5 ms·

Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning

98 points by ggreer 9y ago

andyjohnson0 9y ago
Scott Aaronson's post on Kolmogorov, mentioned in the post above, was discussed on HN a couple of months ago [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002
adiabatty 9y ago
> But politically-savvy Kolmogorov types can’t just build a bubble. They have to build a whisper network. The trouble with whisper networks, though, is that they breed poorly-supported misinformation (fake news?) that may or may not have anything to do with whether thunder or lightning comes first. Seems like if you want to reduce the incentive to create fake-news-breeding whisper networks, you should do what you can to not incentivize whisper-network creation.
- lmm 9y ago
  Well, obviously the best thing is to ensure that all truths are politically acceptable. But given that we live in a society in which certain truths aren't acceptable, what's the best course that individuals can pursue on the margin?
  - dogruck 9y ago
    Well said. Said another way, society often prefers falsehood over truth, because many times the truth is more immediately painful. (I would argue that in the long term truth is always superior)
  - Symmetry 9y ago
    I worry more that the problem isn't that certain truths aren't acceptable but rather that certain truths aren't generally representable. People in general don't understand probabilities and in political races this means that in practice predictions get simplified down to "Candidate A is certainly going to win" or "It's a toss up!".
nl 9y ago
For such a smart person, it surprises me that he seems to have missed the point of what is going on in <insert politicized debate of the day here>. In modern Western thought, voices aren't suppressed. Instead, they are politicized and used to put the speaker on a "side". Then the people on that side will defend their side (although not always the speaker) using that person as a proxy for their side. We see this in global warming, in nuclear power, in gender equality, in free speech rights, in gun rights, in nurture vs nature. I can think of only two examples where something similar to the behavior called out in this article occurs in the modern West. The first is the "neural network conspiracy" where CIFAR funded research for years, until they suddenly won. The other is cold fusion, where there are persistent rumors that this wasn't perhaps the dead end it was made out to be (I don't have the expertise to evaluate that and tell if it is crackpots or not though).
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  He didn't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past. It's not true that voices aren't suppressed in the modern Western world, though. The original post by Scott Aaaronson, the one from which this post takes it title, was a response to present-day suppression of opinions. Both Scotts have opted to write their posts in a very general tone (even though they're obvious responses to some recent events), but I'll nevertheless spell it out in concrete terms: if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum, you risk losing your job to an angry Twitter mob.
  - empath75 9y ago
    > if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum, you risk losing your job to an angry Twitter mob. "Free speech" doesn't and shouldn't protect you from facing personal consequences for your speech. If you publicly profess stupid and/or offensive ideas, other people have a right to form opinions of you because of them, and those people have a right to choose not to do business with you.
    - nl 9y ago
rocqua 9y ago
This talk of many people knowing the orthodoxy is wrong kinda reminds me of the predictability crisis as described in this HN post from a week ago [1]. Only here, people did eventually speak out against the orthodoxy and seemed to have some effect. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347
sanxiyn 9y ago
Lightning comes before thunder. Sue me.
otakucode 9y ago
There is a very large problem with comparing these sorts of issues between pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment cultures. Prior to the Englightenment, all knowledge was religious knowledge. Astronomy was the study of how God arrayed the heavens. Geology was the study of the firmament and how God created it. Physics was the motion God gave to every object. Agriculture was when God wanted you to plant your crops. Biology was how Gods morality was reflected in the living things in nature. There was no difference between religious ideas and ideas about reality - there was no separation whatever. The Enlightenment was significant because it gave us a wedge. It allowed us to say 'religion is about the spiritual, about the ephemeral and ineffable, and science is about material reality'. That is a difference larger than modern people can easily understand. If your religious beliefs are beliefs about your everyday life and the visceral world you live in, you see things very differently. You can't simply live next door to someone with a different set of beliefs from your own. That person is an agent of evil, a soldier fighting in the cosmic and Earthly war between Good and Evil which will either see an eternity of peace and paradise (here, on this planet, not somewhere else) or an eternity of suffering depending upon who wins the war. While Kolmogorov might have been able to build a bubble, those before the Enlightenment could not. It was impossible to defer judgement to some never-to-come 'afterlife'. It was impossible to extend to others a tolerance for their differing views. It was impossible for considering different ideas about how reality worked to not have a moral and religious consequence. The Enlightenment was so profoundly and deeply successful that those who grew up in societies where it took root can't even conceive of how different it would be to believe that everything which occurs in the world is the direct and immediate expression of the will of a god which suffuses all things and which the material world is but a slim skin over.

98 points by ggreer 9y ago

Scott Aaronson's post on Kolmogorov, mentioned in the post above, was discussed on HN a couple of months ago [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002

adiabatty 9y ago

> But politically-savvy Kolmogorov types can’t just build a bubble. They have to build a whisper network. The trouble with whisper networks, though, is that they breed poorly-supported misinformation (fake news?) that may or may not have anything to do with whether thunder or lightning comes first. Seems like if you want to reduce the incentive to create fake-news-breeding whisper networks, you should do what you can to not incentivize whisper-network creation.

lmm 9y ago
Well, obviously the best thing is to ensure that all truths are politically acceptable. But given that we live in a society in which certain truths aren't acceptable, what's the best course that individuals can pursue on the margin?
- dogruck 9y ago
  Well said. Said another way, society often prefers falsehood over truth, because many times the truth is more immediately painful. (I would argue that in the long term truth is always superior)
- Symmetry 9y ago
  I worry more that the problem isn't that certain truths aren't acceptable but rather that certain truths aren't generally representable. People in general don't understand probabilities and in political races this means that in practice predictions get simplified down to "Candidate A is certainly going to win" or "It's a toss up!".

nl 9y ago

For such a smart person, it surprises me that he seems to have missed the point of what is going on in <insert politicized debate of the day here>. In modern Western thought, voices aren't suppressed. Instead, they are politicized and used to put the speaker on a "side". Then the people on that side will defend their side (although not always the speaker) using that person as a proxy for their side. We see this in global warming, in nuclear power, in gender equality, in free speech rights, in gun rights, in nurture vs nature. I can think of only two examples where something similar to the behavior called out in this article occurs in the modern West. The first is the "neural network conspiracy" where CIFAR funded research for years, until they suddenly won. The other is cold fusion, where there are persistent rumors that this wasn't perhaps the dead end it was made out to be (I don't have the expertise to evaluate that and tell if it is crackpots or not though).

TeMPOraL 9y ago
He didn't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past. It's not true that voices aren't suppressed in the modern Western world, though. The original post by Scott Aaaronson, the one from which this post takes it title, was a response to present-day suppression of opinions. Both Scotts have opted to write their posts in a very general tone (even though they're obvious responses to some recent events), but I'll nevertheless spell it out in concrete terms: if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum, you risk losing your job to an angry Twitter mob.
- empath75 9y ago
  > if you express your disagreement with the current feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum, you risk losing your job to an angry Twitter mob. "Free speech" doesn't and shouldn't protect you from facing personal consequences for your speech. If you publicly profess stupid and/or offensive ideas, other people have a right to form opinions of you because of them, and those people have a right to choose not to do business with you.
  - nl 9y ago

rocqua 9y ago

This talk of many people knowing the orthodoxy is wrong kinda reminds me of the predictability crisis as described in this HN post from a week ago [1]. Only here, people did eventually speak out against the orthodoxy and seemed to have some effect. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347

sanxiyn 9y ago

Lightning comes before thunder. Sue me.

otakucode 9y ago

There is a very large problem with comparing these sorts of issues between pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment cultures. Prior to the Englightenment, all knowledge was religious knowledge. Astronomy was the study of how God arrayed the heavens. Geology was the study of the firmament and how God created it. Physics was the motion God gave to every object. Agriculture was when God wanted you to plant your crops. Biology was how Gods morality was reflected in the living things in nature. There was no difference between religious ideas and ideas about reality - there was no separation whatever. The Enlightenment was significant because it gave us a wedge. It allowed us to say 'religion is about the spiritual, about the ephemeral and ineffable, and science is about material reality'. That is a difference larger than modern people can easily understand. If your religious beliefs are beliefs about your everyday life and the visceral world you live in, you see things very differently. You can't simply live next door to someone with a different set of beliefs from your own. That person is an agent of evil, a soldier fighting in the cosmic and Earthly war between Good and Evil which will either see an eternity of peace and paradise (here, on this planet, not somewhere else) or an eternity of suffering depending upon who wins the war. While Kolmogorov might have been able to build a bubble, those before the Enlightenment could not. It was impossible to defer judgement to some never-to-come 'afterlife'. It was impossible to extend to others a tolerance for their differing views. It was impossible for considering different ideas about how reality worked to not have a moral and religious consequence. The Enlightenment was so profoundly and deeply successful that those who grew up in societies where it took root can't even conceive of how different it would be to believe that everything which occurs in the world is the direct and immediate expression of the will of a god which suffuses all things and which the material world is but a slim skin over.