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Very interesting question! I would argue that concepts like "size", "colour", "texture" are grounded in a more base level of reality than concepts such as "buy

Very interesting question! I would argue that concepts like "size", "colour", "texture" are grounded in a more base level of reality than concepts such as "buy price", "sell price", "dividend" etc. The former set of concepts relate to aspects of the physical world as perceived by creatures that inhabit that world, while the latter refer to social constructs of the human socio-economic world that are themselves reliant on abstract human concepts of utility, value, the market etc. This thought is not fully developed but I'm drawn to the idea that if an intelligence is grounded in an understanding of a more base level of reality it will find it easier to generalize beyond any one given domain. I could be entirely wrong of course.

IIAOPSW 4y ago
But how do you determine the basicness level of reality? And how do you know there isn't a layer lower than our own?
- r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
  I'm philosophically comfortable with the notion that some things are unknowable and that eventually one just has to take certain cornerstone propositions about the nature of reality on trust and / or faith. Ultimately though the question is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, as the claim I'm making is that physical reality is at a lower level than socio economic reality (which I'll give you is a contested claim these days)
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    Yes, the systems we construct within this reality are obviously not the bottom of the stack because we built the stack. But suppose the trading bots figure out how to manipulate the rounding mechanics of high frequency trading to jerry rig a Turing machine within their reality. Now fast forward from this and suppose they've all obtained an equivalent of a home PC. For fun they all start playing a "sim city" like game version of our reality. So far as they can tell, money is real reality (rather than socio-economic construct), and the "physical" reality is an abstract game constructed at a higher level. So who's reality is who's construct in the end?

IIAOPSW 4y ago

But how do you determine the basicness level of reality? And how do you know there isn't a layer lower than our own?

r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
I'm philosophically comfortable with the notion that some things are unknowable and that eventually one just has to take certain cornerstone propositions about the nature of reality on trust and / or faith. Ultimately though the question is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, as the claim I'm making is that physical reality is at a lower level than socio economic reality (which I'll give you is a contested claim these days)
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Yes, the systems we construct within this reality are obviously not the bottom of the stack because we built the stack. But suppose the trading bots figure out how to manipulate the rounding mechanics of high frequency trading to jerry rig a Turing machine within their reality. Now fast forward from this and suppose they've all obtained an equivalent of a home PC. For fun they all start playing a "sim city" like game version of our reality. So far as they can tell, money is real reality (rather than socio-economic construct), and the "physical" reality is an abstract game constructed at a higher level. So who's reality is who's construct in the end?