Capitalismo e Mercados

We are used to thinking of such bureaucratic interventions­ particularly the monopolies and regulations - as state restriction on "the market" - owing to the prevailing prejudice that sees markets as quasi-natural phenomena that emerge by themselves, and governments as having no role other than to squelch or siphon from them. I have repeatedly pointed out how mistaken this is, but China provides a particularly striking example. The Confucian state may have been the world's greatest and most enduring bureaucracy, but it actively pro­moted markets, and as a result, commercial life in China soon became far more sophisticated, and markets more developed, than anywhere else in the world. This despite the fact that Confucian orthodoxy was overtly hostile to merchants and even the profit motive itself. Commercial profit was seen as legitimate only as compensation for the labor that merchants expended in transporting goods from one place to another, but never as fruits of speculation. What this meant in practice was that they were pro-market but anti-capitalist. Again, this seems bizarre, since we're used to assuming that capital­ ism and markets are the same thing, but, as the great French historian Fernand Braude! pointed out, in many ways they could equally well be conceived as opposites. While markets are ways of exchanging goods through the medium of money-historically, ways for those with a surplus of grain to acquire candles and vice versa (in economic shorthand, C-M-C', for commodity-money-other commodity)-capitalism is first and foremost the art of using money to get more money (M-C-M'). Normally, the easiest way to do this is by establishing some kind of formal or de facto monopoly. For this reason, capitalists, whether merchant princes, financiers, or industrialists, invariably try to ally them­selves with political authorities to limit the freedom of the market, so as to make it easier for them to do so. From this perspective, China was for most of its history the ultimate anti-capitalist market state. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years

O mito da Quimera

A quimera na mitologia Grega era um monstro fêmea, uma mistura de leão, cabra e cobra com um terrível bafo de fogo. Foi morta pelo herói Belerofonte com a ajuda de Pégaso, o cavalo alado.

Nas lendas existem vários animais quiméricos, misturas de dois ou mais animais, como a Esfinge, o Minotauro, os Centauros, as Hárpias... Estas são instâncias mais velhas do mito do herói e do dragão e, elas próprias, ecos de mitos ainda mais antigos. Por exemplo, numa imagem de um tempo Babilónico observamos a luta de uma leão alado com um herói igualmente capaz de voar [1].

Mas qual o significado do mito, para além do óbvio tropo "herói corajoso mata monstro assustador" transformado em cliché por tantos livros, filmes e séries de TV? Ugo Bardi [2] sugere que o mito espelha a perene luta entre a humanidade e a natureza, entre o desejo de uma ordem para a sociedade e o medo do caos incontrolável e desconhecido do mundo selvagem. A relevância deste mito e desta luta, nos dias que correm, é a vitória esmagadora que os Homens estão a infligir ao nomeado «monstro». Só que, ironicamente, precisamos do monstro para sobreviver.  Sem uma ecosfera funcional, a Humanidade arrisca-se a desaparecer. Também Belerofone, o assassino da Quimera, morreu cego, aleijado, miserável.

[1] http://www.unifi.it/surfchem/solid/bardi/chimera/origins.html
[2] http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.pt/2012/06/making-peace-with-our-chimeras.html

Xeque

Muitos historiadores e sociólogos do conhecimento afirmam com segurança que toda pesquisa é tendenciosa. Pergunto-me como esse fato foi descoberto. Não é tautológico ou mesmo autoevidente. Certamente foi preciso investigação -- isto é,pesquisa -- para descobri-lo. Mas na medida em que a pesquisa é tendenciosa, as conclusões a que ela chega não merecem confiança. Assim, essa conclusão, a de que toda pesquisa é tendenciosa, se correta, não tem de merecer confiança. E, naturalmente, se estiver incorreta, então também não merece confiança. Portanto, não merece confiança. Poderia ser verdadeira, mas não podemos ter boas razões para pensar que seja.

 Jarret Leplin, A novel defense of scientific realism; Oxford University Press, 1997. [via Blog da Crítica]

Vendilhões

Se um governo vendesse periodicamente os tesouros nacionais para manter o nível de vida dos cidadãos que representa, a maioria consideraria, com razão, ser este um comportamento irresponsável e insustentável. No entanto, é exactamente isto que fazemos com as nossas reservas energéticas.

A Ideologia do Cancer

"I once heard Paul Ehrlich remark that if an engineer proposed a design for an aircraft with a constantly expanding crew, we would think him mad. And yet, when an economist defends a theory that posits a perpetually growing global economy, he is awarded a Nobel Prize. Notwithstanding that, "perpetual growth" is unknown in the natural world. In the words of the novelist Edward Abbey, "the ideology of constant growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." It is an ideology that leads to the death both of the cancer and its host." - Ernest Partridge 

Encontro com a realidade

"to those who will not have the benefit of two billion years’ accumulated energy reserves"

Podem descarregar o livro aqui. E vão-se preparando: isto não vai ser bonito...

[edit] "At present it’s much cheaper to buy a new microwave, DVD player, or vacuum cleaner than to get a malfunctioning one fixed. That’s crazy. This craziness is partly caused by our tax system, which taxes the labour of the microwave-repair man, and surrounds his business with time-consuming paperwork. He’s doing a good thing, repairing my microwave! – yet the tax system makes it difficult for him to do business. The idea of “greening the tax system” is to move taxes from “goods” like labour, to “bads” like environmental damage. Advocates of environmental tax reform suggest balancing tax cuts on “goods” by equivalent tax increases on “bads,” so that the tax reforms are revenue-neutral." (pg.225)

Vida

One Shot

"It has been often said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ore gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only." Fred Hoyle

Eutanásia e Soylent Green

"[...] All hypocrisy aside [Soylent Green] speaks to another area of future shock that's dear to my heart: the the death with dignity right to die. GREEN has the best assisted suicide scene in all cinema! When Eddie G. can't stand it no more, he heads off to 'Home' - a giant white (air-conditioned!) edifice that draws the shambling old city dwellers in like the light at the end of a filthy smog-encrusted, rat-crowded tunnel. It's no coincidence that once one decides to shuffle off their mortal coil everything becomes suddenly magical and precious. Heston finally cries when he sees the Cinemascope vistas that only the voluntary suicides are allowed access to in the magic chamber. Beforehand, when you enter "Home"; a man and a woman in white flowing robes let you pick the color of the blazing light you want to subsume you in the chamber.

I love that retro-futuristic suicide chamber so much I want to live there! I want to encourage the building of just such a room as a place not just for dying, but tripping... instead of the usual clinical hospital setting where most legally approved medical experiment therapeutic tripping is done. In fact, if you substitute exposed brick for one of the walls and make the screen just a tiny smaller, and put the bed on the floor, it would look a lot like my old apartment!

Most of all I wish my 100 year -old granny could have access to an assisted suicide set-up like that one. They won't let her just die in her nursing home, just because she's fairly healthy for a 100 year old woman... it's just she's bored. She can barely hear or see anymore, and can't walk because of a bad hip, and can't really think straight for long periods... I know she'd at least like to have the option, as she meanders through the years; her own mom died at 107--and the last17 years (!) kind of sucked) the doctors are hovering to make sure she sticks around in this earthly, withered form as long as possible.

It's ironic that our collective denial of death has sealed the doom of this planet and made dying so unpleasant. Western medical science is convinced dying is a violation of our basic human liberties, and they're too busy curing every disease nature can come up with to consider whether they've doomed us all in the process. It's left for hundredth monkeys like me and Chuck Heston to ask the tough questions and make the grisly suggestions." Erich Kuersten

Filosofia

"[...] There are things I know I learned from studying philosophy. The most dramatic I learned immediately, in the first semester of freshman year, in a class taught by Sydney Shoemaker. I learned that I don't exist. I am (and you are) a collection of cells that lurches around driven by various forces, and calls itself I. But there's no central, indivisible thing that your identity goes with. You could conceivably lose half your brain and live. Which means your brain could conceivably be split into two halves and each transplanted into different bodies. Imagine waking up after such an operation. You have to imagine being two people.

The real lesson here is that the concepts we use in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard. Even a concept as dear to us as I. It took me a while to grasp this, but when I did it was fairly sudden, like someone in the nineteenth century grasping evolution and realizing the story of creation they'd been told as a child was all wrong. [2] Outside of math there's a limit to how far you can push words; in fact, it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings. Everyday words are inherently imprecise. They work well enough in everyday life that you don't notice. Words seem to work, just as Newtonian physics seems to. But you can always make them break if you push them far enough.

I would say that this has been, unfortunately for philosophy, the central fact of philosophy. Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean by "free." Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by "exist." Paul Graham

Questões menores?

"Words like "maximize" or "minimize" are disdained by the great thinkers among us as they are associated with common problems, not ultimate ones. But there are some evils we can minimize or even prevent, regardless of the ultimate origin of evil. I think it is clear that we should emphasize addressing common problems. Perhaps we'll find that when common problems have been resolved the ultimate ones will no longer interest us." Ciceronianus

Origens

"As enunciated by classic thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Mill, liberalism holds that the legitimacy of state authority derives from the state’s ability to protect the individual rights of its citizens and that state power needs to be limited by the adherence to law. One of the fundamental rights to be protected is that of private property; England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 was critical to the development of modern liberalism because it first established the constitutional principle that the state could not legitimately tax its citizens without their consent.

At first, liberalism did not necessarily imply democracy. The Whigs who supported the constitutional settlement of 1689 tended to be the wealthiest property owners in England; the parliament of that period represented less than ten percent of the whole population. Many classic liberals, including Mill, were highly skeptical of the virtues of democracy: they believed that responsible political participation required education and a stake in society -- that is, property ownership. Up through the end of the nineteenth century, the franchise was limited by property and educational requirements in virtually all parts of Europe. Andrew Jackson’s election as U.S. president in 1828 and his subsequent abolition of property requirements for voting, at least for white males, thus marked an important early victory for a more robust democratic principle." Francis Fukuyama

Impotência

"Se uma pessoa decide ir contra os factos da História e contra os factos da Ciência e da Tecnologia, não há muito que possamos fazer por ela. Na maioria dos casos, sinto apenas pena por termos falhado na sua educação" -- Harrison Schmitt

Limites e Influências

[An] ethical theory, explicit belief about right and wrong, is not omnipotent in determining our behavior, but it is influential. Good theories of ethics can encourage us to behave well; bad theories can promote correspondingly unethical behavior. Grounding ethics in reciprocal altruism unduly encourages selfishness; ultimate reliance on social, legal, or religious tradition or authority tends to entrench the oppressive or persecutorial aspects of those institutions; and perhaps most insidiously, denial that there is a rational foundation for ethics exerts influence toward ethical relativism, which tends to imply that any adopted ethical standard is as good as any other—and thence toward ethical nihilism, the doctrine that there is no real distinction between right and wrong. - Gary L Drescher, Good and Real.

Definições e Abusos

[A] definition can be anything we choose. But the arbitrariness of definitions doesn’t make truth arbitrary. Rather, it just means that in order to understand which proposition it is whose truth we’re being asked about, we need to know what the words mean. Once again, it is just a matter of pinning down the meaning in order to pin down the truth. [...] whenever something substantive seems to depend on a choice of definition—for example, if whether to take a contemplated action seems to depend on whether the action falls within the scope of some proposed definition of right—we should suspect that a tacit definition is being smuggled in, and a sleight-of-hand substitution of the tacit definition for the explicit one is occurring. Here’s a good diagnostic technique: define some made-up word in place of the familiar one that is being defined, and see what apparent difference that substitution makes. [...] A definition is just an arbitrary association between a symbol and a concept; it has nothing to do with what is true or false about the world. [...] If concepts yielded to our attempts to equate them just by our proclaiming definitions in that manner, then definitions would be like magic spells, capable by their mere incantation of somehow rearranging the substantive facts of the world. Obviously, definitions have no such power. [We need arguments, not definitions] [e.g. ownership] A supporter of libertarian capitalism may argue that you are morally entitled to use your own property for your exclusive benefit, because such entitlement is the very definition of the word own. But by that definition, you have not established that anything is your own until you have (somehow) established that you are morally entitled to use it for your exclusive benefit. However, there is another definition of own that is often implicitly smuggled in—roughly, that if you have obtained an item by purchasing it, inheriting it, building it, and so forth, then you own it. Sleight-of-hand alternation between the explicit and implicit definition creates the illusion of having established that whatever you build, purchase, inherit, and so forth, you are necessarily entitled to use for your exclusive benefit. [You need to argue that the latter implies the former]. - Gary L Drescher, Good and Real.

Atribuição

Um modelo científico não é verdadeiro ou falso. Ele pode ser adequado à evidência relevante, passível ou não de estabelecer predições, coerente internamente e ainda, espera-se, compatível com o corpo científico relacionado. É sobre estas propriedades que devemos avaliar um dado modelo, não se ele corresponde à verdade. Qualquer modelo, qualquer conceito dele derivado, qualquer crença estruturada, é uma narrativa, um conjunto de construções cognitivas socialmente construídas e biologicamente limitadas. O mesmo não se pode dizer dos respectivos referentes, aos quais apenas temos impressões indirectas, projecções incompletas sobre os efeitos que produzem. Esta é a componente real que tentamos entender e sobre a qual há pouco a dizer (imagino a epistemologia como um corpo de conhecimento imensamente maior que o da ontologia). E este entendimento é procurado seja através das impressões subjectivas do que é a verdade -- pelo respeito da tradição, pelas diversas convicções colectivamente chamadas fé --, seja através da abordagem empírica e racionalmente crítica que designamos por método científico. Ou, muitas vezes, por uma mistura das duas.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies IV

Collapse then is not a fall to some primordial chaos, but a return to the normal human condition of lower complexity. The notion that collapse is uniformly a catastrophe is contradicted, moreover, by the present theory. To the extent that collapse is due to declining marginal returns on investment in complexity, it is a economizing process. It occurs when it becomes necessary to restore the marginal return on organizational investment to a more favorable level. [...] In a situation where the marginal utility of still greater complexity would be too low, collapse is a economical alternative.

[...]

Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum. Collapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration. Where such a competitor does exist there can be no collapse, for the competitor will expand territorially to administer the population left leaderless. Collapse is not the same thing as change of regime. Where peer polities interact collapse will affect all equally, and when it occurs, provided that no outside competitor is powerful enough to absorb all. [...] there are major differences between the current and the ancient worlds that have important implications for collapse. One of these is that the world today is full. That is to say, it is filled by complex societies; these occupy every sector of the globe, except the most desolate. This is a new factor in human history. Complex societies as a whole are a recent and unusual aspect of human life. The current situation, where all societies are so oddly constituted, is unique. [...] There are no power vacuums left today. Every nation is linked to, and influenced by, the major powers, and most are strongly linked with one power bloc or the other. [...] Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies III

Any complex hierarchy must allocate a portion of its resource base to solving the problems of the population it administers, but must also set aside resources to solve problems created by its own existence, and created by virtue of overall societal complexity. Prior to the development of modern welfare states it is likely that these increased administrative costs did little for the population as a whole other than to maintain some semblance of basic needs. And often even that was not accomplished. To maintain growth in complexity, hierarchies levy heavier taxes on their populations. At some point even this yields declining marginal returns. This happens when rates are so high that avoidance increases, and taxation-induced infation erodes the value of the money collected.

Rulers [...] must constantly legitimize their reigns. Legitimizing activities include such things as external defense and internal order, alleviating the effects of local productivity fluctuations, undertaking local development projects, and providing food and entertainment (as in Imperial Rome) for urban masses. In many cases the productivity of these legitimizing investments will decline. Whatever activities a hierarchy undertakes initially to bond a population to itself (providing defense, agricultural development, public works, bread and circuses, and the like) often thereafter become de rigueur, so that further bonding activities are at higher cost, with little or no additional benefit to the hierarchy. [...] The alternative course is to reduce legitimizing activities and increase other means of behavioral control. Yet in such situations, as resources committed to benefits decline, resources committed to control must increase. Although quantitative cost/beneft data for such control systems are rare, it seems reasonable to infer that as the costs of coercion increase, the benefits (in the form of population compliance) probably do not grow proportionately [...] These remarks are not meant to suggest that social evolution carries no benefits, nor that the marginal product of social complexity always declines. The marginal product of any investment declines only after a certain point; prior to that point benefits increase faster than costs. Very often, though, societies do reach a level where continued investment in complexity yields a declining marginal return. At that point the society is investing heavily in an evolutionary course that is becoming less and less productive, where at increased cost it is able to do little more than maintain the status quo.

[...]

For human societies, the best key to continued socioeconomic growth, and to avoiding or circumventing (or at least financing) declines in marginal productivity, is to obtain a new energy subsidy when it becomes apparent that marginal productivity is beginning to drop. Among modern societies this has been accomplished by tapping fossil fuel reserves and the atom. Among societies without the technical springboard necessary for such development, the usual temptation is to acquire an energy subsidy through territorial expansion.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies II

[I]ntensification in agriculture and resource production follows a pattern of declining marginal productivity [...] rationally-acting human populations will first exploit those resources that yield the best return per unit of effort, and still meet the needs of the population. If this is so, then it follows that any change in resource extraction must be in the direction of using resources that are more costly to obtain, process, distribute, and/or market, so that the marginal product of labor and other inputs declines. Thus, hunters and gatherers first exploit foods that are higher in nutritional value, and easier to obtain and process, than resources that are less favorable for these characteristics [...] In other spheres of resource extraction, minerals and energy forms can be ranked in terms of their ease of discovery, extraction, processing, and use. Resources that rank higher in these dimensions will be used before resources that don't, and when these are no longer sufficient, secondary resources will be employed. [...] Among whatever set of resources a population obtains, for whatever reasons, the law of diminishing returns is likely to apply. As demand for a commodity grows, increased production will at some point mean depletion or insuffciency of the least costly sources. At that point, more costly sources must be used, with declining marginal returns.

Tainter - The collapse of complex societies I

Despite a institutionalized authority structure, an ideological basis, and a monopoly of force, the rulers of states share at least one thing with chiefs and Big Men: the need to establish and constantly reinforce legitimacy. In complex as well as simpler societies, leadership activities and societal resources must be continuously devoted to this purpose. Hierarchy and complexity, as noted, are rare in human history, and where present require constant reinforcement. No societal leader is ever far from the need to validate position and policy, and no hierarchical society can be organized without explicit provision for this need.

Legitimacy is the belief of the populace and the elites that rule is proper and valid, that the political world is as it should be. It pertains to individual rulers, to decisions, to broad policies, to parties, and to entire forms of government. The support that members are willing to extend to a political system is essential for its survival. Decline in support will not necessarily lead to the fall of a regime, for to a certain extent coercion can replace commitment to ensure compliance. Coercion, though, is a costly, ineffective strategy which can never be completely or permanently successful. Even with coercion, decline in popular support below some critical minimum leads infallibly to political failure. Establishing moral validity is a less costly and more effective approach.

Nacionalismo

[...] There is however a less obvious, but far more important difference between nationalism and familial favoritism: Despite its mighty evolutionary basis, almost everyone recognizes moral strictures against familial favoritism. Almost everyone knows that “It would help my son” is not a good reason to commit murder, break someone’s arm, or steal. Indeed, almost everyone knows that “It would help my son” is not a good reason for even petty offenses – like judging a Tae Kwon Do tournament unfairly because your son’s a contestant.

Nationalism, in contrast, is widely seen as an acceptable excuse for horrific crimes against outgroups. Do you plan to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign civilians? Just say, “It will save American [German/Japanese/Russian/whatever] lives” – and other members of your tribe will nod their heads. Do you want to deprive millions of foreigners of the basic human rights to sell their labor to willing buyers, rent apartments from willing landlords, and buy groceries from willing merchants? Just say, “It’s necessary to protect American jobs” in a self-righteous tone, then bask in the admiration of your fellow citizens - Bryan Caplan [via Café Hayek]

Falácia de Projecção Mental

Alfred North Whitehead no seu livro Process and Reality de 1929 apresentou o que ficou conhecido como The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness:

neglecting the degree of abstraction involved when an actual entity is considered merely so far as it exemplifies certain categories of thought (pg.11).

Este é um aviso sobre o erro de confundir o abstracto com o concreto. Esta ideia possui várias denominações. Talvez a mais conhecida seja a de Alfred Korzybski, 'O mapa não é o território'.

A este mesmo problema E.T. Jaynes designou por Falácia de Projecção Mental. No texto seguinte Jaynes usa-o para discutir as interpretações da teoria quântica e como a confusão entre estes dois níveis -- entre ontologia e epistemologia -- pode ter estado na origem do célebre desacordo de que deus não joga aos dados entre Einstein e Bohr:

The failure of quantum theorists to distinguish in calculations between several quite different meanings of 'probability', between expectation values and actual values, makes us do things that don't need to be done; and to fail to do things that do need to be done. We fail to distinguish in our verbiage between prediction and measurement. For example, the famous vague phrases: 'It is impossible to specify...'; or 'It is impossible to define...' can be interpreted equally well as statements about prediction or statements about measurement. Thus the demonstrably correct statement that the present formalism cannot predict something becomes perverted into the logically unjustified (and almost certainly false) claim that the experimentalist cannot measure it!

We routinely commit the Mind Projection Fallacy: supposing that creations of our own imagination are real properties of Nature, or that our own ignorance signifies some indecision on the part of Nature. It is then impossible to agree on the proper place of information in physics. This muddying up of the distinction between reality and our knowledge of reality is carried to the point where we find some otherwise rational physicists, on the basis of the Bell inequality experiments, asserting the objective reality of probabilities, while denying the objective reality of atoms! These sloppy habits of language have tricked us into mystical, pre-scientific standards of logic, and leave the meaning of any QM result ambiguous. Yet from decades of trial-and-error we have managed to learn how to calculate with enough art and tact so that we come out with the right numbers!

The main suggestion we wish to make is that how we look at basic probability theory has deep implications for the Bohr-Einstein positions. Only since 1988 has it appeared to the writer that we might be able finally to resolve these matters in the happiest way imaginable: a reconciliation of the views of Bohr and Einstein in which we can see that they were both right in the essentials, but just thinking on different levels.

Einstein's thinking is always on the ontological level traditional in physics; trying to describe the realities of Nature. Bohr's thinking is always on the epistemological level, describing not reality but only our information about reality. The peculiar flavor of his language arises from the absence of all words with any ontological import. J. C. Polkinghorne (1989, pp. 78,79) came independently to this same conclusion about the reason why physicists have such difficulty in reading Bohr. He quotes Bohr as saying:

"There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature."

[...] Bohr would chide both Wigner and Oppenheimer for asking ontological questions, which he held to be illegitimate. Those who, like Einstein (and, up until recently, the present writer) tried to read ontological meaning into Bohr's statements, were quite unable to comprehend his message. This applies not only to his critics but equally to his disciples, who undoubtedly embarrassed Bohr considerably by offering such ontological explanations as "Instantaneous quantum jumps are real physical events." or "The variable is created by the act of measurement.", or the remark of Pauli quoted above, which might be rendered loosely as "Not only are you and I ignorant of x and p; Nature herself does not know what they are."

We disagree strongly with one aspect of Bohr's quoted statement above; in our view, the existence of a real world that was not created in our imagination, and which continues to go about its business according to its own laws, independently of what humans think or do, is the primary experimental fact of all, without which there would be no point to physics or any other science.

The whole purpose of science is learn what that reality is and what its laws are. On the other hand, we can see in Bohr's statement a very important fact, not sufficiently appreciated by scientists today as a necessary part of that program to learn about reality. Any theory about reality can have no consequences testable by us unless it can also describe what humans can see and know. For example, special relativity theory implies that it is fundamentally impossible for us to have knowledge of any event that lies outside our past light cone. Although our ultimate goal is ontological, the process of achieving that goal necessarily involves the acquisition and processing of human information. This information processing aspect of science has not, in our view, been sufficiently stressed by scientists (including Einstein himself, although we do not think that he would have rejected the idea).

Although Bohr's whole way of thinking was very different from Einstein's, it does not follow that either was wrong. In the writer's present view, all of Einstein's thinking (in particular the EPR argument) remains valid today, when we take into account its ontological purpose and character. But today, when we are beginning to consider the role of information for science in general, it may be useful to note that we are finally taking a step in the epistemological direction that Bohr was trying to point out sixty years ago.

But our present QM formalism is not purely epistemological; it is a peculiar mixture describing in part realities of Nature, in part incomplete human information about Nature - all scrambled up by Heisenberg and Bohr into an omelette that nobody has seen how to unscramble. Yet we think that the unscrambling is a prerequisite for any further advance in basic physical theory. For, if we cannot separate the subjective and objective aspects of the formalism, we cannot know what we are talking about; it is just that simple. E.T. Jaynes, Probability in Quantum Theory (1996).

Adaptação

"[The Dis] wanted their civilization to last forever— that's the one thing we do know about them. They built for the ages in everything they did. The evidence is that they did last a very long time— maybe eighty million years. But early on, they discovered a disquieting truth we are only just learning ourselves. It is this: Sentience and toolmaking abilities are powerful ways for a species to move into a new ecological niche. But in the long run, sentient, toolmaking beings are never the fittest species for a given niche. What I mean is, if you need tools to survive, you're not well fitted to your environment. And if you no longer need to use tools, you'll eventually lose the capacity to create them. It doesn't matter how smart you are, or how well you plan: Over the longest of the long term, millions of years, species that have evolved to be comfortable in a particular environment will always win out. And by definition, a species that's well fitted to a given environment is one that doesn't need tools to survive in it.

[...]

"It's the same with consciousness. We know now that it evolves to enable a species to deal with unforeseen situations. By definition, anything we've mastered becomes instinctive. Walking is not something we have to consciously think about, right? Well, what about physics, chemistry, social engineering? If we have to think about them, we haven't mastered them— they are still troublesome to us. A species that succeeds in really mastering something like physics has no more need to be conscious of it. Quantum mechanics becomes an instinct, the way ballistics already is for us. Originally, we must have had to put a lot of thought into throwing things like rocks or spears. We eventually evolved to be able to throw without thinking— and that is a sign of things to come. Some day, we'll become like the people of Dis, able to maintain a technological infrastructure without needing to think about it. Without needing to think, at all…

"The builders of Dis faced a dilemma: The best way to survive in the long run on any world they colonized was to adapt yourself to the environment. The best survivors would be those who no longer needed technology to get by. They tried to outlaw such alterations, but how do you do such a thing for the long term without suppressing the scientific knowledge that makes it possible? Over tens or thousands of millennia, you can only do this by suppressing all technological development, because technologies intertwine. This tactic results in the same spiral into nontechnological life. So inevitably, subspecies appeared that were better survivors in a given locale, because they didn't need technology in that locale. This happened every time, on all their worlds.

"The inhabitants of Dis had studied previous starfaring species. The records are hard to decipher, but I found evidence that all previous galactic civilizations had succumbed to the same internal contradictions. The Dis-builders tried to avoid their fate, but over the ages they were replaced on all their worlds by fitter offspring. These descendents had no need for tools, for culture, for historical records. They and their environment were one. The conscious, spacefaring species could always come back and take over easily from them. But given enough time… and time always passes… the same end result would occur. They would be replaced again. And so they saw that their very strength, the highest attainments they as a species had achieved, contained the seeds of their downfall.

"This discovery finally explained to us why toolmaking species are rare to begin with. It takes an unusual combination of factors to create a species that is fit enough to survive, but at the same time is so unfit in its native environment that it must turn to its weakest organ, its brain, for help. Reliance on tools is a tremendous handicap for any species; only a few manage to turn it into an asset.

"The builders of Dis knew they were doomed. We all are: technological civilization represents a species' desperate attempt to build a bubble to keep hostile environments at bay. Sentient species also never cooperate with one another over the long term, because the environments they need in order to live are incompatible. Some, like the Chicxulub, accept this easily and try to exterminate everyone else. Even they can't stop their own evolution and so eventually they cease to be starfaring species. Destruction or devolution are the only choices."

Karl Schroeder - Permanence

Perfeito, Imperfeito

O teorema de Bayes mostra como se deve integrar nova evidência ao conhecimento prévio já adquirido. A sua aplicação determina exactamente como a inferência e a aprendizagem podem ser optimizadas. Porém, não é assim que a cognição humana funciona. Para entender esta são necessários modelos de inferência imperfeitos, complexos, prevendo decisões que possam ser sub-óptimas, até incoerentes (e.g., a Prospect Theory de Daniel Kahneman). Este é um reflexo da história evolutiva do nosso cérebro que, como tudo o resto na evolução, é o possível entre as limitações físicas e cognitivas, o contigente da geografia, do clima e do tempo onde a nossa espécie se desenvolveu, dos compromissos cegos do passado.

Distância

As palavras representam um compromisso de significados. Cada imagem do mundo, cada pessoa, encontra na linguagem uma tradução comum, uma comunicação privilegiada com os outros. Mas esta tradução tem falhas, desacordos que passam sem ser anunciados sendo, com suficiente azar, fontes de tragédia. A maioria das palavras não aparentam ter este problema, como 'formiga', 'unha', 'amarelo'. Infelizmente, porque decerto não é coincidência, palavras com impacto social, como 'política', 'igualdade' ou 'juramento', são riquíssimas em equívocos. Veja-se esta última, 'juramento'. Detenho dois significados distintos desta palavra: (i) o intuito de respeitar a promessa feita independentemente do contexto, ou (ii) o intuito de respeitar a promessa só enquanto os pressupostos iniciais continuem a ser respeitados. A distância entre estas duas interpretações é a distância que separa, por exemplo, um energúmeno com farda de um polícia.

Evidências II

Este tipo de preconceito irá ocorrer mais cedo ou mais tarde (a não ser que o mundo actual impluda). Vai ser curioso ver filósofos e cientistas a torcerem-se para negar a evidência crescente de comportamento consciente da parte da nossa futura Inteligência Artificial. Algo similar está hoje a ocorrer com as discussões sobre o liver arbítrio contra a evidência da neurociência.

Políticas

Como pode uma economia sustentável ser compatível com a exigência de crescimento constante? Uma economia que tem de crescer para existir não lida bem com limites ou fronteiras. Só que o mundo é este, tem um volume fixo, e há décadas que usamos mais do que a sua capacidade natural de regeneração. A tecnologia e a ciência também têm limites humanos e económicos, e é provável que tenhamos, neste domínio, já entrado em ganhos decrescentes. Se, por azar nosso, uma economia sustentável for similar a um ecossistema, como parar, dar um passo atrás, como travar este comboio desgovernado que insistimos em acelerar?

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (2/2)

"Comrade Members, like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom--if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this [constitutional] convention sat for ten years before reporting--but I would be frightened if you took less than a year.
"Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional . . . for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments. For example, I note in one draft report a proposal for setting up a commission to divide Luna into congressional districts and to reapportion them from time to time according to population.
"This is the traditional way; therefore it should be suspect, considered guilty until proved innocent. Perhaps you feel that this is the only way. May I suggest others? Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him. Constituencies might be formed by dividing people by occupation. . . or by age. . . or even alphabetically. Or they might not be divided, every member elected at large---and do not object that this would make it impossible for any man not widely known throughout Luna to be elected; that might be the best possible thing for Luna.
"You might even consider installing the candidates who receive the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don't reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous--think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.
"But if representative government turns out to be your intention there still may be ways to achieve it better than the territorial district. For example you each represent about ten thousand human beings, perhaps seven thousand of voting age--and some of you were elected by slim majorities. Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out--many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels--correctly!--that it has been disenfranchised.
"But, whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!
"I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent--the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority . . . while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
"But in writing your constitution let me invite attention the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative! Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies . . . no interference however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation. . . no involuntary taxation. Comrades, if you were to spend five years in a study of history while thinking of more and more things that your governinen should promise never to do and then let your constitution be nothing but those negatives, I would not fear the outcome.
"What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing."

Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1/2)

[...]But I'm no Marxist; we Fifths have a practical program. Private where private belongs, public where it's needed, and an admission that circumstances alter cases. Nothing doctrinaire."
"Capital punishment?"
"For what?"
"Let's say for treason. Against Luna after you've freed Luna."
"Treason how? Unless I knew the circumstances I could not decide."
"Nor could I, dear Wyoming. But I believe in capital punishment under some circumstances. . . with this difference. I would not ask a court; I would try, condemn, execute sentence myself, and accept full responsibility."
"But--Professor, what are your political beliefs?"
"I'm a rational anarchist."
"I don't know that brand. Anarchist individualist, anarchist Communist, Christian anarchist, philosophical anarchist, syndicalist, libertarian--those I know. But what's this? Randite?"
"I can get along with a Randite. A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as 'state' and 'society' and 'government' have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame. . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world. . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure."
Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Separação

"Anyone of any persuasion ought to be able to acknowledge that economic logic indicates that imposing a price ceiling on milk will, other things equal, create a shortage of milk. But that in itself is not an argument against the policy. Mises assumed the policymaker would have thought that result bad, but the economist qua economist cannot declare it such. As Israel Kirzner likes to say, the economist’s job in the policy realm is merely to point out that you cannot catch a northbound train from the southbound platform." - Sheldon Richman