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Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overload

And what would give you this ability?

No, you just have to be able to tell which units fall under a concept and which don't.

The problem is that in order to achieve the kind of cognitive economy you described in your earlier post, you would have to define "human beings" as a (possibly infinite) list of names. Rand's notion of concept won't let you do that. Do you understand why you would have to do this in order for your scheme to work?

Why is there a problem with Rand's notion of "concept"?

I don't understand. Why is there a problem with what?

I was not claiming that the method by which I generated the list was a definition or anything like a definition. It is not. With Rand's notion of "concept" we can define "human beings" as "rational animals". Why is there a problem?

Interesting point, but you're a little bit off the mark. The problem here is that with Rand's notion of "concept" you may demonstrate that each of the above is a human being, but you can't define "human beings" as "SpookyKitty OR Doug Morris OR Necrovore OR DavidOdden OR... etc." But this example actually illustrates my point. In it, the underlying algorithm (the kind mentioned in my step 3 above) is so simple and so natural for our brains that we barely even recognize it as such. Explicitly, the algorithm (as a lambda expression) is: function name => name ++ " has the faculty of reason." and where the parameter space is over people's names. It's not a definition at all. It's just a particular kind of algorithm that kinda sorta looks like a definition.

We don't have to explicitly repeat the second step. We don't have to generate a data entry for each natural number, or for a lot of them. We don't perform induction in its proper sense of moving to something general from a sufficient accumulation of particular statements or observations. Once we've proven the basis step and the induction step, we can conclude deductively by the principle of mathematical induction that the statement is true for all natural numbers greater than or equal to our original small N.

It sort of does, but they are all copies. Mathematical proof by induction works like this: First, prove that the statement is true for some small N such as N = 1. Second, prove that, if it's true for N, it's true for N + 1. So if you've proved that a statement is true for N = 1, repeating the second step allows you to prove that it's true for N = 2, N = 3, and so on. So technically there is a "data entry" for each natural number, although all the "data entries" are similar because you are using the same step over and over. Technically the deduction part only goes as far as you take it, but you can choose how many times to repeat it, and therefore how high N is. The induction part comes into play when you realize that, since you can make N as high as you want, this means the original statement has been proven true for all N. That's the genius of mathematical induction -- it captures that induction in the form of a simple process that you can use over and over to try to prove or disprove different things. However, it is a special case. Not all inductions can be captured like that.

It does not require a data entry for each natural number, or even for a lot of them. It does not require access to any set. It requires access to the concept of a natural number. A concept is not a set. The purpose of a concept is to allow us to deal with its units without listing them individually.

Suppose our long list includes: "SpookyKitty has the faculty of reason. Doug Morris has the faculty of reason. Necrovore has the faculty of reason. DavidOdden has the faculty of reason." If we replace this with "Human beings have the faculty of reason." this shortens the long list and includes more than the original list included. Isn't this an example of cognitive economizing that Rand's theory can account for?

It requires access to the set of natural numbers, which is infinite, Q.E.D.

It's not an exception at all. Mathematical induction is a form of deduction, not a form of induction. In particular, mathematical induction does not require access to a very large data set.

I am happy to announce that my second book is now available for a select audience. Please register for alpha and beta release in the link. https://sites.google.com/view/reinventing-psychology/ Title of the book is Reinventing Psychology Using Objectivism: Exploring deepest foundations of self-esteem. Details can be viewed in the link, but here I would like to share the changes in my world view since publication of the first book 1. Better understanding of the market : While marketing the first, I was not clear about the intended audience. But now,for reasons mentioned in chapter 13 - Central Purpose of Life in Theory, I know my primary audience are Objectivist intellectuals, secondary are psychology and other intellectuals, then social and political activists (including fiction writers), and then curious but non intellectual individuals. 2. Better understanding of how culture changes : Again,as a result of insights in CPL in theory, and foundations from prior chapters, I now know that businesses and engineering alone cannot change culture, no matter how efficient, effective, and innovative. At best, business, engineering and political systems can slow or accelerate the cultural progress or decline. In order to move culture in the direction of rational ideas like Objectivism, the philosophy needs to be applied to subjects like Psychology, Sociology, even Theology, law, history, education, economics, etc. Only then can we have social movement, political movement, and then movement of businesses/engineering in a new direction. 3. Better understanding of mistaken premises of more than 20 years: Based on empirical data, but wrong interpretation, I was driven by the premise I corrected in (2.). That is, data showed significant social changes through business, engineering and politics in post-1991 India, post iPhone and post internet world, post ChatGpt tech etc. This was the premise which motivated me for my first book Reinventing Management. Even this second book was initially motivated by the premise of businesses and engineering as prime mover of culture. That is, I inferred that the psychology of business / engineering leaders was more fundamental than their management practices. Only now I realize the narrowness of my interpretation. I inferred what was a change in speed of culture due to businesses and politics, as a change in the direction of culture. This brings me to the final point. 4. The mistaken premise in (3.) was not limited to my choices as a writer. It cascaded into my professional choices. I considered businesses and associated people as mistaken but intrinsically good. Agreed, there are some decent people in business and even politics, but currently, business culture is driven mostly by those with irrational but consistent ideologies. (When such individuals reach the logical conclusion of their irrationality in the form of bad consequences for customers and employees, they double down instead of course correct ). Still, I am proud that when faced with specific contradictions due to wrong premises, I did not become a pragmatist and gave up on the principle of being principled. Or like Communists started considering myself like a victim. Instead, I acted on what I thought were the right ideas badly applied, and continued. That is, until I independently became aware of my ideological shortcomings. The 5 years I spent in writing this second book, reflect ideas I discovered and presented in the book. Standing on the shoulders of giants...

Part of that objective could have been effected already, by the financial and other international mechanisms that isolate Iran. But had to be ~sustained~ for the long term, not that on-again-off-again version of foreign policy we have seen. And then militarily by swift and dreadful retaliation and airstrikes or assassinations, case by case, by "the international community" at every terror or other assault connected to Iran. That defeat and "total victory", meaning I guess a self-sacrificial invasion, overthrow, occupation and "democratization" of the enemy nation would become moot. (The "proportionality" anti-concept keeps repeating. Right now from Biden warning Israel. Sort of, don't hurt them more than they hurt you. No, a defensive response to an attack must be disproportionate; it must give an enemy hesitation in repeating further attacks, IOW, it must DETER. By which means lives are saved down the line (including enemy civilian lives). To agree with Journo, a "moral-philosophic" policy was absent in handling Iran (etc,) and terrorism in general. The War on Terror, badly conceived of and excecuted back then has created a greater crisis now -- one, Israel has to deal with alone. The West wins hearts and minds when such people eventually resign to the fact they have nothing to gain but much to lose from an insane ideology that means to eventually convert the Infidel and reign supreme on Earth.

Indeed. I'm going to make a thread about induction at some point in the future. The definition in the OP allows for two kinds of induction which feed each other. The first, induction over concepts, leads to the discovery of concepts which terminate on more input parameters, thereby forcing the background theory to undergo more tests. This will lead to the faster rejection of false premises. The second, induction over background theories, leads to the discovery of more accurate theories. In the short term, the effect on concepts is unpredictable, it can make them terminate on more or less input parameters. In the long term, however, more and more premises will have to be added to the theory, meaning more sentences will be provable in the theory, meaning that concepts will be able to terminate on more and more input parameters, making them "sharper".

Peikoff said in his lectures about induction that he doesn't think induction can be done symbolically. Formal systems are usually only deductive. (The only exception I can think of is "proof by mathematical induction" and I think that's a special case.) In general, you can't write an "inductive syllogism." The system I described earlier in this thread (where concepts are described as functions) is incomplete because it doesn't include a mechanism for induction but rather shows how the results of that mechanism might be usefully organized. An old TRS-80 can do deduction faster than we can. However, so far, the only way machines can begin to perform induction is through neural networks and such (which means they are doing emulations of what we have been doing). It has only recently become practical to implement neural networks large enough to even try this. Induction is very different from deduction in several respects, and one respect in particular is that induction requires access to a very large data set (whereas a deductive syllogism has only a few propositions). The size of the neural networks necessary to attempt induction is related to this. I also think that induction can be a "trial and error" thing where it might take several attempts at forming a concept or a generalization in order to get it right. Inductive reasoning has to be checked against reality. There is also a feedback loop in play where, through experience (of reality), you can refine your concepts and generalizations, to make them even more accurate.

(c) There is a conceptual flaw in it. Yes, concepts are necessary. Yes, Rand's theory does explain some degree of cognitive economy. No, it is not sufficient. Yes, that is a serious problem, because no, it cannot serve as a foundation of a theory of human knowledge. And this is because there is a serious conceptual flaw in it. Is my position clear now? You seem to have a lot of trouble grasping meta-theoretical abstractions, so I will guide you through it by the hand. First, write out a list of facts. It can be as long or as short as you want, but it must have some length. Abstract out the language these facts are written. All of them must be written in some language (and the same language, preferably) but can be written in any language. All languages have words consisting of symbols of some sort which correspond to concepts and these concepts have definitions. We omit the specific nature of the concepts and their definitions themselves, and we retain only the fact that a concept is a piece of cognitive data that is "defined by" another, longer piece of data. We also omit the specific nature of the referents of each of these concepts, retaining only the fact that they must have some referents. Next, take this abstract list of abstract facts and expand out all of the abstract words of this abstract language with the abstract definitions of the abstract concepts as far as it is possible to go. Since all concepts eventually reduce to the perceptual level, the above abstract process must terminate in a list of extremely long sequences of abstract symbols (standing for abstracted perceptual level and abstracted axiomatic concepts) representing abstracted perceptual level facts. These are the 10001001011011011's. You will now have an arbitrarily long list of extremely long abstracted perceptual level facts. By using the abstracted definitions of the abstracted concepts, i.e.: concept: 'a' definition: '01110010101' You can shorten each entry in this list a considerable deal. This is the kind and degree of cognitive economy that Rand's theory can account for. BUT This abstract mechanism cannot shorten the list itself! If your list started out with 19,392 entries, then, after you do as much cognitive economizing as Rand's theory can account for, you will remain with a list of exactly 19,392 entries. And yet, we know that the list can be made much shorter. In fact, it is possible to represent an infinitely long list of facts using only finitely many symbols. This is what human reason can do, and Rand's theory cannot explain this phenomenon.

You implied that you had an alternative theory of concepts. The logically prior question is “So what?”, the answer might be (a) It amuses me, (b) there is an empirical flaw in the existing theory or (c) there is a conceptual flaw in it. These are the three intellectually-legitimate reasons for proposing an alternative. To be more specific about (a), it is also a legitimate exercise to determine that some equally-good alternative is possible, which is different from trolling where one is amused at how clever one is at evading the question. Whatever rationale you have, an absolute prerequisite for any theory comparison is having a correctly-represented standard against which the competitor is measured. The standard of comparison is Rand’s theory of concepts, a specific thing that we know. It is not a conjectured theory of logic or propositions, which Rand did not write. It is nonsense to criticise her for not presenting a theory of symbolic logic and propositions, because that was not her goal. As I have explained above, by definition Rand’s theory of concepts achieves cognitive economy, which is a fundamental insight into concepts. Hundreds of millions of instances of dog can now be entered into propositions, sentences and discussions simply by uttering the word “dog”. A huge savings, it even allows you to refer to things that you have not directly experienced! ITOE serves as an inspiration to further cognitive economization, where we can understand recursion in terms of cognitive economy – I won’t bother to list all of the ways in which “standing for” and “abstraction” play an essential role in human cognition. Your newest line of attack is against what you think Rand thought concepts are. Presumably you can cite parts of ITOE which might even accurately summarize her view. You complain that “The kind of thing that she thinks concepts are is not and can never be sufficient to capture the breadth and depth of human knowledge”. So what? Concepts are a necessary fact, not a sufficient fact. It seems that you have not been paying attention to what I’ve been telling you, that her theory is the foundation of a theory of human knowledge, not a complete theory itself. I have invited you to contemplate subsequent contributions by Binswanger and Kelley which move the project forward. There does exist a real problem that has been ignored by all, that the mind does not operate in terms of symbolic propositions as you might learn in Phil. 250. An expression like (∀Fi∈G ([(Fn)1] ≠ [(Fn)2] has no referent in the real world (it is a floating abstraction, a formula not related to any existent). 10a1aa11c11, b0011a0101a00b, c00ada00 are meaningless, they have no referent. Perhaps you have in mind some secret referent and can point us to an instance of 10a1aa11c11, but I’m not interested in playing a guessing game, I imagine there are puzzle-solving fora where people get off on that sort of stuff. Objectivism take existence as primary, and cognitive analysis to depends on existents. Therefore, you need to identify what thing 10a1aa11c11 represents, likewise b0011a0101a00b, then we can evaluate Rand’s theory of that representation versus yours.

A Friday Hodgepodge Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner. *** 1. I'll start with a win for today. By leveraging a log review for blogging purposes, I caught myself letting a tax matter fall through the cracks. We could have already been done, but getting it done today is great, too. Chalk another one up for regular log reviews. And blogging. And multi-purposing things. 2. This one's good for the awwwwww! factor alone: Our new kitten sometimes sleeps on my pillow next to my head. Image by Yunus Tuğ, via Unsplash, license.3. The kids are no longer toddlers and I needed a new grill after the move. That was only ever going to mean one thing: I'm back to grilling with charcoal! As I've said before, gas is more convenient in a lot of respects, but the taste with charcoal is superior, and I enjoy using charcoal more. 4. I enjoyed seeing Arsenal dig in and win 4-2 after Leicester City scored two goals out of thin air during a short span of the second half. My favorite commentator on Arsenal, Peter Wood, does well to describe the overall performance and impressive reaction to the setback:The team didn't play the victim. There was no panic in the system. They just accepted the job was to score, and they pummelled that task hardcore. It was a destruction zone out there -- but the Leicester keeper Hermansen was putting on a worldie, and it really did start to feel like they weren't going to find a way. Then it arrived in the 94th minute. From a corner, the ball found Trossard at the back post, he put it back into the danger zone, and it was turned in by Leicester. Three minutes later, Kai Havertz capitalised on a poor clearance and made it 4. 36 shots. 16 on target. 4.62 xG. This was a battering of exceptional proportions...I remember talking with another fan before halftime about how solidly the Gunners were in control of the game, and then how they just kept on with it. If anything has struck me more than the impressive record the team has amassed over the last couple of years under Mikel Arteta, it has been the mentality behind it. -- CAVLink to Original

So that confusion will be minimized.

My complaint, I will state it again, is, as we can clearly see from the way Rand defines the notion of "concept", it being severely limited in the ways that I've explained above, there is simply no way that her epistemology can possibly account for the degree of cognitive economy that it purports to. None of this has anything to do with natural language production, the composition of meanings and other things that neither Rand nor I addressed. It has to do, fundamentally, with what she thinks concepts are. The kind of thing that she thinks concepts are is not and can never be sufficient to capture the breadth and depth of human knowledge. Therefore, we need a different definition of "concept". Well I'm starting with concepts. Are you saying that concepts don't exist? What floating abstraction? Why would I model something with no specific properties? What is your complaint? I'm more confused about it than ever.

Spooky Kitty, why are you taking such a formalized approach?

This brings to my mind the American composer Charles Ives. I understand he didn't want to make composing his way of making money because he feared that would pressure him away from artistic integrity. So he sold insurance for a living.