlikely on human timescales. But that reasoning is inapplicable to the initial state. There is nothing generic about the initial state. It is unique. It has no history and no mechanism of formation.

I am not sure what criticisms to the Principle of Indifference you are referring too. The ones I have seen are arguments about model building and the need to implement Bayesian methods when there is not a case of total stochastic ignorance , which is not the case vis-á-vis the Past Hypothesis. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's not the criticisms of the PoI as such (although there are some, e.g. Norton, "Ignorance and Indifference") but of its thoughtless or even nefarious application. In hypothesis testing we are supposed to compare the predictions of the new and improved theory to the current consensus - the null hypothesis. Picking unrealistic distributions as representing the null hypothesis amounts to strawmaning.

In the case of the Past Hypothesis the situation is even worse, because there is nothing even to strawman. We do have stochastic ignorance if we bracket out theories that go beyond the established Big Bang theory, such as Inflation, since that is the context in which the question was originally posed.

If you encounter a phenomenon of which you have no previous knowledge, what are you supposed to do? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It depends - see my previous reply.

Right. So did the expansion take place in order to facilitate the evolutionary process? Or was the initial state itself actually metastable? Perhaps the idea of a closed system is inapplicable? — Pantagruel

The initial state was unstable due to the structure of spacetime - that's how the theory goes. The universe was set to expand from the get-go. It is (assumed to be) causally closed, but the interesting thing about relativistic spacetime is that as it expands, its energy content increases. This is a point of disanalogy with the expanding vessel.

I am wary of elaborate analogies given in lieu of an argument. Give me the argument straight, then illustrate it with an analogy if you like, and I'll be the judge of how relevant and helpful the analogy is. So, I'll be honest, I skipped to the end first to see what the moral of that analogy was supposed to be, and then went back to read it.

My problem with this is that it consigns areas begging for inquiry to the bucket of things we just accept for the trivial reason that it is clearly possible for what we observe to exist. Our aliens might never figure out they are seeing a language, let alone what the messages they observe mean, but I certainly think they can find something out about these "brute facts," which presupposes that they be analyzable using probabilities. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And... I am afraid I am still not getting your point, even after reading the alien story.

A puzzling phenomenon found in the world is not a good parallel to what we have been discussing. Such a thing would invite the same sort of analysis as we apply to everything else: that is to say, we would try to put it in the context of our accumulated knowledge about the world and try to reduce it to some aspects of that knowledge. (I am loath to get into an argument over an analogy, but briefly, one problem with it is that it biases the story by stipulating that the phenomenon is literally "out of this world" and causally inexplicable. But your hypothetical aliens would have no reason to assume that.)

By contrast, the initial conditions of the Big Bang universe are necessarily inexplicable within the context of the Big Bang theory. Note that I am not saying that they are necessarily inexplicable tout court. It's just that if you have a causal theory, then the very structure of the theory dictates that it unspools backwards from the present observations into the past, and its initial conditions (or conditions at infinity, as the case may be) are where the theory runs up against its limits. Here be dragons. Here be the explanatory terminus. Here be brute facts.

A theory that goes beyond the Big Bang (and we have several candidates, starting with Inflation, which by now is almost as established as the Big Bang) would explain the Big Bang conditions, but it would in turn run up against its own limits.

You could also posit an explanatory terminus somewhere besides the structure and its boundary conditions. Indeed, you could posit the existence of observers as an explanation of some features of the structure and the boundary conditions, rather than the other way around, as in a traditional causal theory. This approach has an idealist ring to it: our own existence is the one thing we are most certain about, so why not put that at the foundation? I do not endorse this approach, but I think it has a right to exist.

Would it be fair here for the aliens to assume that the arrangement they observe is extremely unlikely barring some sort of underlying logic to the portal's outputs? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see how. Under the "null hypothesis" that the symbols are drawn randomly with a uniform probability from a pool that includes all and only the symbols that they have observed - yes. But what would be the reason to posit this null hypothesis? (Don't say "principle of indifference" - that's an epistemic technique, not a scientific or a metaphysical principle.) And yes, I am aware that in experimental science significance testing often resorts to positing a uniform distribution as the null hypothesis, but this practice is justly criticized.

I mean, I get the underlying intuition: you observe patterns, as opposed to chaos - you hypothesize a causal mechanism that would neatly explain your observations and integrate that explanation at a minimal cost into your noetic structure. That's how science generally works. OK, so how does this relate to the Past Hypothesis?

There are all sorts of interesting things to consider here. Given the aliens can never know the origin of the patterns, that they are separated from that knowledge by an epistemic (and maybe ontological) barrier, would it be fair for them to assume said patterns are just brute facts? — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's not really a question, is it? The answer is given in the premise.

Would it be justifiable to posit that the observed phenomena was some sort of language? — Count Timothy von Icarus

You could hypothesize this, sure. A computational linguist could probably say more.

I used that thought experiment because I think it's a neat idea. More to the point though, there are tons of areas where we essentially have no clue what sort of frequency we should expect for variables. The early universe is in no way epistemicaly unique here. Keynes was thinking of just this sort of scenario when he developed the principle, and Jayne's was thinking of similar cases we he expanded on it with the Principal of Maximum Entropy.

Maybe someone will pull a Quine on these ideas, but these seem grounded in mathematical logic, not the particularities of any particular observation. So, I would apply the concept here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

OK, can you say more - specifically, in relation to the Past Hypothesis? What is the meaning of probability in this context? What conclusions could we draw from it?

Russia has been and one can argue is still a colonizer: there are parts that it annexed through force in the 19th Century just as other European colonizers were doing (starting with Chechnya, that was occupied as late as 1859). China has had some ports colonized, but never has been colonized (the Mongol Horde didn't have colonies). — ssu

Russia has been an empire since before there was The Russian Empire, and through all its name changes. It continued expanding its domain through 1940s, when it swallowed up some lands to the west and effectively colonized others. And then the empire collapsed in 1980s-1990s, when first the Warsaw Pact countries broke off, followed by the Soviet Union republics. (It should be noted that Russia, led by Yeltsin, was the main driver of the Soviet Union's demise. But that sentiment didn't last, and soon ressentiment prevailed.)

Now Russia is fighting a classic imperialist war of aggression. Empire nostalgia is rife in the Russian public sphere, and Putin likes to compare himself (favorably) to Catherine and Peter, and revels in his territorial conquests.

I remember seeing a broadcast of Putin at some meeting answering questions from his fawning underlings. One of them, a retired prosecutor, had a rather long and convoluted question with a self-serving proposal wrapped inside. Putin, looking bored and distracted, obviously wasn't paying attention. But he perked up at the mention of "new territories," and when it came his turn to speak, he latched on to that. With a twinkle in his eye, he remarked how the Sea of Azov was now Russia's inner sea, an achievement that eluded even Peter the Great.

From a systems perspective, subsystems leech energy (negentropy) from their parent systems. So if entropy were ever at a "universal maximum" it would be theoretically impossible for any subsystem ever to emerge. Since cosmic evolution is manifestly systemic evolution (concurrent with the emergence of new dominant laws) entropy would have to be at an initial minimum. Either that, or the entropy of the universe would have to change over time. — Pantagruel

Here is a rough analogy from school thermodynamics. Consider an insulated vessel filled with gas at a thermal equilibrium. This system will remain stable forever and nothing interesting will happen there, as you rightly note (barring Boltzmann brains and such). Now suppose that the walls of the vessel expand outward. The vessel is no longer at equilibrium, even though it started out in an apparent equilibrium state (that is, if we don't take expansion into account).

You seem to be disagreeing with the past hypothesis, in that it wasn't low entropy, but maximum entropy? — ChatteringMonkey

I am not disagreeing with the low(er) entropy part. The space that is currently occupied by the observable universe was at a much lower entropy 14 billion years ago (it had better be!) Was it at a maximum entropy? That's a trick question. I would say that, in a limited sense, it was.

I guess the question is not whether it was likely or not, but whether it was low entropy or not (low entropy is unlikely by definition) — ChatteringMonkey

Ah, see, I actually don't agree that "low entropy is unlikely by definition." That is true of closed systems that have been evolving for some time. As per the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the entropy of such systems should be increasing over time. But we are talking about the initial state, which does not have a history. In response to this @Count Timothy von Icarus invoked the principle of indifference. I object that we cannot get a free lunch from the principle of indifference: it cannot teach us anything about the physical world. And conclude that statements about how probable/special/surprising the early universe was are not meaningful absent a theory of the universe's origin that would inform our expectations.

Added to that, (as also notes), the fact that, in absolute terms, the entropy of the early universe was much lower than it is now doesn't tell us all we need to know: there are other factors to consider. And the elephant in the room is that, although we typically assume that the universe is thermodynamically closed, the undisputed fact is that it was never stable: it has been constantly expanding. And that changes everything.

And if it was the first case (the universe itself explanding) than the past hypothesis isn't "matter was in a low entropy configuration", but "the universe was small". Is a small universe likely or unlikely, without another frame of reference, who knows... so I guess I would agree with you. Probabilities only make sense if you have relevant information. And since we don't, it doesn't. What is the likelihood of drawing the ace of spades out of an undefined amount of cards and with undefined types of cards in the deck? — ChatteringMonkey

:up:

And if it was as Hersh says it was, it's really a panicky bad choice for Biden to make: Germany wasn't going to go for Nordstream gas anyway as there was no energy Armageddon or even one blackout in Germany this winter. — ssu

By that time Germany had already reduced its dependence on Russian gas from ~50% to ~9% and was on course to eliminate it entirely. And it wasn't getting any gas from Nord Stream anyway, since the Russians had already shut it down indefinitely in an apparent attempt to cause as much pain for Europe as they could before they lost their leverage entirely.

I didn't want to further detail the thread, so I started a new discussion: The Past Hypothesis: Why did the universe start in a low-entropy state?

You are correct about the nature of the Past Hypothesis; that's a fine answer, but it isn't the argument I get frustrated with. By definition, there are more ways to be in a high entropy state than a low entropy state. Perhaps there is indeed a mechanism at work in the early universe that makes a later low entropy state counterintuitively more likely than a high entropy one. But, barring support for that fact, we are left with the principal of indifference, and this suggests that we weight all options equally, combinatorially if there are a finite number of states. That is, giving equal likelihood to all potential universes of X mass energy existing in an early state with all possible levels of entropy, the high entropy universes outnumber the low entropy ones, barring some other sort of explanation. Appeals to the Anthropic Principle don't address this. The same issue comes up with the Fine Tuning Problem; if we don't know the likelihood of values for constants, indifference should prevail. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am not sure that the principle of indifference can lend us any insight here. When tossing a coin, we assume that the coin has equal chances of landing heads or tails, because we are very familiar with coins and the behavior of objects of that sort. When we cannot assume that for some reason, then all that the principle of indifference does is describe the state of our ignorance: since I know nothing except that there are two possibilities, I have no greater expectation of heads than of tails. But note that, although in the latter case we have derived the same 50% probability, the meaning of this probability is not the same. We did not learn that the coin is fair through the application of the principle of indifference! All we did is learn how to bet in order to avoid Dutch Book-style exploits.

How does this help us understand the origin of the universe? It's a one-off event against the background of complete ignorance, and the outcome of this event is already known. What more can we learn from the principle of indifference? What does "the probability of this event is such and such" even mean in this case?

Positing some as of yet not understood mechanism by which this is not the case is fine, after all, we have empirical evidence that the entropy of the early universe was low (counterintuitively despite being near equilibrium, wrapping your head around negative heat is a doozy). — Count Timothy von Icarus

(My emphasis.) We haven't really talked about the Past Hypothesis itself, so let's do that now. If you take the currently observable universe and compare its entropy with the entropy of the same region of space as it was shortly after the Big Bang, you will find that the entropy is indeed much larger now (at least if we restrict ourselves to very short time horizons in each case, in which the universe can be considered quasi-static as per classical thermodynamics, because otherwise the meaning of entropy and how it should be calculated becomes unclear). And yet the universe after the Big Bang is typically described as a very uniform "particle soup." It wasn't at equilibrium, because it was quickly expanding, but if, counterfactually, there was no expansion, then the universe would have already been at its maximum entropy (and on very short time scales, during which expansion could be neglected, it was). Expansion added bucketloads of additional degrees of freedom, thus lifting the ceiling on the maximum entropy - and this is how we find ourselves, 14 billion years later, at a much higher entropy and still far from equilibrium. All thanks to the dramatic expansion of space during the time between then and now.

So, was the (relatively) low-entropy state of the early universe very special and unlikely (whatever that might mean)? Frankly, I don't see how.

As opposed to what? A world at thermodynamic equilibrium? — SophistiCat

Yes. Since there are more ways to be high entropy than low entropy we should have more worlds with high entropy than low. So why are we in a low entropy world if it is very statistically unlikely?

Some version of the past hypothesis, right? But then seeing a world where the past hypothesis is true is vanishingly unlikely, even if it occurs with probability 1, according to MWI derivations of the Born Rule. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am surprised that you went for this explanation, given what you said above about frequentist explanations. This is a textbook case where statistics does not apply because it simply does not exist.

Your reasoning applies to an ergodic system that has been evolving for a long time, or an equivalent ensemble. But the early universe is nothing like that. If there is no explanation for the past hypothesis (we don't have a good theory of the universe's origin), then it makes no sense to talk about how likely or unlikely it is, because the universe was and still is far from ergodic, it hadn't been evolving for a long time (ex hypothesi), and we don't have an ensemble (unless some kind of a multiverse theory is true, but that is still very speculative, so we can't take it as given).

It seems to me that either low probability events should always be surprising and make us ask questions or they never should, not a too cute mix of both. Just bite the bullet and say the Born Rule is meaningless, a total illusion, in that case. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Eh, surprise is a tricky thing. There have been some detailed analyses of surprise in the literature, both from the purely epistemological standpoint and specifically in the context of issues like the multiverse and fine-tuning. But I find that in the latter case the arguments get too far afield. They start from some careless analogies (e.g. Leslie's firing squad) and then get bogged down in the arguments over the analogies. Given that our everyday intuitions are not trained for such exotic scenarios as multiverses, we probably shouldn't put too much stock in them.

Maybe he is not lying just making false claims. Anyways, talking about OSINT, I was aware of Oliver Alexander's review of Hersh's article: https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe

Or are you referring to somebody else? — neomac

I read something else, less comprehensive. And one can find more with a quick google. For my part, I wasn't all that interested in fact-checking Hersh's story, because I didn't take it seriously in the first place. But I knew that it would make a splash, especially in far-right/left circles. I think the real story here is not in what Hersh wrote, but in how it was received.

But I take your point. We can't take it for granted that he made up all or some of the story himself. He may have just laundered the story that he was handed by his "anonymous source" without doing any of the things that are routinely done in the corrupt western mainstream media - you know, like doing his own research and fact-checking. But my guess is that he at least contributed his own embellishments.

I have never seen a satisfactory explanation of why we should find ourselves in the world that has increasing entropy — Count Timothy von Icarus

As opposed to what? A world at thermodynamic equilibrium?

And what do you mean by explanation here? We are bound to find ourselves in one world or another. How could you explain the fact that the world that we find ourselves in is this one? Explain in terms of what?

Well, the real issue here

...is just what those peace terms are. Russia simply should exit from Ukraine, including Crimea, and respect the territorial integrity of the country what it has accepted starting when the country became independent.

Having any problem with that? — ssu

Well, at least China doesn't. This is #1 in their recent position statement:

1. Respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Universally recognized international law, including the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, must be strictly observed. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld. All countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community. All parties should jointly uphold the basic norms governing international relations and defend international fairness and justice. Equal and uniform application of international law should be promoted, while double standards must be rejected. — China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis

China never officially acknowledged Russian territorial acquisitions, including annexation of Crimea. (Of course, they weren't thinking about Ukraine when they were writing this - they were thinking about Taiwan.)

BTW Hersh too candidly admits to lie in his profession whenever he thinks he has a good reason to (https://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/). — neomac

In most cases, Hersh attaches a caveat—such as “I’m just talking now, I’m not writing”—before unloading one of his blockbusters, which can send bloggers and reporters scurrying for confirmation. — Sy Hersh Says It’s Okay to Lie (Just Not in Print)

Sy Hersh no longer confines his lies to talks. His latest "blockbuster" has been fact-checked using OSINT and found to be lacking in some crucial details.. I won't be digging that up, but here is an example of just how brazen and stupid his lies can be:

Today, the secretary general of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a committed anti-communist, who served as Norway’s prime minister for eight years before moving to his high NATO post, with American backing, in 2014. He was a hardliner on all things Putin and Russia who had cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War. — How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

Vietnam War: 1955 - 1975
Jens Stoltenberg: 1959 -

So what is the perfect definition of knowledge? — Cidat

How should we define knowledge? In context. — Fooloso4

The first question to ask is: what do you what from your definition? Do you want it to reflect current use in ordinary language? That is what dictionary definitions do, so the obvious thing would be to consult a good English dictionary. Or do you want a specialized definition for something specific? Then you should be asking a more specific question.

Generally, just inquiring after a definition out of context is not very productive. Words are tools, and as with all tools, we fashion them for a reason.

(This is just to expand what @Fooloso4 said.)

Russia too has means, the right amount of hawkishness and a history of false flag operations to directly or indirectly support such operation. — neomac

And Russia is the only player (that I know of) that has actually done this before. Possibly more than once. But those Georgia incidents made a lot more sense at the time. With Nord Stream it's not obvious.

Yeah, all of a sudden there's a flood of murky intelligence leaks in media. What's up with that?

New York Times: Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say
Washington Post: Intelligence officials suspect Ukraine partisans behind Nord Stream bombings, rattling Kyiv’s allies
Die Zeit: Nord-Stream-Ermittlungen: Spuren führen in die Ukraine
The Times: West kept quiet about Nord Stream attack to protect Ukraine

I'm not jumping to any conclusions. Technically, anything is possible, I suppose. The sea is very shallow there, so a diving crew operating off a boat could get to the pipes. The pipelines were not secured or actively monitored in any way. That patch of the sea was heavily trafficked, including by numerous boats that were turning off their tracking devices.

Motive remains difficult to understand though, especially given the timing.

Stupidity has always been dangerous — Wolfgang

This is the one thing that you said that even makes any sense. The rest is a confused, ungrammatical mess.

Listening to some jazz for a change: J.D. Allen

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAHNJvwXuaSzTliSAmna2TA

Sonny Rollins said about him: "He’s got a nice, big, fat sound, and he’s got a lot of ideas. He doesn’t sound like he’s ever wanting to find something to play."

As you know, what morality descriptively ‘is’ and what morality normatively ‘is’ are separate questions. In traditional moral philosophy, an extreme version of this idea is that “science has nothing to offer moral philosophy”, implying that what is descriptively moral is irrelevant to what is normatively moral.

Gert contradicts this view by claiming that the "lessening of harm" component of what is descriptively moral (a subject within science's what 'is' domain) is also normatively moral by his criterion “what all rational people would put forward”. — Mark S

No, he does not. Nowhere does Gert claim that the imperative of lessening of harm is (a) descriptively moral and (b) scientifically justified.

Also, I disagree that for something to even be recognized as a moral code, it has to be acceptable by all moral agents ("rational people"). That is much too restrictive for a definition. It would mean that any rule that may not be universally endorsed is "not even wrong": it does not belong to the category of things that could be morally right or wrong, and if you use it in such a way, your interlocutors would not understand you. (Or worse yet, one would have to disqualify all dissenters as moral agents!) That is clearly not the case. Rational people can have moral (as opposed to merely definitional) disagreements.

In putting forward the normative definition of morality as "the behavioral code that... all rational persons, under certain specified conditions, would endorse," Gert identifies those who accept it with moral realists, and those who think that no code would meet this definition with moral skeptics. I don't think that is right either. A moral realist is not necessarily committed to the principle that all universal ethical truths are uncontroversial.

He does give a definition of morality (at 15:28) as "An informal public system applying to all moral agents that has the goal of lessening of harm suffered by those who are protected by this system". — Banno

Are any of you wondering how Gert’s morality can be so concrete?

He can be concrete because his subject in the video is what morality ‘is’ – the same subject as Morality As Cooperation Strategies (MACS). I don’t hear him making direct claims about what morality we somehow imperatively ought to follow (the standard focus of traditional moral philosophy). — Mark S

This formulation departs from the meta-ethical question of "what morality is". Stating that the goal of moral precepts is "lessening of harm" tells us what we imperatively ought to follow: we ought to lessen harm. It is morally good to lessen harm and morally bad to increase it.

As a nonexhaustive moral imperative, "lessen harm" is uncontroversional, but that doesn't make it any less of a moral imperative. Then making it the be-all, end-all of all morality means putting forward a moral theory (known as negative utilitarianism).

Declaring the failure of reductionism seems premature. — Fooloso4

When the OP first started posting on this forum a while ago, I was driven by curiosity to quick-read some sort of paper or book chapter that he shared. I remember being struck by the breathtaking ease with which he solved long-standing problems of philosophy. He proved the existence of God in one short paragraph, then went on as if that question was now settled once and for all. He established the truth of determinism even more simply: by quoting Laplace's famous maxim (Laplace's demon). Later he did think it necessary for some reason to revisit the question of determinism in light of the challenge supposedly posed by quantum mechanics, but dismissed it right away with a reference to Bohm's pilot wave theory - thus settling, in passing, the problem of the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

As pointed out, you probably misunderstood that passage, which comes from the very beginning of the introduction. What you quoted is not a definition as such. Gert is outlining two broad senses of morality: descriptive and normative, and the formulations are intentionally broad and vague, so as to encompass most, if not all definitions in each category. The specifics that you are asking are what an actual definition would be expected to clarify, and the article touches upon them.

To what extent can well-informed, mentally normal, religious people be rational about their religion-based moral beliefs? — Mark S

"Rational" here is intended in a very broad sense:

In the normative sense, “morality” refers to a code of conduct that would be accepted by anyone who meets certain intellectual and volitional conditions, almost always including the condition of being rational. That a person meets these conditions is typically expressed by saying that the person counts as a moral agent. — Gert

(Emphasis in the original.) So, basically, "rational" in the original formulation means anyone who "counts as a moral agent."

Seems to me, in the context of the article, that Gert is not offering a definition of morality, but giving reasons why such a thing is bothersome. — Banno

Well, that's what you generally find in overviews of philosophical topics, such as those in the SEP. You get into the weeds practically as soon as you set out (the very next subchapter in Gert's article on the definition of morality questions the very possibility of defining morality...) You leave with more questions than answers, which probably frustrates some people, but that's the way I like it.

One year mark.

Few to go? — ssu

Lots of analyses and retrospectives in the press, as one would expect.

FT published a large investigation with juicy details: How Putin blundered into Ukraine — then doubled down (open access for now, or use this link: txtify.it). Some accord with what was already known or supposed (only a very narrow circle knew anything about the invasion right up until the fateful date). Some are pretty sensational: "According to two people close to the Kremlin, Putin has already gamed out the possibility of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine and has come to the conclusion that even a limited strike would do nothing to benefit Russia."

As ever, this is all based on anonymous insider information, so use your sound judgement.

The Financial Times spoke to six longtime Putin confidants as well as people involved in Russia’s war effort, and current and former senior officials in the west and Ukraine for this account of how Putin blundered his way into the invasion — then doubled down rather than admit his mistake. All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. — FT

One year into a war instigated and prolonged by the United States.

The issue is 99.9% obvious and certain for you. — Paine

That's not even 99.9%. No room for questioning of the narrative is left here.

On the other hand, this isn't much better:

Yeah, yeah - this is over simplifying and there are a thousand and one details/nuances. But as I read the back & forth conversations? Both sides make some legit points - hence my comment that both sides share blame. — EricH

I understand that not everyone is invested into this issue to the same extent. But if you are not willing to make the effort, then the honest response to a controversy should not be "I don't know enough to have an informed opinion, so I'll just split the difference."

I do think that his banning will probably be more of a loss to the site than anything. — Jack Cummins

I think it's more of a loss to him than anything - and I don't mean that in a dismissive way. TheMadFool/Agent was one of the oldest members of this forum (not sure if he was on its predecessor), and he spent most of his waking life here, as far as I could see. That's going to be a big hole to fill.

As it is, many users on the site are alone in rooms, reaching out to other people — Jack Cummins

Yes, that's what I was thinking. But the owner and administrators of the forum would like it to be more than just a social club (yet it is that, too). There are other places that are more suitable for that purpose.

Yeah, and the fact that it bullshits and occasionally goes off the rails only adds to the authenticity of the experience :)

Yeah, so I've heard. One of what must have been hundreds of publications on this topic is this Ezra Klein podcast with psychologist, neuroscientist and AI skeptic Gary Marcus, who makes the same point: A Skeptical Take on the A.I. Revolution

Gary Marcus was also on Sean Carroll's podcast last year (but that was before ChatGPT came out). He argues that the unstructured neural network learning model that is used in AIs like ChatGPT will never be adequate, and advocates the incorporation of the old-fashioned structured approach to AI.

ChatGPT is now available in Ukraine: https://t.me/stranaua/91541

The ChatGPT neural network does have some knowledge of events after 2021 (although it warns that they are limited).

When asked "What happened in Ukraine on February 24, 2022", the bot told us about "the imposition of martial law in a number of regions" (in fact, martial law was introduced throughout the country) in connection with the "Russian military offensive in the Chernihiv region", and also about some mythical decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which allegedly canceled the amendments to the Constitution of 2020, and thereby limited the powers of the president.

"This decision led to a sharp deterioration in relations between the President of Ukraine and the Constitutional Court, and also caused a wave of political protests and accusations of misconduct," ChatGPT wrote in a completely bogus story (there were no such decisions of the Constitutional Court on that day).

Do you mean to say that most of our decisions are too trivial and petty to be measured by the lofty standards of rationality?

Rather, you are under-thinking it. Saying that we ought do what is right is trivial; that's just what "ought" is.

The joke is that any choice is rational, hence any choice is right. — Banno

This trivializes rationality and equivocates about normativity.

I suppose you had in mind rationalizations of subjects' choices such as this?

My sense of fairness is worth more that $1 or even $10. If it were $10,000, that would be a different thing. On the other hand, telling someone to go fry ice when he tries to stiff me for thousands might be worth it. — T Clark

Rationality implies certain shared epistemic standards. Those standards have to be at least enduring and widespread, if not permanent and universal, or they would have no meaning. Further, they cannot be inviolate, or else they would be superfluous. It follows then that not every decision is necessarily rational.

Further, "right" is not the same as "rational." Rationality is normative, but it does not represent the full extent of normativity.

Fundamentally, humans are driven to survival, not toward selfish promotion. If it works toward our survival that we abuse one another, we will, and the same holds true for cooperation. But we don't intuit our best survival techniques a priori. We learn through trial and error (natural selection).

So, if you toss me into a dystopia where I am to decide how much to give away to avoid your spite, I'm not fully adapted to such an environment, so I may use my adaptations gained in my normal world to my disadvantage. On the planet I evolved, we have expectations that you share a certain amount with me if you expect mutual respect from me, and consequences result if you violate that norm.

This means that how your test subjects react in this generation will vary in future generations as you continue to expose people to this new adaptation. — Hanover

We find ourselves in "dystopian" situations more commonly than you think. Evolutionary and cultural adaptations serve to improve fitness on average and over long timescales. They do not fine-tune our behavior perfectly for every possible situation that we may face in this world.

This experiment tests adaptations, not inherent human nature. — Hanover

This wording is confusing, but I think you meant that this experiment tests the ability to adapt to the situation, as opposed to acting on instinct or habit. But this too is not right: there is no right or wrong way to behave in this experiment, so those acting on instinct are not failing a test. The idea is to find out whether people will act "rationally" (in the game theoretic sense). And the conclusion is that they generally don't - presumably, because the desire for and the expectation of fairness interferes with "rational" considerations. (Could be other reasons as well, such as fucking with experimenters, but I don't think that is very common.)

I'm not sure what these experiments really show other than how otherwise normal people might attempt to navigate a world where arbitrary power controls the random distribution of money. — Hanover

The experiments falsify game theory predictions. Despite all the "isn't it obvious?" sentiment going in this thread, that's not a trivial result, though not entirely unexpected. Game theory is a powerful and successful theory, whatever people say. It was never meant to represent the full extent of human relationships, but pragmatically, it works well enough in a lot of real-world situations.

Also a point about the experimental setup being artificial and unrealistic. That is common to experiments, which try to isolate certain features and exclude confounders. So that in itself is not a good criticism. In this case the idea was to draw a contrast with game theory predictions, and that means creating conditions where the kind of rational self-interest that a game theory solution would take into account would not predict the result. This is why the experiments try to rule out social factors - reputation, reciprocity and all that - which a sophisticated game-theoretical simulation could account for.

There's the joke. Ought we do what feels right and reject the unfair offer, or ought we follow the games-theoretical approach, and accept any offer? The Evolution of fairness article appears to offer a way to resolve this, if our intuition is actually the application of a stochastic strategy. But then in applying our intuition we are ipso facto applying a rule, and acting rationally.

So ought we apply the rule? — Banno

You are overthinking this. We ought to do what feels right (or what you think is right - whichever word you prefer). That's just what ought means.

So NATO is monitoring their targeting systems and won't allow them to strike the Russian interior? — frank

I doubt it. They know full well that Americans would not agree to that. And those systems don't have the range to strike deep in the interior anyway. More likely the Americans are second-guessing the Ukrainians, trying to conserve their expensive munitions.

Of course, no evidence yet doesn't mean there isn't any but I think, once again, we really don't know who's done it and we need to wait it out. — Benkei

I agree, and I never said otherwise. There are arguments in favor of the Russia-did-it theory (e.g. this), and I could buy some of them, but not with real money.

One thing though that makes it easier to buy the Russia theory is that the risk threshold is much lower for Russia than for any other plausible actor. They have little to lose, since their relationships with Europe are at their lowest point since the Bolshevik revolution. Worse comes to worst, they will just deny everything, like they always do, not caring at all whether they are believed.