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The problem with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as an argument against academic knowledge is it may be true for the general population, however, the entire purpose

by VLM 7y ago

The problem with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as an argument against academic knowledge is it may be true for the general population, however, the entire purpose of STEM academia is to subvert the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Teaching a kid quantum mechanics or calculus inherently has little to do with the general population's belief in religion or astrology or virtue signalling, for example. The average Joe_6_Pack Arrival movie heptapod might culturally have an easier or harder time learning lambda calculus; its certain that the only people (well, heptapods) who would matter, the CS academics, would be quite familiar with lambda calculus. STEM has a dependency chain such that its hard to do quantum mechanics without something like statistical thermodynamics and basic probability theory. Thus, cultures without statistical thermodynamics, like Ancient Rome or non-European cultures in general never developed quantum mechanics, therefore no nifty MOSFET transistors therefore no electric cars or industrial VFDs therefore no solar non-petrochemical energy industry therefore they die out or are replaced with more advanced cultures before interstellar travel is reached. We don't know the dependency chain for interstellar travel but the more complicated things are, the more fragile they are, always, so its HIGHLY likely any two interstellar cultures would have identical dependency chains to pass various gates along the path. You can play games with early steam engines burning lignite or peat and it won't matter terribly much at the time or in the long run, but it seems there's only one way, using metal catalysts, to "invent" your first organic chemistry hydrogenation process, for example. You can make steel in a low tech medieval blacksmiths shop, but transistors have tighter constraints. Most of advanced civilization is a mask over fragile, complicated, and delicate dependency chains. We'd like to think we're on the path to interstellar travel rather than self destruction, so obviously all interstellar aliens would have lambda calculus much like ourselves, because the gates we have to pass thru only pyramid and narrow as the task gets more complicated. And interstellar travel seems likely to be complicated.

theknarf 7y ago
What about a civilisation who never invented silicon diodes but kept using vacuum tubes? Or what about a civ. who invented logic programming first and never then invented lambda calculus. Or what if they come from a much lower gravity planet, their spaceships might look completely different. Or what if they're not a carbon based species; why do we then assume they'd have to travel a similar tech path as us?
- theamk 7y ago
  Vacuum tubes are inherently limited by physics, they cannot be used to create an efficient and small power converters. So if civilization is stuck with vacuum tubes, it is highly unlikely they’ll get to renewable power sources, and therefore they’ll likely to die off once they run off of their oil-equivalent. If the civilization comes to us, it is likely they are at least as technological advanced as we are. Which means they likely has invented all the same math we did, and more. There is no guarantee that their version of lambda calculus is popular in their world, it could be it is an obscure and boring topic that no alien cares about, but they’ll still understand it if they need to. People did design and even flew spaceships from lower gravity planet - this was Appolo lunar module. The lunar module did look different that earth based rockets, but it was still pretty similar. Carbon life or not, there are only so much shapes a spaceship can take, physics forces your hand. There are only so many stable elements in the periodic table, and they combine in identical way everywhere. Lack of water and oxygen in the atmosphere may allow aliens to use a different metal, but a reaction rocket spacecraft will still look like a enclosure with rocket-shaped nozzles at the rear end.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Maybe they only ever used hydro power, on their, hot and humid 2G rocky water planet.
    - bigtunacan 7y ago
      Maybe they are vastly overrun by sandworms that spew unlimited supplies of oil rather than Melange?
ordu 7y ago
You are relying on implicit assumption that quantum mechanics is the only possible theory that could lead to an invention of MOSFET transistors. Maybe this assumption is true, but I do not know it to be proved. Of course QM is the only known to us theory that had led to MOSFETs, but it doesn't mean that one couldn't invent some completely different way to describe reality which would enable him to invent MOSFETs.
- theamk 7y ago
  In order to build a MOSFET, you need to know how do electrons react in the presence of thin barriers, and how thick should the gate oxide be to prevent breakdown while still keeping the field strong. Does a civilization know this? If no, they cannot make MOSFETs. If yes, than whatever branch of physics and math describes this is called “quantum mechanics” Can it be different, can you do QM without Schrödinger Equation? Sure, but it will still be QM. One can rearrange terms on formulas, use different units, work with voltage instead of energy, introduce various metrics and so on. Physicists do it all the time, it is simply theory reformulation.
  - stult 7y ago
    >In order to build a MOSFET, you need to know how do electrons react in the presence of thin barriers, and how thick should the gate oxide be to prevent breakdown while still keeping the field strong. And yet I somehow managed to produce a pretty complex quantum computer before I was even born: my brain. Or maybe my mom did, but she is nearly as ignorant of quantum physics and biology as I was as a fetus, so the point stands. The person above was wrong about your implicit assumption about QM and dependency chains. Your real assumption is that interstellar societies will develop technologies intentionally using explicit knowledge that charts such a dependency chain, rather than evolving capabilities via or alongside implicit knowledge, such as the implicit knowledge we all share in which allows us to produce human brains with no intellectual effort whatsoever. We don't and can't know what chunks of those dependency chains are innate for other species, which in turn means we don't know how they will traverse such a chain, even assuming ad arguendo your hypothesis that the dependency graph is essentially linear.
grawprog 7y ago
>You can play games with early steam engines burning lignite or peat and it won't matter terribly much at the time or in the long run, but it seems there's only one way, using metal catalysts, to "invent" your first organic chemistry hydrogenation process, for example. You can make steel in a low tech medieval blacksmiths shop, but transistors have tighter constraints. But, what if these aliens are say chromium or silicone based life from a planet with a chlorine or fluorine based atmosphere. I imagine the dependency chain would look totally different for a species like that. The chemical reactions we rely on for many of our sciences on earth would not work at all in an evironment like that. Combustion based technology would likely not be at the forefront of such a species. I think a lot of anthropomorphization goes on when it comes to aliens. Just on earth we've got billions of different forms of life, all of which is specifically adapted for earth's conditions. Change any of those conditions even a little and life on earth would look totally different, as it has for most of earth's history. I see no reason why any kind of aliens, interstellar travellers or not, would need to resemble us or any of the technological dependency chains we've created. It assumes everywhere else works mostly the same as it has here for the short window as humans have existed and that the chains of technological dependencies humans have created based on the resources available on earth are a universal technological progression all intelligent life must goes through, which just seems arrogant and all knowing to me.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I don’t believe there would be silicon based life not because they are impossible, but because of Occam’s razor. If something is easier (carbon), it would happen faster and out compete harder things. It’s the nature of entropy.
  - nemosaltat 7y ago
    There’s a good explanation/discussion on this in “The Disappearing Spoon.” It’s a fun read, on the history of the elements in the periodic table.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
You are assuming that lambda calculus is a necessary part of that path. So far as I can see, you did nothing to substantiate that assumption. Can you reach the stars without computer programming? Probably not. Can you do computer programming without lambda calculus? Absolutely. You can do it based on Turing Machines, for example. (Are they equivalent? Yes, but also no. The Church-Turing Thesis says that they are formally equivalent. Yet nobody, when they say "lambda calculus", is thinking of Turing Machines and calling that lambda calculus.)
tetron 7y ago
This is my take as well. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics to describe physics suggests it is more fundamental than something our monkey brains came up with. If aliens are operating with the same physics, they are going to create a mathematics that is isomorphic to our own.
- magusdei 7y ago
  Isomorphism != equality. Formulas in greek numerals are trivially isomorphic to ones using arabic numerals, because they are different representations of the "same" concepts, but nobody would argue that arabic numerals aren't more practical (at least for us).[1] So even though the concepts the aliens come up with might be technically isomorphic to (a version of) lambda calculus on some extremely abstract level, there is no guarantee that either we or they would be able to recognize this, owing to a vast difference in representation. [1] Similarly, a basic theorem in algorithmic information theory states that all programming languages are about equally efficient in terms of program size,[2] but that doesn't mean that all programming languages are actually equally good for every problem in practice, as the constant debates about "the best language" among programmers clearly show. [2] The basic argument is that, if programs written in language A are vastly shorter than those written in language B, it is possible to write an interpreter for language A in language B of constant length c. So all programs written in language B are at most c chars longer than those written in language A.

by VLM 7y ago

theknarf 7y ago

What about a civilisation who never invented silicon diodes but kept using vacuum tubes? Or what about a civ. who invented logic programming first and never then invented lambda calculus. Or what if they come from a much lower gravity planet, their spaceships might look completely different. Or what if they're not a carbon based species; why do we then assume they'd have to travel a similar tech path as us?

theamk 7y ago
Vacuum tubes are inherently limited by physics, they cannot be used to create an efficient and small power converters. So if civilization is stuck with vacuum tubes, it is highly unlikely they’ll get to renewable power sources, and therefore they’ll likely to die off once they run off of their oil-equivalent. If the civilization comes to us, it is likely they are at least as technological advanced as we are. Which means they likely has invented all the same math we did, and more. There is no guarantee that their version of lambda calculus is popular in their world, it could be it is an obscure and boring topic that no alien cares about, but they’ll still understand it if they need to. People did design and even flew spaceships from lower gravity planet - this was Appolo lunar module. The lunar module did look different that earth based rockets, but it was still pretty similar. Carbon life or not, there are only so much shapes a spaceship can take, physics forces your hand. There are only so many stable elements in the periodic table, and they combine in identical way everywhere. Lack of water and oxygen in the atmosphere may allow aliens to use a different metal, but a reaction rocket spacecraft will still look like a enclosure with rocket-shaped nozzles at the rear end.
- jacobush 7y ago
  Maybe they only ever used hydro power, on their, hot and humid 2G rocky water planet.
  - bigtunacan 7y ago
    Maybe they are vastly overrun by sandworms that spew unlimited supplies of oil rather than Melange?

ordu 7y ago

You are relying on implicit assumption that quantum mechanics is the only possible theory that could lead to an invention of MOSFET transistors. Maybe this assumption is true, but I do not know it to be proved. Of course QM is the only known to us theory that had led to MOSFETs, but it doesn't mean that one couldn't invent some completely different way to describe reality which would enable him to invent MOSFETs.

theamk 7y ago
In order to build a MOSFET, you need to know how do electrons react in the presence of thin barriers, and how thick should the gate oxide be to prevent breakdown while still keeping the field strong. Does a civilization know this? If no, they cannot make MOSFETs. If yes, than whatever branch of physics and math describes this is called “quantum mechanics” Can it be different, can you do QM without Schrödinger Equation? Sure, but it will still be QM. One can rearrange terms on formulas, use different units, work with voltage instead of energy, introduce various metrics and so on. Physicists do it all the time, it is simply theory reformulation.
- stult 7y ago
  >In order to build a MOSFET, you need to know how do electrons react in the presence of thin barriers, and how thick should the gate oxide be to prevent breakdown while still keeping the field strong. And yet I somehow managed to produce a pretty complex quantum computer before I was even born: my brain. Or maybe my mom did, but she is nearly as ignorant of quantum physics and biology as I was as a fetus, so the point stands. The person above was wrong about your implicit assumption about QM and dependency chains. Your real assumption is that interstellar societies will develop technologies intentionally using explicit knowledge that charts such a dependency chain, rather than evolving capabilities via or alongside implicit knowledge, such as the implicit knowledge we all share in which allows us to produce human brains with no intellectual effort whatsoever. We don't and can't know what chunks of those dependency chains are innate for other species, which in turn means we don't know how they will traverse such a chain, even assuming ad arguendo your hypothesis that the dependency graph is essentially linear.

grawprog 7y ago

>You can play games with early steam engines burning lignite or peat and it won't matter terribly much at the time or in the long run, but it seems there's only one way, using metal catalysts, to "invent" your first organic chemistry hydrogenation process, for example. You can make steel in a low tech medieval blacksmiths shop, but transistors have tighter constraints. But, what if these aliens are say chromium or silicone based life from a planet with a chlorine or fluorine based atmosphere. I imagine the dependency chain would look totally different for a species like that. The chemical reactions we rely on for many of our sciences on earth would not work at all in an evironment like that. Combustion based technology would likely not be at the forefront of such a species. I think a lot of anthropomorphization goes on when it comes to aliens. Just on earth we've got billions of different forms of life, all of which is specifically adapted for earth's conditions. Change any of those conditions even a little and life on earth would look totally different, as it has for most of earth's history. I see no reason why any kind of aliens, interstellar travellers or not, would need to resemble us or any of the technological dependency chains we've created. It assumes everywhere else works mostly the same as it has here for the short window as humans have existed and that the chains of technological dependencies humans have created based on the resources available on earth are a universal technological progression all intelligent life must goes through, which just seems arrogant and all knowing to me.

Aperocky 7y ago
I don’t believe there would be silicon based life not because they are impossible, but because of Occam’s razor. If something is easier (carbon), it would happen faster and out compete harder things. It’s the nature of entropy.
- nemosaltat 7y ago
  There’s a good explanation/discussion on this in “The Disappearing Spoon.” It’s a fun read, on the history of the elements in the periodic table.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

You are assuming that lambda calculus is a necessary part of that path. So far as I can see, you did nothing to substantiate that assumption. Can you reach the stars without computer programming? Probably not. Can you do computer programming without lambda calculus? Absolutely. You can do it based on Turing Machines, for example. (Are they equivalent? Yes, but also no. The Church-Turing Thesis says that they are formally equivalent. Yet nobody, when they say "lambda calculus", is thinking of Turing Machines and calling that lambda calculus.)

tetron 7y ago

This is my take as well. The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics to describe physics suggests it is more fundamental than something our monkey brains came up with. If aliens are operating with the same physics, they are going to create a mathematics that is isomorphic to our own.

magusdei 7y ago
Isomorphism != equality. Formulas in greek numerals are trivially isomorphic to ones using arabic numerals, because they are different representations of the "same" concepts, but nobody would argue that arabic numerals aren't more practical (at least for us).[1] So even though the concepts the aliens come up with might be technically isomorphic to (a version of) lambda calculus on some extremely abstract level, there is no guarantee that either we or they would be able to recognize this, owing to a vast difference in representation. [1] Similarly, a basic theorem in algorithmic information theory states that all programming languages are about equally efficient in terms of program size,[2] but that doesn't mean that all programming languages are actually equally good for every problem in practice, as the constant debates about "the best language" among programmers clearly show. [2] The basic argument is that, if programs written in language A are vastly shorter than those written in language B, it is possible to write an interpreter for language A in language B of constant length c. So all programs written in language B are at most c chars longer than those written in language A.