4 ms·

Because we wouldn't have any concepts of art or beauty or music or many of the things that seem to make life worth living.

by collyw 8y ago

naasking 8y ago
Why would reductionism reduce the majesty of complexity? Cellular automata are about as simple and reductionist as you can get, but they produce breathtaking complexity. Conway's game of life is simply brilliant. Reduction gives your appreciation new depths.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Why would reductionism reduce the majesty of complexity? Cellular automata are about as simple and reductionist as you can get, but they produce breathtaking complexity. Because we (well, some of us) don't really like breathtaking complexity that's reducible to some simple rules. Or at least don't like that kind of complexity to be the norm.
  - jamesrcole 8y ago
    That's not what reductionism is. It says there are certain elements that interact with each other in certain ways. It does not concern itself with the nature of configurations of such elements, and how those evolve. These may be extremely complex configurations, of huge numbers of the elements, that evolve in very complex ways. A really important point about this, which is usually misunderstood, is that "does not concern itself with" is not the same as "dismisses" or "views as invalid or unimportant". Also, this is not a matter of what we "like" or "dislike". It's a matter of how reality is or isn't, and what we like or dislike has no bearing on that.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Also, this is not a matter of what we "like" or "dislike". It's a matter of how reality is or isn't, and what we like or dislike has no bearing on that. What we know about how reality is or isn't has a very big impact on what we like or dislike.
      - jamesrcole 8y ago
        What's your point? This doesn't relate to what you originally said, or to my reply to that.
        coldtea 8y ago
        Doesn't relate to your reply? I directly quoted the part of your reply I responded to. My point is, to repeat myself, that what we consider the reality behind the way something is made, what it is composed of, etc, does play a role on whether we like or dislike it. Like or dislike extends beyond the final artifact. We could even like something (e.g. a painting) and stop liking it, even though it's the same, if we find that it's e.g. an imitation and not the original, or that some romantic story of how the painter created it is not real, etc. The same can happen when we discover a reductionist explanation of something we admire or are in awe of, that makes it less intriguing and mysterious. E.g. "you think love is some glorious connection to this particular person, but the feeling is just a chemically induced thing, and we can arbitrarily make you feel it for any random person if we inject you with this".
        jamesrcole 8y ago
        I said it's a matter of how reality is, and that our likes have no bearing on how that reality is. You replied "What we know about how reality is or isn't has a very big impact on what we like or dislike.", and does not relate to what I said. They're completely separate points. (Also, the point of yours that I was originally replying to was "Because we (well, some of us) don't really like breathtaking complexity that's reducible to some simple rules." which is clearly referring to what is out there in reality not our view of it, and whether we like or dislike that characteristic of reality out there.).
  - naasking 8y ago
    > Because [some of us] don't really like breathtaking complexity that's reducible to some simple rules. Or at least don't like that kind of complexity to be the norm. And if investigation reveals that all art and music are governed by simple rules, you're suddenly going to dislike all art and music? How precisely does revealing the hidden reality suddenly reduce how pleasing something is to the senses?
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >How precisely does revealing the hidden reality suddenly reduce how pleasing something is to the senses? How "pleasing something is to the senses" is a complex phenomenon, not some crude constant -- and it's subjective basis has a lot of interplay with eras, norms, goals, and lots of other stuff, including how we feel and what we know about it. When you know how the "sausage is made" you can like it less, even to the point of affective how pleasant the taste is to you.
      - naasking 8y ago
        You're essentially claiming that you only like something because it's not something else, and that it's only worth liking because you think it has some innate magic that separates it from something "mundane". It's basically a religious argument, and when it's revealed that it really is "mundane" after all, suddenly you don't like it. Calling this a type of supernatural elitism is generous I think.
- collyw 8y ago
  Music to me is a perfect example. The X factor or various shows try to reduce it to a formula and to me the result is crap (in my opinion). Likewise with cooking, but I guess many people like McDonalds.
  - jamesrcole 8y ago
    That's not reductionism. I won't repeat what I've argued elsewhere in this thread - it should be pretty easy to find my explanation of why.
  - sudosteph 8y ago
    A pop culture "formula" to tailor a piece of art to suit the tastes of a particular audience is not really an example of actual scientific reductionism though. It could potentially be "scientism" if anyone actually believed it was scientific, but I don't think most would. A better example of a reduction that relates to music, would be about how you can predict which combinations of notes will sound dissonant by looking at intervals between the frequencies of notes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonance_and_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonance_and_dissonance ). Yes, it means a lot properties of music can be defined in relatively simple mathematical terms (timing and chord theory being other ways) - but that doesn't mean the interaction between those properties isn't still complex and beautiful. It just gives us more ways to explore that beauty.
  - scotty79 8y ago
    How could you get perfect model of music until you have perfect model of brain? Expeirience of music happens there. You can't just say let's not try to explain sth because previous attempts fell short. If that was what smart humans do we would still be in awe why the fire is burning.
- sudosteph 8y ago
  I've been reading Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" which goes in very deep on cellular automata and possible applications on it, and I couldn't agree more with you more. There's even one section where he uses cellular automata logic to formally derive the fundamental rules of propositional logic. He basically re-wrote that section for his blog recently if anyone is curious: https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/11/logic-explainability-and-the-future-of-understanding/ https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/11/logic-explainability...
  - naasking 8y ago
    Interesting article! You may also be interested in Computability Logic [1]: > Computability Logic (CoL) understands computational problems in their most general – interactive sense. [...] CoL provides a generalization of the Church-Turing thesis to the interactive level. The classical concept of truth turns out to be a special, zero-interactivity-degree case of computability. This makes classical logic a special fragment of CoL. Being a conservative extension of the former, computability logic is, at the same time, by an order of magnitude more expressive, constructive and computationally meaningful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability_logic

Because we wouldn't have any concepts of art or beauty or music or many of the things that seem to make life worth living.

by collyw 8y ago

Because we wouldn't have any concepts of art or beauty or music or many of the things that seem to make life worth living.

naasking 8y ago

Why would reductionism reduce the majesty of complexity? Cellular automata are about as simple and reductionist as you can get, but they produce breathtaking complexity. Conway's game of life is simply brilliant. Reduction gives your appreciation new depths.

coldtea 8y ago
>Why would reductionism reduce the majesty of complexity? Cellular automata are about as simple and reductionist as you can get, but they produce breathtaking complexity. Because we (well, some of us) don't really like breathtaking complexity that's reducible to some simple rules. Or at least don't like that kind of complexity to be the norm.
- jamesrcole 8y ago
  That's not what reductionism is. It says there are certain elements that interact with each other in certain ways. It does not concern itself with the nature of configurations of such elements, and how those evolve. These may be extremely complex configurations, of huge numbers of the elements, that evolve in very complex ways. A really important point about this, which is usually misunderstood, is that "does not concern itself with" is not the same as "dismisses" or "views as invalid or unimportant". Also, this is not a matter of what we "like" or "dislike". It's a matter of how reality is or isn't, and what we like or dislike has no bearing on that.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Also, this is not a matter of what we "like" or "dislike". It's a matter of how reality is or isn't, and what we like or dislike has no bearing on that. What we know about how reality is or isn't has a very big impact on what we like or dislike.
    - jamesrcole 8y ago
      What's your point? This doesn't relate to what you originally said, or to my reply to that.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Doesn't relate to your reply? I directly quoted the part of your reply I responded to. My point is, to repeat myself, that what we consider the reality behind the way something is made, what it is composed of, etc, does play a role on whether we like or dislike it. Like or dislike extends beyond the final artifact. We could even like something (e.g. a painting) and stop liking it, even though it's the same, if we find that it's e.g. an imitation and not the original, or that some romantic story of how the painter created it is not real, etc. The same can happen when we discover a reductionist explanation of something we admire or are in awe of, that makes it less intriguing and mysterious. E.g. "you think love is some glorious connection to this particular person, but the feeling is just a chemically induced thing, and we can arbitrarily make you feel it for any random person if we inject you with this".
        jamesrcole 8y ago
        I said it's a matter of how reality is, and that our likes have no bearing on how that reality is. You replied "What we know about how reality is or isn't has a very big impact on what we like or dislike.", and does not relate to what I said. They're completely separate points. (Also, the point of yours that I was originally replying to was "Because we (well, some of us) don't really like breathtaking complexity that's reducible to some simple rules." which is clearly referring to what is out there in reality not our view of it, and whether we like or dislike that characteristic of reality out there.).
- naasking 8y ago
  > Because [some of us] don't really like breathtaking complexity that's reducible to some simple rules. Or at least don't like that kind of complexity to be the norm. And if investigation reveals that all art and music are governed by simple rules, you're suddenly going to dislike all art and music? How precisely does revealing the hidden reality suddenly reduce how pleasing something is to the senses?
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >How precisely does revealing the hidden reality suddenly reduce how pleasing something is to the senses? How "pleasing something is to the senses" is a complex phenomenon, not some crude constant -- and it's subjective basis has a lot of interplay with eras, norms, goals, and lots of other stuff, including how we feel and what we know about it. When you know how the "sausage is made" you can like it less, even to the point of affective how pleasant the taste is to you.
    - naasking 8y ago
      You're essentially claiming that you only like something because it's not something else, and that it's only worth liking because you think it has some innate magic that separates it from something "mundane". It's basically a religious argument, and when it's revealed that it really is "mundane" after all, suddenly you don't like it. Calling this a type of supernatural elitism is generous I think.
collyw 8y ago
Music to me is a perfect example. The X factor or various shows try to reduce it to a formula and to me the result is crap (in my opinion). Likewise with cooking, but I guess many people like McDonalds.
- jamesrcole 8y ago
  That's not reductionism. I won't repeat what I've argued elsewhere in this thread - it should be pretty easy to find my explanation of why.
- sudosteph 8y ago
  A pop culture "formula" to tailor a piece of art to suit the tastes of a particular audience is not really an example of actual scientific reductionism though. It could potentially be "scientism" if anyone actually believed it was scientific, but I don't think most would. A better example of a reduction that relates to music, would be about how you can predict which combinations of notes will sound dissonant by looking at intervals between the frequencies of notes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonance_and_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonance_and_dissonance ). Yes, it means a lot properties of music can be defined in relatively simple mathematical terms (timing and chord theory being other ways) - but that doesn't mean the interaction between those properties isn't still complex and beautiful. It just gives us more ways to explore that beauty.
- scotty79 8y ago
  How could you get perfect model of music until you have perfect model of brain? Expeirience of music happens there. You can't just say let's not try to explain sth because previous attempts fell short. If that was what smart humans do we would still be in awe why the fire is burning.
sudosteph 8y ago
I've been reading Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" which goes in very deep on cellular automata and possible applications on it, and I couldn't agree more with you more. There's even one section where he uses cellular automata logic to formally derive the fundamental rules of propositional logic. He basically re-wrote that section for his blog recently if anyone is curious: https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/11/logic-explainability-and-the-future-of-understanding/ https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/11/logic-explainability...
- naasking 8y ago
  Interesting article! You may also be interested in Computability Logic [1]: > Computability Logic (CoL) understands computational problems in their most general – interactive sense. [...] CoL provides a generalization of the Church-Turing thesis to the interactive level. The classical concept of truth turns out to be a special, zero-interactivity-degree case of computability. This makes classical logic a special fragment of CoL. Being a conservative extension of the former, computability logic is, at the same time, by an order of magnitude more expressive, constructive and computationally meaningful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computability_logic