My Second Smart Idea

I'm the loudest voice in the blogosphere at this point pushing the notion that Feedback is the whole deal.    Indeed, I've not heard anyone else say it loudly or clearly enough.  And of course, I 've called this out as Aretae's First Law:

Feedback dominates ( aka Rates not States)

If anything, I consider this to be my primary contribution ot the blogosphere these last 5 years.  In education?  Feedback systems dominate, and therefore lecture is moronic.  In government,  all government systems that have ever existed have feedback systems that push towards the impoverishment of the citizenry in favor of those in the government.  In software, the feedback systems determine how good the software is.  In Manufacturing, feedback is all of quality.  Evolution.  Science. Bayesian Epistemology. It's all feedback all the way down.  1 idea...that's all.

Well, this afternoon, thanks to a couple influences, I had my second important insight.  I've danced around it before, and I've referenced topics near it in Aretae's 4th law...which is about to be promoted. The 4th law is:

Brain Bunnies (previously known as Monkey Brains)

Your brain doesn't work how you want it to.  Ever.  There's lots of little bunnies running around in your head, each with it's own goals/systems.  The conscious mind is only the press secretary for the rest of your brain...making up answers about why in order to support the herd of brain-bunnies who have independently decided what to do, and now need verbal cover.

Moving on to the real insight...thank you Tom and Andrew for setting up my insight:

Verbal learning is THE education problem.

Human beings' brains are a very small percent verbal.
Only a very few excessively verbal people are even poor (as opposed to abysmal) at verbal reasoning...and the folks who can make any sense at all of verbal nonsense are hailed as heroes in our age.  They end up as the denizens of the cathedral.  And of course, as the most verbal folks, the ones who spin the words, their inclination is not to point out how bad the verbal capabilities of the best of us are.
Therefore, any learning process that goes through the verbal cortex will be massively inefficient.
Don't use verbal systems to teach or persuade.
They stink.
Instead, use the visual cortex, the musical capabilities of the brain, the social capacities.  And leave the crappy verbal part out of the learning business.

Of course, that is a tremendously subversive notion.  That would perhaps eliminate from many learning systems the advantage accruing to folks with high verbal IQs.  Which violates everything that the Cathedral holds dear.

Tell us what you really think, Penelope

via insty, Penelope Trunk rants a wee bit about universal preschool.

Simulation arguments from lunch conversation at work

Among Singulitarians it's widely accepted that, assuming simulations are doable, then prima facie, if you can't observe the difference between a simulation and reality, we are almost certainly in a simulation.  Certainly if simulations are possible, than folks will run some number of them, and under any reasonable amount of computing in the future...we are running in a simulation with p > .99999....

The counterpoint observed at lunch a few days ago is that this assumes one giant Singulitarian assumption.  Simulations are possible.  It's not perfectly clear that one can simulate minds in pure software.  If one can't simulate minds in software, then we are not running a simulation with p > .99999

Therefore, it becomes a question:  Our likelihood of being in a simulation is perfectly equal to the  probability that one can simulate minds in software.

Except it's not.  At lunch, I forgot several things.

What is the likelihood of a civilization reaching the level of complexity to do deep simulations of other  minds without first destroying itself?  Doesn't this reduce to a reduction in the probability that one CAN simulate minds in software?

Also...we assume that simulations are interesting to civilizations that can run simulations.   I do not think this is as obvious as we think it is.

Two further strikes against the simulationist argument...with the 2nd being more powerful than the first.

However, I personally consider quantum mechanics to be evidence for being in a simulation.  God is playing dice with the universe, quite literally.  Also makes the many-worlds interpretation laughable.

Also, I consider the lonely universe to be further (mild) evidence that we're in a simulation.

Two points for the simulationists.

No further conclusions...just further noodling.

Links

• Kling on the massive logic leap to paternalism
• Damned by association in the Minimum Wage Debate.   Very interesting.
• Robin Hanson contra Yudkowsky on AI and Fooms.
• Tim B. Lee on software patents.
• Environmentalist activism literally resulting in the deaths of millions of people
• Lomborg in Slate
• Insty adds a bit
• Bidinotto more broadly
• Henderson quotes Acton more completely than normal.  I will cite that as well:

  I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. 

• Best recent quote, from CoyoteBlog through BluntObject:

“Everybody with half a brain is coming to California”

– Governor Jerry Brown

Citizen/Subject

There is a deep difference between those who lean hard to the freedom-ward, and those who don't on this issue. What is that distinction?

What is the moral difference between agents of the state and non-agent citizens?

Statists of various stripes suggest that the state is positioned well to make intelligent decisions about how the subject are allowed to live, and therefore that agents of the state should be treated morally differently than the garden-variety subject of the state.

Libertarians of various stripes argue instead that the state is almost never likely to make impartial decisions, and therefore that agents of the state should be treated morally identically to ordinary citizens.

This difference is perhaps most noticeable in the issue of gun control.

The statist suggests that the police and perhaps some specific deputized citizens should be able to protect everyone against violence, and that others have no such right...and certainly not via firearms.

The libertarian, contrarily, suggests that it is a moral failing for a person to go unarmed.  As a citizen, it is my right and my duty to protect myself, my family, and perhaps my community.  Only the incompetent and newly arrived have any business depending on the generosity of the community to protect them while not shouldering their own portion of the burden.

This is my favorite pro-gun argument...not intended to convince anyone...but my friend Paul Hsieh , philosopher, and general smart guy brought it up many years ago when my travel prohibited me from carrying.  Your moral status within the world shifts when you carry a lethal weapon on your person.  You can no longer be a child or a sheep, nor can you allow your passions to carry you off.  You must become an adult; a sheepdog.  And doing it of your own volition is particularly praiseworthy.  And hopefully you don't condescend too much to the sheep and children you end up protecting.

Practice vs. Theory

In Theory, some of my time is less busy than it has been in the last few months.

• I've not been sick for 10/30 days like I was in January.  
• I don't have a second gig away from my normal 40-hour work-week that eats 3 days out of town (pleasant though they were).  
• I don't have to catch up on math homework grading for the 15 days that I was sick or out of town.  
• Most of my daughter's gymnastics competitions are done for the season.   
• I've finished updating a side-gig updating someone else's software for a friend.  Had to remember a bunch of old school VBA 6 MS Access nonsense.  

In practice, I'm not free because I'm:

• writing an algebra-intuition-pump for Android devices.  Iterations 1-12 are finished, and starting up with 3 more iterative features.  Hopefully releaseable by April.
• preparing a book (Agile software development re-foundationalized as a feedback systems problem), with partners, mostly via presentation, filming the presentation, and sending off to co-author's friends for ghostwriting.  These smart people. All by mid-March
• working extra hours at work to support some of my folks who've gone offshore, for a month, provided I can get my organization to pay for my extra hours.
• trying to get caught up on necessary reading in my field (I've got a dozen books stacked), 
• preparing presentations for Agile 2013 (I signed up for 4, with most/all of them being co-presentations)
• keeping up with homeschool math homework.  Saxon demands that the student remember everything they've ever done...anyone approaching this via a normal homework mentality of do and forget loses badly.  As a homeschooler, we do, and then mark for correctness, and then redo until it is correct.  Saxon for 16yo, Singapore for the 2 littler ones.
• teaching the 16yo to drive -- scary -- too close to the curb!
• helping the 7yo with bicycle riding -- out of breath!
• driving back and forth to a different city (in the Texas triangle 1.5-4.5 hours away) every other weekend for one reason or another -- Friends all over the state, Family mostly in Houston with Birthdays, etc.  Gymnastics for kid -- girl has one left this season.  Started level 4 competition in December.  Level 5 as of early this month.   Boy should start competing later.  
• trying to keep the wife sane by holding the baby when I'm at home.  Hume is 3mo a week ago.  And fatter than your baby.  No one is willing to believe he's 3 months old.  Too active, alert, coordinated, and big.  8lbs @ birth.  11lbs @ 1 month.  14lbs @ 2 months.  Hasn't stopped growing.   Didn't weigh him yet at 3mo.  Outweighs all the 5-6 month babies from our birthing center.  
• doing Superslow weekly, which is fast, but the recovery time isn't.  Legs press up to 8 reps @ 510 (2:40).  Started overhead press this week, and not only am I weak at it, but also, it impacts my chest press.  oddly, 1:45 pulldown, 1:20 overhead press,  2:40 leg press, and 1:30 chest press all in the course of 15 minutes has me massively overheated (lay down on the floor after with nausea, hearing impairment, heavy sweat, dizziness).  Now that the glove is available for only $900, I desperately want to try it, but my heart-surgeon trainer is more careful than I am.  This ate Sunday this week as my brain melted around my muscles.  
• Worrying about kicking off a more serious training business with a friend/business acquaintance/ long term partner.  I don't have the time to do all or even most of the training, but I can get it set up.  Will only take 5x the amount of time that I actually have free.  
• trying to set up a Feedback Systems-based corporate consulting practice through a marketing consultant...starting to lean into the Feedback Systems in life book as well.  
• trying to take diet  more seriously than I have this last 3 months (Seth Roberts: Shangri-La + Fermentation / Paleo: PaNu + Cordain / IF: Leangains + etc.) , all of which substantially hit the "sleep a decent number of hours" button, which I don't normally do.  Now all I need is someone to play fatbet (or similar, what's the good one?) with me, and I might be in good shape.  

Short South Korea

So, there I was, having dinner with Foseti, and as usual, his insights about stuff he's seen directly are excellent.

We got near agreement on the following:

In broad strokes, there is only one political system yet discovered that generates wealth and economic growth in rich countries:
The northern-european/germanic/anglo system of strong individual property rights and common law.  In less broad strokes, there are two-and-a-half:

Anglo systems (low redistribution, low regulation, strong individual property rights):
England, America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, post-war Japan.

Nordic systems (assuming the existence of enough nords) (high redistribution, low regulation, property rights):
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, maybe Germany.

Swiss system (Maybe would collapse into nordic systems if ANY swiss people needed welfare) (hyper-federalist, direct democracy, cantonal competition driving low taxes):

On the other hand, there is a widely admired economic system that does NOT deliver growth after catch-up:  Fascism/Corporatism/Crony Capitalism/Japan/South Korea.  Foseti's was the excellent point that from being in Korea, he saw that the line between the government and the Zaibatsu was blurry at best.  And that it lined up well with Japan.

Aretaevian competition-theory says that you cannot build an innovation system out of that approach.  

And so...South Korean growth should fall off pretty hard.  You heard it here.

Oh...and Foseti's a real nice guy in person.

It must be true

Usually said of some feature of reality that hasn't had experiments run on it.

Effectively guarantees falsity.

Once again annoyed by rationalists and many worlds.

Things to remember

1.  Regulation has a far higher impact on the life, quality of life and wealth of the citizenry than does taxation and transfers.  Depending on how whether you use conservative or radical estimates and how bad your tax bracket is, the numbers are somewhere between 2x and 40x differences.  Anyone talking about government problems in terms of transfers is playing in the kiddie pool.
2.  The preferences of the poor and middle class impact policy in America to a tune of precisely zero percent.  The rich get the tax rates they want and the regulations they want.

Forgetting either of these would severely skew your arguments.

War on the Poor

Sumner makes my disputed point from before much more eloquently.  Government programs mostly screw the poor and disadvantaged in favor of the rich and well off, as everyone this weekend is pointing out that Yglesias said.  If you go one further with the HBDism...most of the poor are minorities...which makes government mostly a war on the poor minorities...while doing a few other things on the side (killing people on the other side of the world).

QoTD

Arnold Kling:

I believe it helps to think in terms of two uses for reasoning. There is motivated reasoning, which is aimed at rationalizing one’s own actions and those of one’s favored group. And there is constructive reasoning, which is aimed at seeking the truth. The existence of motivated reasoning is well established in the literature on psychology and political beliefs. The existence of constructive reasoning is something that I take on faith.

Links

Two posts this time:

Mel links to Bruce Levine on how anti-authoritarians get psychiatric interventions:  Assume an arbitrary dystopia.

Yvain on Moldbuggery and divergent notions of power.