Curious Wonder web notes

 The biologist Robert Trivers developed a suggestion from George Williams on how another kind of altruism could evolve (where altruism, again, is defined as behavior that benefits another organism at a cost to the behaver). Dawkins explains it with a hypothetical example. Imagine a species of bird that suffers from a disease-carrying tick and must spend a good deal of time removing them with its beak. It can reach every part of its body but the top of its head. Every bird would benefit if some other bird groomed its head. If the birds in a group all responded to the sight of a head presented to them by grooming it, the group would prosper. But what would happen if a mutant presented its head for grooming but never groomed anyone else? These freeloaders would be parasite-free, and could use the time they saved not grooming others to look for food. With that advantage they would eventually dominate the population, even if it made the group more vulnerable to extinction. The psycholog...

...Herbert Simon's argument that modular design in computers and minds is a special case of modular, heirarchical design in all complex systems. Bodies contain tissues made of cells containing organelles; armed forces comprise armies which contain divisions broken into battalions and eventually platoons; books contain chapters divided into sections, subsections, paragraphs, and sentences; empires are assembled out of countries, provinces, and territories. These "nearly decomposable" systems are defined by rich interactions among the elements belonging to the same components and few interactions among elements belonging to different components. Complex systems are hierarchies of modules because only elements that hang together in modules can remain stable long enough to be assembled into larger and larger modules. Simon gives the analogy of two watchmakers, Hora and Tempus: The watches the men made consisted of about 1,000 parts each. Tempus had so constructed his that if ...

Ontology - study of existence. Ideal -  as pertaining to Plato's ideal forms.  Ideal forms, like perfect circles and triangles, are constructed by combining different patterns of information into simplified, perfected concepts. These concepts rely on features of infinity to define perfection, a normal straight line will reveal imperfections when zoomed in, but ideal types are defined as being perfectly straight regardless of how infinitely it is zoomed into. Ideal types are in league with mathematical constants in their self containment.  From this interpretation, it isn't far fetched to conclude that these patterns would still exist even if the laws of the universe were different, giving credence to the conclusion that "ideas are the highest type of reality or have the greatest claim to being considered real". However, this is only true of the constructed concepts, the same cannot be said for the actual objects that these concepts are conjured up to represent. Real t...

 Are the marvelous algorithms of animals mere "instincts" that we have lost or risen above? Humans are often said to have no instincts beyond the vegetative functions; we are said to reason and behave flexibly, freed from specialized machinery. The featherless biped surely understands astronomy in a sense that the feathered biped does not! True enough, but it is not because we have fewer instincts than other animals: it is because we have more- Our vaunted flexibility comes from scores of instincts assembled into programs and pitted in competitions. Darwin called human language, the epitome of flexible behavior, "an instinct to acquire an art" (giving me the title for The Language Instinct), and his follower William James pressed the point: Now, why do the various animals do what seem to us such strange things, in the presence of such outlandish stimuli? Why does the hen, for example, submit herself to the tedium of incubating such a fearfully uninteresting set of o...

"Free will is another enigma. How can my actions be a choice for which I am responsible if they are completely caused by my genes, my upbringing, and my brain state? Some events are determined, some are random; how can a choice be neither? When I hand my wallet to an armed man who threatens to kill me if I don't, is that a choice? What about if I shoot a child because an armed man threatens to kill me if I don't? If I choose to do something, I could have done otherwise—but what does that mean in a single universe unfolding in time according to laws, which I pass through only once? I am faced with a momentous decision, and an expert on human behavior with a ninety-nine percent success rate predicts that I will choose what at this point looks like the worse alternative. Should I continue to agonize, or should I save time and do what's inevitable?"  -Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, ch 8 pg 558 "Free will is an idealization of human b...

Perspective is what makes experience Subjective. Measurement is what makes things Objective. Idealization is what makes concepts Abstractive.    Subjectivity My experience of this table in front of me can be enriched, gradually, increasingly the more perspectives I take of it; I can look at it to gather its brownish color and different angles will return different shades of brown depending on its specularity and where the light is coming from; I can knock on it to gather sounds from it, whether it's hollow or dense, wooden or metal; I can touch it to feel its texture and temperature, a warm finger will make the table feel cold, and a cold finger warm, conductive materials exaggerate this effect; I can smell and taste it to detect the kinds of chemicals that might be on it. Key properties/features of perspective these experiences I've gathered from the table are available only to me, specifically the version of me that experienced them earlier, though a "watered down"...