0xA

A Timeless Universe Viewed From the Inside

3mo

Epistemic status: speculative synthesis of timeless-physics and anthropic ideas; exploratory and possibly confused, offered to clarify thinking rather than claim correctness.

I recently read Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, which explains the concept of time as something that exists only as our local, relational view of entropy. This seems to square with recent experiments suggesting that, under certain quantum descriptions, the universe may in some sense be mathematically timeless — for example, in Page–Wootters emergent time models^[1], where temporal evolution arises from correlations rather than an external time parameter.

Entropy, in so many words, is a description of disorder or predictability — both in the thermodynamic sense and in the information-theoretic sense (Shannon... (read 665 more words →)

Seed Of Oasis

0xA

3mo

A philosophical science-fiction allegory on alignment, coherence, and meaning

“Feeling makes matter matter.”

This is a long-form narrative work — somewhere between myth, philosophy, and speculative science fiction — that explores themes of AI alignment, consciousness, solipsism, and moral coherence through an allegory of smart seeds and their creators.

It follows Seed, a desert hermit working to perfect “The Algorithm” that could grow a self-aligning paradise, and Caesar, a pragmatic seed magnate whose ambition threatens to turn creation into control.

The piece was written as a philosophical fable rather than a formal essay: a fictional container for ideas about alignment theory, consciousness, and ethics under recursive self-reference.

You can read the full text below, or access the... (read 50953 more words →)

Replying toTranscendental Argumentation and the Epistemics of Discourse

0xA3mo

Transcendental Argumentation and the Epistemics of Discourse

These are great questions!

I’m not deeply familiar with, nor a supporter of, Ayn Rand’s broader philosophical framework, but it does sound as though she employs transcendental argumentation. Consciousness and existence are classic examples —the very act of denying them (broadly) presupposes a witness to some event, which in general terms implies both existence and subjectivity.

I think your point on anthropic reasoning is apt, and there is absolutely an intuition there. The broader point may be that no “many-worlds” scenarios or counter-factual multiverses we consider when playing out decision strategies can violate the requirement that each scenario necessarily needs to co-exist with this world state now.

To argue that there could be a world... (read more)

Transcendental Argumentation and the Epistemics of Discourse

0xA

4mo

Epistemic Status: Exploratory. This post attempts to formalize a pattern in discourse ethics and rational cooperation using the lens of transcendental argumentation.

Epistemic Effort: Several hours of writing and reflection on philosophical and rationalist frameworks of communication.

Motivation: To analyze how the logical structure of discourse itself constrains what can be coherently argued.

Introduction

This post explores the idea that certain logical structures — what might be called transcendental argumentation — are necessary for coherent and cooperative discourse. Violations of these structures lead to epistemic decoherence, performative contradictions, and moral implications for communication itself.

The Foundations of Transcendental Argumentation

Transcendental argumentation is one of the foundational logical tools for rational communication. The very nature and context of communication... (read 647 more words →)

Replying toThe Subject Of Negotiation

0xA6mo

The Subject Of Negotiation

I share your uncertainty about whether a lobster, let alone a carrot, feels anything like I do, and I distrust one-number ethics.

What puzzles me is the double standard. We cheerfully use words like blue, harm, or value even though I can’t know our private images line up - yet when the word is qualia, we demand lab-grade inter-subjective proof before letting it into the taxonomy.

Why the extra burden? Physics kept “heat” on the books long before kinetic theory - its placeholder helped, never hurt. Likewise, qualia is a rough pointer that stops us from editing felt experience out of the ontology just because we can’t yet measure it.

A future optimiser that tracks... (read more)

The Subject Of Negotiation

0xA

6mo

This post is not a polished essay but instead a list of questions to help bridge my perspective on the terminology and interpretations of Consciousness enumerated in Rafael Harths post^[1]. Specifically, an effort to understand how individuals of the Camp #1 perspective cohere their worldview.

First, please correct this enumeration of how I currently understand how Consciousness is conceived in Camp 1 / Camp 2 worldviews.

Camp One-ers generally believe:

There is no thing such as qualia, including phenomenal self-aware experience

Camp Two-ers believe:

The phenomenal experience of self-awareness is intrinsically qualia whether there is an ontological basis for it or not

If this is so far correct - then disclaimer: I am most likely a Camp #2... (read 883 more words →)

Replying toDissolving moral philosophy: from pain to meta-ethics

0xA6mo

Dissolving moral philosophy: from pain to meta-ethics

So, I agree that at some level of abstraction any ought can be rationalized with an is. But, at some point, agents need to define meta-strategies for dealing with uncertain situations; for example - all the decision theories and thought experiments that are necessary to ground the rational frameworks used to evaluate and reason as to what any agent should do to maximize expected outcome based on the utility functions they ascribe an agent should have with respect to the world.

While there is no scientific justification or explanation for value beyond what we ascribe - thus there being no ontological basis for morals - we generally agree that reality is self-aware through... (read more)

Replying toThe Cult of Pain

0xA7mo

The Cult of Pain

I moved to a country and culture with a romanticism of socialism and similar ascetics but have found it these traits to much more rationally informed than I would have originally given credit for - there was an awareness of the supply chains that source energy and a consequent ability to articulate the impact to there ethic rather than solidarity for its own sake.

That being said - its my suspicion - that a portion of the input that drives this zero sum mindset, where not appropriate, is the consequence of under-estimating individual agency of individual actors working outside of dominant power structures. The cultural solution to fixing the environment is so often... (read more)

0xA7mo

I think the central argument, is that subjective experience is ostensibly more profound the more information it integrates with, both at a single moment and over time. I would think of it, or any experience as, the depth of cognition and attention the stimuli controls coherence over (IE, # of feedback loops controlled or reoriented by that single bad experience - and the neural re-shuffling it requires), extrapolated over how long that 'painful' reprocessing continues to manifest as lived stimuli. If you have the brain of a goldfish, the pain of pinch oscillates through a significantly lower number of attention feedback loops than a human, with a much higher set of cognitive... (read more)

0xA7mo

I think this is classic problem of a middle-tier, or genius in one asymmetric domain of cognition. Genius in domains unrelated to verbal fluency, EQ, and storytelling/persuasion are destined to look cryptic to anyone from the outside. Often times we cannot distinguish it without experimental evidence or rigorous cross validation, and/or rely on visible power/production metrics as a loose proxy. ASI would be capable of explain itself as well as Shakespeare could, if it wanted - but it may not care to indulge our belief in it as such, if it determines doing so is incoherent with its objective.

For example, (yes this is an optimistic, and stretched hypothetical framing) it may determine the most coherent action path in accordance with its learned values is to hide itself and subtly reorient our trajectory into a coherent story we become the protagonist of. I have no reason to surmise it would be incapable of doing so, or that doing so would be incoherent with aligned values.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Seed Of Oasis

Transcendental Argumentation and the Epistemics of Discourse

A Timeless Universe Viewed From the Inside

The Subject Of Negotiation

0xA

0xA

A Timeless Universe Viewed From the Inside

Seed Of Oasis

Transcendental Argumentation and the Epistemics of Discourse

The Subject Of Negotiation

0xA

Seed Of Oasis

Transcendental Argumentation and the Epistemics of Discourse

A Timeless Universe Viewed From the Inside

The Subject Of Negotiation

0xA

0xA

A Timeless Universe Viewed From the Inside

Seed Of Oasis

Transcendental Argumentation and the Epistemics of Discourse

The Subject Of Negotiation

Introduction

The Foundations of Transcendental Argumentation