3 ms·

You are on a tech forum. Reductionism is pretty much the norm here. Any programmer that has toyed with chaotic system theory can imagine holist views as explain

by Iv 6y ago

You are on a tech forum. Reductionism is pretty much the norm here. Any programmer that has toyed with chaotic system theory can imagine holist views as explained by emergent behaviors of simpler systems. > Did you purposefully ignore my question? No, actually I had to rewrite my answer enitrely 4 or 5 times to avoid talking past each other, as it is clear we have different worldview, but I am doing my best to be less dismissive and bridge the difference in assumptions, something I did not do in my earlier messages, sorry about that. > Holistically speaking, how do you propose we measure “health”? I am not. I am proposing we measure precise aspects of morality. Keyword here is "precise". Measuring something requires a workable definition. A word like "health" or "good" can have several operational definitions that are contradictory with each other. In some contexts, like a hospital, you would measure "health" with a compound of physiological measures, like temperature, heart-rate, blood pressure. An economist would probably define it more in terms of likelihood to survive the year/decade. Likewise, "ethics" or "good" are not operational definitions but things like "approval of peers", "likelihood of being recognized guilty of a crime", "reported happiness" are measurable metrics that we can use to try and establish a quantitative model of ethics.

ukj 6y ago
Sure, lets go with your theory that "reductionism is the technical norm". Lets represent "health" as the identity function in Lambda calculus. λx.health This is equivalent to the English sentence "health is health". Reduce it for me. Translate it into an expression roughly equivalent to "health is a function of...."
- Iv 6y ago
  I just don't understand what you are trying to do. > Lets represent "health" as the identity function in Lambda calculus. Health is a function now? Why an identity function? > This is equivalent to the English sentence "health is health". No, this is equivalent to the sentence "health transforms anything back into what it is" which is a weird predicate. > Reduce it for me. Translate it into an expression roughly equivalent to "health is a function of...." I am genuinely trying to understand what you are looking for. Considering just this sentence of yours, how is this not answered by my previous message? Especially this part: > In some contexts, like a hospital, you would measure "health" with a compound of physiological measures, like temperature, heart-rate, blood pressure. An economist would probably define it more in terms of likelihood to survive the year/decade. This is not a tautology, that's practically two algorithms to get numerical values that represents metrics of health. And why are we talking about health? I thought we were talking about ethics?
  - ukj 6y ago
    Health IS health. That is what “it” is. I am representing it by the identity function, because Holistically “health” is itself and nothing else (otherwise you are equivocating “health”). This is the first law of logic: identity. You insist on reductionism, so I am asking you to reduce “health” to its constituents. We can do the exact same thought experiments with “ethics” - reduce it. It isn’t sufficient to say “X is a metric of health/ethics, if I think more of X is healthy/ethical and you think less of X is healthy/ethical.
    - Iv 6y ago
      > It isn’t sufficient to say “X is a metric of health/ethics, if I think more of X is healthy/ethical and you think less of X is healthy/ethical. The starting point of this conversation is to say that it is neither you nor I who decide the appropriate amount of X, but that by measuring the compromise human society reached in term of balance between X and Y, we can determine that society wants e.g. 0.654 of X for each unit of Y. If you accept the predicate "Society's behavior defines what is ethical" then you get a moral framework that is interesting (but that is not mine, personally, as I refuse that predicate). It gives you a coherent framework that is the closest you can have from an objective morality: it is an inter-subjective one. It is also changing in time.
      - ukj 6y ago
        I am a proponent of objective/ inter-subjective morality. I am just not a proponent of it’s quantification. It emerges from self-organization - it isn’t deterministic. Measurements/quantities are about the past (a posteriori). Morality is about the future (a priori). If you measure “health” or “ethics” at X (X>0), where in your model would it say whether X OUGHT to be driven towards; or away from 0? And yet human health has greatly improved over the last 2000 years is a true, qualitative statement. Quantitative models are just instruments. Those instruments themselves can be used ethically or unethically.
        Iv 6y ago
        1. There is no opposition between non-deterministic self-organization and quantification. You can measure metrics of any chaotic system. 2. Morality is about the future? You must have skipped a step there. Are you assuming consequentialism? Do you mean that the morality of an action can only be judged w.r.t its future consequences? If so, it just means you need probabilities, which can be evaluated objectively. 3. The is/ought problem is well known. The core assumption of this discussion is: "we ought to do as society decided to do". All that remains to be measure is what society decided to do. Does society make effort to raise or lower X? That's a factual question that will lead you to know whether X OUGHT to be increased or decreases. > And yet human health has greatly improved over the last 2000 years is a true, qualitative statement. It is totally subjective. There are people (e.g. believers of racial purity) who would argue it is not the case. You can find antivaxxers to claim that our way of life is inherently unhealthy compared to ancient times. Religious fanatics consider that spiritual health (the only important one to them) fell since the times of revelations. Life expectancy has increased, but there that's an objective metric that you, subjectively, decided matters. "Health" means nothing until you have "reduced" it to objectivable metric.

by Iv 6y ago

ukj 6y ago

Sure, lets go with your theory that "reductionism is the technical norm". Lets represent "health" as the identity function in Lambda calculus. λx.health This is equivalent to the English sentence "health is health". Reduce it for me. Translate it into an expression roughly equivalent to "health is a function of...."

Iv 6y ago
I just don't understand what you are trying to do. > Lets represent "health" as the identity function in Lambda calculus. Health is a function now? Why an identity function? > This is equivalent to the English sentence "health is health". No, this is equivalent to the sentence "health transforms anything back into what it is" which is a weird predicate. > Reduce it for me. Translate it into an expression roughly equivalent to "health is a function of...." I am genuinely trying to understand what you are looking for. Considering just this sentence of yours, how is this not answered by my previous message? Especially this part: > In some contexts, like a hospital, you would measure "health" with a compound of physiological measures, like temperature, heart-rate, blood pressure. An economist would probably define it more in terms of likelihood to survive the year/decade. This is not a tautology, that's practically two algorithms to get numerical values that represents metrics of health. And why are we talking about health? I thought we were talking about ethics?
- ukj 6y ago
  Health IS health. That is what “it” is. I am representing it by the identity function, because Holistically “health” is itself and nothing else (otherwise you are equivocating “health”). This is the first law of logic: identity. You insist on reductionism, so I am asking you to reduce “health” to its constituents. We can do the exact same thought experiments with “ethics” - reduce it. It isn’t sufficient to say “X is a metric of health/ethics, if I think more of X is healthy/ethical and you think less of X is healthy/ethical.
  - Iv 6y ago
    > It isn’t sufficient to say “X is a metric of health/ethics, if I think more of X is healthy/ethical and you think less of X is healthy/ethical. The starting point of this conversation is to say that it is neither you nor I who decide the appropriate amount of X, but that by measuring the compromise human society reached in term of balance between X and Y, we can determine that society wants e.g. 0.654 of X for each unit of Y. If you accept the predicate "Society's behavior defines what is ethical" then you get a moral framework that is interesting (but that is not mine, personally, as I refuse that predicate). It gives you a coherent framework that is the closest you can have from an objective morality: it is an inter-subjective one. It is also changing in time.
    - ukj 6y ago
      I am a proponent of objective/ inter-subjective morality. I am just not a proponent of it’s quantification. It emerges from self-organization - it isn’t deterministic. Measurements/quantities are about the past (a posteriori). Morality is about the future (a priori). If you measure “health” or “ethics” at X (X>0), where in your model would it say whether X OUGHT to be driven towards; or away from 0? And yet human health has greatly improved over the last 2000 years is a true, qualitative statement. Quantitative models are just instruments. Those instruments themselves can be used ethically or unethically.
      - Iv 6y ago
        1. There is no opposition between non-deterministic self-organization and quantification. You can measure metrics of any chaotic system. 2. Morality is about the future? You must have skipped a step there. Are you assuming consequentialism? Do you mean that the morality of an action can only be judged w.r.t its future consequences? If so, it just means you need probabilities, which can be evaluated objectively. 3. The is/ought problem is well known. The core assumption of this discussion is: "we ought to do as society decided to do". All that remains to be measure is what society decided to do. Does society make effort to raise or lower X? That's a factual question that will lead you to know whether X OUGHT to be increased or decreases. > And yet human health has greatly improved over the last 2000 years is a true, qualitative statement. It is totally subjective. There are people (e.g. believers of racial purity) who would argue it is not the case. You can find antivaxxers to claim that our way of life is inherently unhealthy compared to ancient times. Religious fanatics consider that spiritual health (the only important one to them) fell since the times of revelations. Life expectancy has increased, but there that's an objective metric that you, subjectively, decided matters. "Health" means nothing until you have "reduced" it to objectivable metric.