It is interesting you bring up the idea of limit. I'm not sure if you mean this as a metaphor, or as a literal model of what you are trying to convey. — Adam's Off Ox
From what you say, I gather that objectivity is binary. I also gather that an objective claim can either be correct or incorrect. While no idea can be more correct than correct, I gather you are saying some ideas can be more incorrect than others. — Adam's Off Ox
This is an interesting description of what we do with science. I would have described the method differently. Could I ask you, do you have hands on experience with science? Have you done lab work in a university setting or been paid for scientific research? I ask because my experience has been different. — Adam's Off Ox
Lyotard was a theorist of postmodernity. He was incredibly critical of it, and the fact that he is often called a 'postmodernist' philosopher - as if he advocated or celebrated it - is not only wrong, it is practically the opposite of what he would have wanted. He bemoaned the end of the meta-narrative, which was coincident, for him, with the crisis of capitalism. He was a diagnostician of postmodernity, not a cheerleader for it. — StreetlightX
I don't think arguing that no one else ought be plunked here is the best course of action, because no one considering having kids is listening. — csalisbury
Any pretense of 'this-is-actually-about-actually-reducing-suffering' vanishes quickly; if what we're talking about a pipe dream, then we're not meaningfully talking about reducing suffering anymore; we're very much in something else. — csalisbury
I like what you've said about the irrecusable (apologies to Ray Brassier), ineluctable, sheer fact-of-the-matter of technology(modernism/capitalism/etc) - yes! You're plunked down somewhere, and the way back is barred, like a pile of pixelated concrete in a survival horror game; you have to go forward. — csalisbury
An ALU is a combinational logic circuit, meaning that its outputs will change asynchronously in response to input changes. In normal operation, stable signals are applied to all of the ALU inputs and, when enough time (known as the "propagation delay") has passed for the signals to propagate through the ALU circuitry, the result of the ALU operation appears at the ALU outputs. The external circuitry connected to the ALU is responsible for ensuring the stability of ALU input signals throughout the operation, and for allowing sufficient time for the signals to propagate through the ALU before sampling the ALU result.
In general, external circuitry controls an ALU by applying signals to its inputs. Typically, the external circuitry employs sequential logic to control the ALU operation, which is paced by a clock signal of a sufficiently low frequency to ensure enough time for the ALU outputs to settle under worst-case conditions.
For example, a CPU begins an ALU addition operation by routing operands from their sources (which are usually registers) to the ALU's operand inputs, while the control unit simultaneously applies a value to the ALU's opcode input, configuring it to perform addition. At the same time, the CPU also routes the ALU result output to a destination register that will receive the sum. The ALU's input signals, which are held stable until the next clock, are allowed to propagate through the ALU and to the destination register while the CPU waits for the next clock. When the next clock arrives, the destination register stores the ALU result and, since the ALU operation has completed, the ALU inputs may be set up for the next ALU operation. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unit
I'll chat about other stuff, but I've no interest in the antinatalist stuff, more or less power to me. — csalisbury
As for the rest: it seems like you don't like your job - that's a common thing. Strip metaphysics and go from there. — csalisbury
After decades training with the world’s foremost doulas, midwives and practitioners of Transcendental Meditation I’ve come up with a method (patent pending) of progeneration that actually decreases suffering and I’m almost ready to license it to expectant mothers for a modest fee. — csalisbury
Objective reality/morality is the limit of a series of increasingly improved subjective opinions on what is real/moral. — Pfhorrest
I do mean it in the same sense it is used in calculus, something that a series asymptotically approaches, but I don’t mean it to be the exact sense of the limit of a numerical series. I guess you could call it a qualitative rather than necessarily quantitative version of a limit. Though in cases where it is possible to quantify the thing in question, I guess such a qualitative limit becomes the same thing as the ordinary quantitative limit, making the former concept perhaps a conservative extension of the latter. — Pfhorrest
When I've been saying 'objective reality', I've tried to distinguish between the putative reality supposed by scientists, i.e. that which models tend toward, and an empiricism-independent objective reality that is the simplest and best explanation for the former. — Kenosha Kid
In my opinion, what "good science" does involves making observations of phenomena and then predicting additional phenomena. The concept of "putative reality" drops out from the process (as an empty variable) so that all the science is left with are phenomena and model. — Adam's Off Ox
I disagree with that. The putative reality is put in by hand in the act of modelling. What is a model a model of if not a putative reality? That is not to say that they believe their models are accurate representations of objective reality, but that, over time, if objective reality does exist, those models should increasingly reflect that objective reality that seems to exist (the putative objective reality). — Kenosha Kid
A "good mathematical model" focuses only on the variables under consideration, and takes into account that an induction (not deductively logical) process is taking place in order to move from call to response. — Adam's Off Ox
That doesn't seem right to me either. The Standard Model, for instance, is not focused "only on the variables under consideration": it is a reference point for what is under consideration and exists (after consideration) whether we are considering something or not. "According to the Standard Model, the hypercharge is conserved under decay of blah blah blah." That is a reference to a model. The model itself is not defined by that reference. Not does the Standard Model go away when we stop considering the hypercharge under decay of blah.
What the Standard Model is is the best model of the elementary contents and interactions of a putative objective reality consistent with the totality of empirical facts. — Kenosha Kid
... where hypercharge and decay are both model representations of other phenomena or data points. When we look at hypercharge and decay, we find they are mathematically defined relationships between other phenomena. What is preserved in the discussion is the math, not putative reality. — Adam's Off Ox
What the Standard Model does, the "why it works", is convert observable data (phenomena) into predicted phenomena. — Adam's Off Ox
Do you consider yourself a physicist, by chance? Or perhaps a scientist in another field? — Adam's Off Ox
Yes, a physicist. Or rather a lapsed physicist. I was active in research until a couple of years ago but sold out mwahahahaaaa! I worked in many-body quantum mechanics. — Kenosha Kid
The mathematics is agnostic to any putative existence of billiard balls as things, but only addresses the variables at hand. — Adam's Off Ox
That is where the assumption of an objective reality which is partly and approximately reflected in the general model simplifies matters. If billiards has an objectively real counterpart which itself obeys something like the general law of billiards, then the success of the general law is explained.
Without this, it is a mystery why merely noting down observations should ever lead to a predictive theory. The model in question cannot account for the success of the model. An objective reality can, by having something similar to the model in its aspect. — Kenosha Kid
By lieu of it being an extrapolation of subjective opinions, it is not mind-independent, for instance. — Kenosha Kid
When I've been saying 'objective reality', I've tried to distinguish between the putative reality supposed by scientists, i.e. that which models tend toward, and an empiricism-independent objective reality that is the simplest and best explanation for the former. — Kenosha Kid
On a different level, but no less relevant, the way we model things like billiard balls, apples, and oranges (deterministically) differs from the way we model gas in a chamber and work (dynamically), which also differs from the way we model quantum mechanics (WTF?). Using the same kind of ontology for all these models seems misplaced considering there are different philosophies in place (indicated by the different mathematics) in the modeling. We no longer have one objective reality defined by all of science, but rather many kinds of realities all taking place at once. — Adam's Off Ox
Being at the unattainable limit of that series, it is independent of anybody’s particular mind. — Pfhorrest
So just to refine the names of these different classes if models, we have: deterministic (billiards), statistical (gases), probabilistic (quantum). In the first, the element behaves deterministically and we can know it. In the second, each element behaves deterministically, but we can't know it and instead treat a statistical ensemble. And in the third, a single element has to be treated statistically.
These are three levels of approximation at modelling the putative objective reality. The first works well at the macroscopic scale, but breaks down when describing macroscopic ensembles of molecular-scale objects. For this, statistical mechanics works fine, so long as we don't wish to model the element itself or it is is sufficiently large. For smaller elements, you need a more thorough treatment.
The putative objective reality remains the same, and the trend of more exact treatment is precisely the trend discussed above, that toward a best model of this reality. That is, we don't think there's a part of reality specifically dealing with things like apples and billiard balls, another part specifically dealing with fluids, etc.
My statistical mechanics lecturer actually took the approach of deriving the entirety of statistical mechanics from quantum mechanics, where entropy is essentially the number of states explored by a system. Similarly, we derived all of the classical mechanics of billiard balls from quantum mechanics.
So we'd say QM is a better, rather than different, model of the objective reality we wish to explain. — Kenosha Kid
Understood, but an extrapolation from actual mental and cultural content still isn't independent of mind and culture. It does not contain identical content, but it contains extrapolations of real mental and cultural moral trends. — Kenosha Kid
Thank you for explaining. While I'm not trying to disagree, I believe I still don't fully understand. It may come off as a disagreement. — Adam's Off Ox
Are the objects at each level of inquiry the same kind of existing objects? Or rather, the words that make up an ontology of things of the same dimension (not just scale)? — Adam's Off Ox
To deny that is just complete moral nihilism, saying that no notion of morality is better than any other; that Hitler didn't actually do anything wrong, because nothing at all is "actually wrong", people just have different feelings about things.
As I recall you already deny that all moral systems are equally wrong, and think that some are less wrong than others. That's all moral objectivism is. — Pfhorrest
There is a fundamental reason why the first and last of these are morally inferior positions, and it has nothing to do with any mind-independent moral objectivity and everything to do with the real biological basis of our morality: those views are fundamentally hypocritical and antisocial — Kenosha Kid
Doing no harm is easy enough, but is it better to do good than do no harm, is it better to do good for 10 and harm 1 than do no harm, etc., etc. [...] You have existence, and you have freedom, and there is no telling what you should do with it. [...] Your morality is what you do with the choices you're given [...] And whatever you do, this is you, making you as you go along, and as long as you're not antisocial (and most people with power still are) and fall into the group above, there's no should. — Kenosha Kid
It's a boogeyman as it lurks behind all sincere claims. — schopenhauer1
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