Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I think one can levy a much more specific critique of rationalism: rationalism is in some sense self-defeating. If you are rational you will necessarily conclude that the fundamental dynamic that drives the (interesting parts of) the universe is Darwinian evolution, which is not rational. It blindly selects for reproductive fitness at the expense of all else. If you are a gene, you can probably produce more offspring in an already-industrialized environment by making brains that lean more towards misogyny and sexual promiscuity than gender equality and intellectual achievement.

The real conflict here is between Darwinism and enlightenment ideals. But I have yet to see any self-styled Rationalists take this seriously.



I always liken this to that we’re all asteroids floating in space. There’s no free will and everything is determined. We just see the whole thing unfold from one conscious perspective.

Emotionally I don’t subscribe to this view. Rationally I do.

My critique for rational people is that they don’t seem to fully take experience into account. It’s assumptions + rationality + experience/data + whatever strong inclinations one has that seems to be the full picture for me.


> no free will

That always seemed like a meaningless argument to me. To an outside observer free will is indistinguishable from a random process over some range of possibilities. You aren’t going to randomly go to sleep with your hand in a fire, there’s some hard coded biology preventing that choice but that only means human behavior isn’t completely random, hardly a groundbreaking discovery.

At the other end we have no issues making an arbitrary decision where there’s no way to predict what the better choice is. So what exactly does free will bring to the table that we’re missing without it? Some sort of mystical soul, well what if that’s also deterministic? Unpredictability is useful in game theory, but computers can get that from a hardware RNG based on quantum processes like radioactive decay, so it doesn’t mean much.

Finally, subjectively the answer isn’t clear so what difference does it make?


> That always seemed like a meaningless argument to me.

Same as that is not the lived experience. I notice that I care about free choice.

The idea that there's no free will may be a pessimistic outlook to some but to me it's a strictly neutral one. It used to be a bit negative, until I looked more closely that there's a difference between looking at a situation objectively and having a lived experience. When it comes to my inclinations and how I want to live life, lived experience takes precedence.

I don't have my thoughts sharp on it, but I don't think the concept even exists philosophically, but I think that's also what you're getting at. It's a conceptual remnant from the past.


"Free choice" is the first step towards the solution to this paradox: free will is what a deterministic choice feels like from the inside. The popular notion of free will is that our decisions are undetermined, which must imply that there is a random element to them.

But though that is the colloquial meaning, it doesn't line up with what people say they want: you want to make your choice according to your own reasons. You want free choice. But unless your own reasoning includes a literal throw of the dice, your justifications deterministically decide the outcome.

"Free will" is the ability to make your own choices, and for most people most of the time, those choices are deterministic given the options and knowledge available. Free will and determinism are not only compatible, but necessarily so. If your choices weren't deterministic, it wouldn't be free will.


This is the position that is literally called compatibilist.

But when you probe people, while a lot of people will argue in ways that a philosopher might call compatibilist, my experience is that people will also strongly resist the notion that the only options are randomness and determinism. A lot of people have what boils down to a religious belief in a third category that is not merely a combination of those two, but infuses some mysterious third options where they "choose" that they can't explain.

Most of the time, people who believe there is no free will (and can't be), like me, take positions similar to what you described, that - again - a proponent of free will might describe as compatibilist, but sometimes we oppose the term for the reason above: A lot of people genuinely believe in a "third option" for choices are made.

And so there are really two separate debates on free will: Does the "third option" exist or not, and does "compatibilist free will" exist or not. I don't think I've ever met anyone who seriously disagrees that "free will" the way compatibilists define it exists, so when compatibilists get into arguments over this, it's almost always a misunderstanding...

But I have met plenty of people who disagree with the notion that things are deterministic "from the outside".


I'm a regular practitioner of magic, have written essays about it on Quora, and I can identify this mysterious third option as "the universe responding to your needs." You can use any number of religious terms to refer it to, like serendipity and the like, but none of them can capture the full texture of precisely how free will operates.

Approaching this subject from a rational perspective divorces you from subject and makes it impossible to perceive. You have to immerse yourself in it and one way to do that is magical practice. Having direct experience of the universe responding to your actions and mindset eventually makes it absurdly clear that the universe bears intelligence and it's in this intelligence that free will operates.

I'd never thought before now to connect magic this directly to free will. Thanks for the opportunity to think this through! If you're interested in a deeper discussion, happy to jump on a call.


lmao, magic? seriously?


You betcha.


It is stronger than compatibilism. Compatibilism argues that free will and determinism are orthogonal. The argument I summarized is that free will is and must necessarily imply determinism..


I think that is a distinction without difference in as much as it's an excuse not to deal with it. But compatibilist "free will" must imply determinism unless some "magic" third alternative exists, because there isn't another option, and there is no evidence to suggest such a third alternative exists, so in practice every compatibilist I've had this discussion with have fallen back on arguing free will is compatible with determinism.


Definition doesn't tell all implications. In practice compatibilists do deeper analysis that reveals that determinism is required for free will.


Opposing the term gives a wrong result too, as people jump to hard determinism.


However "hard" your determinism, there is no support for the notion of agency, and that is all that matters. Without agency, free will is nothing but an illusion, with same moral consequences.


This isn’t true. The position I argued for above is that agency derives from determinism because it is necessarily causal: you have agency because you make decisions in line with your goals. If you didn’t make decisions that were deterministically selected from your goals, you’d actually lack agency!


And agency as inner motivation exists and is determined by your character, otherwise it would be not yours.


I think a reasonable interpretation of the colloquial sense of incompatibilist free will is that people want to be (or have the experience that they are) their own causal origins or prime movers. That they originate an action that is not (purely) the effect of all other actions that have occurred, but in such a way that they decided what that action was.

From the outside, this is indistinguishable from randomness. But from the inside, the difference is that the individual had a say in what the action would be.

Where this tends to get tangled up with notions of a soul, I think, is that one could argue that such a free choice needs some kind of internal state. If not, then the grounds by which the person makes the choice is a combination of something that is fixed and their environment, which then intuitively seems to reduce the free-will process to a combination of determined and random. So the natural thing to do is then to assign the required "being-ness" (or internal state if you will) to a soul.

But there may exist subtle philosophical arguments that sidestep this dilemma. I am not a philosopher: this is just my impression of what commonsense notions of free will mean.


My point is that from the outside this doesn’t look like randomness at all, unless you are mistaking ignorance of their motives as a random oracle. If you can infer what set of goals drives their decision making, and the decision making process itself (e.g. ADHD brain vs careful considered action) you can very much predict their decisions. Marketing and PR people do this every single day. People don’t behave like random oracles, they behave like deterministic decision makers with complex, partly unknown goals so our predictions of their behavior are not always correct. That’s not the same thing as random.


People get emotional about free will because if you come to believe there is no free will it makes you question a lot of things that are emotionally difficult.

E.g. punishment for the sake of retribution is near impossible to morally justify if you don't believe in free will because it means you're punishing someone for something the had no agency over.

Similarly, wealth disparities can't be excused by someone choosing to work harder, because they had no agency in the "decision".

You can still justify some degree of punishment and reward, but a lack of free will changes which justifications are reasonable very substantially.

E.g. punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals, and that has emotionally difficult consequences. For example, for non-premeditated murders carried out out of passion rather than e.g. gang crimes, the odds of someone carrying out another is extremely low and the odds that the fear of a long prison sentence is an actual deterrence is generally low, and and so long prison terms are hard to justify once vengeance is off the table.

And so holding on to a belief in free will is easier to a lot of people than the alternative.

My experience is that there are few issues where people so easily get angry than if you suggest we don't have free will once they start thinking through the consequences (and some imagined ones...).


If there is no free will, thoughts about free will are predetermined and so is punishment. The punishers don’t have agency either. You seem to say that punishers do have free will, but criminals don’t?


I didn't say anything about whether free will exists or not, actually. The comment was specifically worded to explain why some people react to coming to believe there is no free will.

But, sure, I personally do not believe in free will. I'm saying there is no rational basis for thinking anyone has free will ever. I'm saying there is no evidence to suggest free will is possible. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that believing in free will is a religious belief with no support.

But that doesn't mean that events does not have effects on what happens next, just that we don't have agency. That an IF ... THEN ... ELSE ... statement is purely deterministic for deterministic inputs does not mean that changing the inputs won't affect the outputs.

If you "choose" to lay down and do nothing because you decide nothing matters because you don't have free will, you will still lose your job and starve. That it wasn't a "true" "free" choice does not change the fact that it has consequences.

One of the consequences of coming to accept that free will is an illusion is that you need to come to terms with what that means for your beliefs about a wide range of things.

Including that vengeance which might seem moral to some extent if the person who did something to you or others had agency suddenly become immoral. But we still have the feelings and impulses. Reconciling that is hard for a lot of people, and so a lot of people in my experience when faced with a claim like the one I made above that we have no free will tend to react emotionally to the idea of the consequences of it.


Are there deterministic solutions to the three body problem? Or the double pendulum? Or can you tell the t° at any point on earth for say, a millisecond in, say, 6h (feel free to chose a prefered point and time)? And what precision could you realistically produce in that?

If there are non deterministic processes that can be proven to exist, and those interact with deterministic processes, doesn't it follow that the deterministic process becomes non deterministic (since the result of the interaction is necessarily non deterministic), and that it is not continually deterministic.

So - can you see how nothing can be deterministic other than in isolation (or thought experiment really)?

Edit0: typo


There are deterministic solutions to the three body problem or the double pendulum in Newtonian mechanics.

We can’t measure things to arbitrary precision due to quantum mechanics, but Philosophy isn’t bound by the actual physical universe we inhabit. Arbitrary physical models allow for the possibility of infinite precision in measurement and calculation resulting in perfect prediction of future states forever. Alternatively, you could have a universe of finite precision (think Minecraft) which also allows for perfect calculation of all future states from initial starting conditions.


I agree, and indeed there are solutions to chaotic systems - the problem being precision as you mentionned. To me the precision problem it is important : it reframes the "mechanical universe" as being way out of our grasp not because of our understanding but because of it's structure. You got me!

Not certain that philosophy is not bound by our universe - is that something you could elaborate (or lend a link) on?

To apply these hypotheticals to our universe implies (from my understanding) that the density of information present at any and all times since it's inception was present (while compressed) at it's creation/whatever - which I imagine I can find some proof of theoretical maximum information density and information compression compare that to the first state of the universe we can measure to have a better idea if it tracks.


> Not certain that philosophy is not bound by our universe - is that something you could elaborate (or lend a link) on?

I simply mean it’s happy to assume perfect information, perfect clones, etc. The trolly problem generally ignores the possibility that choosing a different track could with some probability result in derailment because the inherent question is simplified by design. We don’t need for the possibility of perfect cloning to exist to consider the ramifications of such etc.


I think I see a distinction in that a hypothetical universe with perfect information is pertinent precisely because it is comparable to our measurable universe and could be tested against.

I guess that's the point of any hypothetical, exploring a simplified model of something complex, but it's not easy to simplify the fabric of reality itself.


That’s more effective as an argument to get rid of the most extreme forms of punishment (eg drawn and quartered) not all forms of retribution.

In a world without free will crimes of passion are simply the result of the situation which means that person would always chose murder in that situation. People who would respond with murder in an unacceptably wide range of situations is an edge case worth consideration without free will. Alternatively if we want nobody to respond with murder in a crime of passion situation evolutionary pressure could eventually work even without free will.

> E.g. punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals, and that has emotionally difficult consequences. For example, for non-premeditated murders carried out out of passion rather than e.g. gang crimes, the odds of someone carrying out another is extremely low and the odds that the fear of a long prison sentence is an actual deterrence is generally low, and and so long prison terms are hard to justify once vengeance is off the table.

That’s assuming absolute certainty about what happened. Punishments may make sense as a logical argument even if it’s only useful in a subset of cases if you can’t be absolutely sure which case something happened to be.

Uncertainty does a lot to align emotional heuristics and logical actions.


Whether or not you have free will is not relevant, as I had described in other comments.

> In a world without free will crimes of passion are simply the result of the situation which means that person would always chose murder in that situation. People who would respond with murder in an unacceptably wide range of situations is an edge case worth consideration without free will.

This is a significant argument. However, there is also worth considering if that is actually accurate, and if such a situation will occur (in a case where whoever would be killed would not effectively protect themself from this).

> That’s assuming absolute certainty about what happened. Punishments may make sense as a logical argument even if it’s only useful in a subset of cases if you can’t be absolutely sure which case something happened to be.

It is true that you do not have absolute certainty, but neither should you arrest someone who is not guilty.

> Uncertainty does a lot to align emotional heuristics and logical actions.

In some cases, yes, but it is not always valid. But, even if it is, this does not mean that you should not consider it logically if you are able to do so.


I think that whether or not you have free will is not so important when making these considerations.

Whether or not you have a choice and free will, you can influence and be influenced by other stuff, since that is how anything is doing.

> punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals

I do agree with that, and I think that whether or not you have free will is not significant. Being emotionally difficult is not what makes it good or bad in this case (and it also does not seem to be so emotionally difficult to me, anyways). Reducing reoffending rates is what is important.

(Another issue is knowing if they are actually guilty (you shouldn't arrest people who are not actually guilty of murder); this is not always certain, either.)

I also think that it should mean that prisoners should not be treated badly and that prison sentences should not be too long. (Also, they shouldn't take up too much space by the prisons, since they should have free space for natural lands and for other buildings and purposes, but that is not quite the same issue, though.)

However, there may be cases where a fine might be appropriate, in order to pay for damages (although if someone else is willing to forgive them then such a fine may not be required). This does not justify a prison sentence or stuff like that, though.

Also, some people will just not like them anymore if they are accused of murder, even if they are not put in prison and not fined. This is not the issue for police and legal things; it is just what it will be. And, if it becomes known, people who disagree with the risk assessment can try to avoid someone.

And, if someone does commit a crime again and may have opportunity to do again in future, then this can be considered as being wrong the first time and this time hopefully you can know better.


I don't find the consequences very hard to bear:

For example

> E.g. punishment for the sake of retribution is near impossible to morally justify if you don't believe in free will because it means you're punishing someone for something the had no agency over.

and

> E.g. punishment might still be justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates, but if that is the goal then it is only justified to the extent that it actually achieves those goals

are simply logical to me (even without assuming any lack of free will).

So what is emotionally difficult about this, as you claim?


I agree; they seem logical to me too, whether or not you have free will.

However, it would seem that not everyone believes that, though.

(It is not quite as simple as it might seem, because the situation is not necessarily always that clear, but other than that, I would agree that it is logical and reasonable, that punishment is only justified from the point of view of reducing offending and reoffending rates and only if it actually achieves those goals.)


Then you're highly unusual (in a good way). Look at the amount of comments on social media with outcries over "too short" sentences for example, and the lack of political support for shortening sentences or improving prison standards.

I'm saying it's emotionally difficult to people because I've had this discussion many times over then last 30+ years and I've seen first hand how most people I have this conversation with tend to get angry and agitated over the prospect of not having moral cover for vengeance.


> Then you're highly unusual (in a good way). Look at the amount of comments on social media with outcries over "too short" sentences for example, and the lack of political support for shortening sentences or improving prison standards.

I live in Germany.

When I observe the whole societal and political situation in the USA from the outside, it seems to me that it is rather "two blocks where in each of these there is somewhat an internal consensus regarding a quite some political positions. On the other hand, each of these two blocks is actively fighting the other one."

On the other hand, for Germany, I would claim that the opinions in society rather consist of "lots of very diverse stances (though in contrary to the USA less pronounced on the extreme ends) on a lot of topics that make it hard to reach a larger set of followers or some consensus in a larger group, i.e. in-fighting about all kinds of topics without these positions forming political camps (and the fractions for different opinions can easily change when the topic changes)."

Thus, in the given example, this means for a person out-crying "too short" sentences on social media, you will very likely find one who is out-crying the opposite position.


“ E.g. punishment for the sake of retribution is near impossible to morally justify if you don't believe in free will because it means you're punishing someone for something the had no agency over.”

False, the punisher also has no will, so it doesn’t matter.


I have much less patience for C++ than I would in a world with free will.

Since there's no free will, outcomes are determined by luck, and what matters is how lucky we can make people through pit-of-success environments. Rust makes people luckier than C++ does.

I also have much less patience for blame than I do in a world with free will. I believe, for example, that blameless postmortems lead to much better outcomes than trying to pretend people had free will to make mistakes, and therefore blaming them for those mistakes.

You can get to these positions through means other than rejection of free will, but the most robust grounds for them are fundamentally deterministic.


If there is no free will, then all arguments about what should be done are irrelevant, since every outcome is either predetermined or random, so you have no influence on whether the project at work will choose Rust or C++. This choice was either made 13 billion years ago at the Big Bang, or it is an entirely random process.


> If there is no free will, then all arguments about what should be done are irrelevant, since every outcome is either predetermined or random, so you have no influence on whether the project at work will choose Rust or C++.

This is not correct. Whether or not you have free will, stuff influences and is influenced by other stuff, so these arguments are not meaningless or worthless.

> This choice was either made 13 billion years ago at the Big Bang, or it is an entirely random process.

I had thought of this before, and what I had decided is that both of these are also independent of having free will. For example, if the initial state includes unknown and uncomputable transcendental numbers which can somehow "encode" free will and then the working of physics is deterministic, then it is still possible (although not necessarily mandatory) to have free will, even though it is deterministic.


Lack of free will doesn’t prevent logical arguments from seeming to work.


Depends on whether you consider facts or theory. Facts don't prevent logical arguments from seeming to work, but lack of free will is theory. When theory doesn't match facts, theory is wrong.


We have built systems that don’t have free will and respond to logical arguments, so no theory is required here.


Random processes can’t use logic.


Fuzzy logic deals with truth values between 0 and 1. You can for example map water temperatures in such systems without having arbitrarily important cutoff points.

Such system often deal with uncertainty quite well including random noise on their inputs. The output ends up a function of both logic and randomness, but can still be useful.


Agreed, I don’t believe a system like that can access the platonic realm of mathematical truths. It’s clear that an electron doesn’t carry the laws of physics with it as it travels.


Why not? The human brain is hardly a perfect system of logic but can emulate such.


Something is orchestrating the decisions that the brain executes in the conscious realm though. (As opposed to or in contrast to the mathematical realm and the realm of the physical laws). We are clearly surrounded by invisible realms, unless you believe electrons are carrying lookup tables of how to respond to invisible electric fields.


This is a strawman argument extended by those who rely on supernatural explanations. In reality, people's utterances and actions are part of the environment that determines future actions, just like everything else.


Sure, but that still doesn't matter: the fact that I wrote my previous comment is what caused you to write your response, but it's not like I had a choice to write that comment or some other: the fact that I wrote that comment, as well as everything that led to me writing it (conversations with teachers, my parents letting me watch English cartoons so I learned English, etc), were predetermined the moment the Big Bang happened, or they're just a quantum fluctuation.

What I'm saying is that there's no logical point to the concept "should" unless you have some concept of free will: everything that happens must happen, or is entirely random.


Divorced from a religious context, it doesn't make any difference.


Which religious context, and why?


Randomness based free will still gives you a non-inevitable future.


So does a computer without free will acting on a physical RNG. Therefore it’s the RNG that matters not free will.


For naturalistic libertarians , free.will is.partly constituted by indtermimksm, not something entirely different.


If you get down to the quantum level there is no such thing as objective reality. Our perception that the world is made of classical objects that actually exist at particular places at particular times and have continuity of identity is an illusion. But it's a really compelling illusion, and you won't go far wrong treating it as if it were the truth in 99% of real-world situations. Likewise, free will is an illusion, nothing more than a reflection of our ignorance of how our brains work. But it is a really compelling illusion, and you won't go far wrong treating it as if it were the truth, at least some of the time.


> If you get down to the quantum level there is no such thing as objective reality.

What do you mean by that? It still exists doesn't it? Albeit in a probabilistic sense that becomes non-probabilistic at larger scales.

I don't know much about quantum other than the high level conceptual stuff.


> It still exists doesn't it?

It's controversial, but here is the argument that the answer is "no": See https://flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf

Or if you prefer a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc


That's non sequitur.

>Under QIT, a measurement is just the propagation of a mutually entangled state to a large number of particles.

eyeroll so it's MWI in disguise, but MWI is quantum realism. Illusion they talk about is that the observed macroscopic state is a part of the bigger superposition (incomplete observation). But that's dumb, even if it's a part of a bigger state, it's still real, because it's not made up, but observed.


> it's MWI in disguise

That's kind of like saying that GRW is Copenhagen in disguise. It's not wrong, but only because it's making the word "disguise" do some pretty heavy lifting.

> MWI is quantum realism

No, it isn't because it can't account for the Born rule. See:

https://blog.rongarret.info/2019/07/the-trouble-with-many-wo...


It's a strange conclusion. You seemingly consider one measurement and expect to see Born rule, and when it doesn't manifest, then MWI is wrong? But Born rule doesn't manifest at sample size one in any interpretation, it manifests only in a long string of measurements. If you consider a long string of measurements, you will see Born rule as <Ψ|Born rule> = 1 - O(exp(-N)), which is basically a definition of empirical tendency.

Well, now I see that QIT isn't quite there. You say classical behavior emerges by tracing, mathematically, not as a physical process? In MWI classical behavior emerges as a physical process, not by tracing. That "look at part of the system (in which case you see classical behavior)" is provided by linear independence of different branches, so each observer naturally observes their branch from inside, and it looks isolated from other branches.


> You seemingly consider one measurement and expect to see Born rule

Huh??? No, of course not. The Born rule is about probabilities. It cannot manifest in a single measurement.

> classical behavior emerges by tracing, mathematically, not as a physical process?

No. The mathematical description of classical outcomes emerges by tracing, which is to say, by discarding information. The physical interpretation of that is left open.

> In MWI classical behavior emerges as a physical process

That's right. MWI commits to a physical interpretation of the math. But there is no scientific or philosophical justification for this, and in fact, when you dig into the details all kinds of problems emerge that are swept under the rug by its proponents. Nonetheless, many MWI proponents insist that it is the One True Interpretation, including some who really ought to know better.

> each observer naturally observes their branch from inside, and it looks isolated from other branches.

Yes, I know. But this doesn't solve the problem. In order to get a mathematical description of me I have to trace the wave function in my preferred basis, which is to say, I have to throw out all of the other branches. And this is not just a computational hack. It's mathematically necessary. Discarding information is the only way to get classical, irreversible processes (like measurement) out of the unitary dynamics of the wave function. So a reasonable interpretation of the math is that I exist only if parallel universes don't. And I'm pretty sure I exist.

I'm not telling you this because I expect you to accept it, merely to show you that the MWI is not self-evidently the One True Interpretation.


In the blog post you say that tracing lets you consider a subset of an entangled system in isolation from the rest of the system. That was consistent with MWI where states are isolated from each other and not discarded. Mathematically discarding isn't necessary, isolation is sufficient.


Sure. So? MWI is not mathematically untenable, it's just incomplete (because it can't account for the Born rule) and IMHO philosophically untenable because it requires that no experiment can demonstrate the existence of a fully isolated universe, i.e. a universe whose macroscopic configuration is different from ours [1]. This feature of the MWI is what I call an IPU -- an Invisible Pink Unicorn -- something that the theory insists exists despite the fact that the theory also requires it to be unmeasurable even in principle. If you want to believe it exists, fine. Just don't call it science, and definitely don't insist that anyone who doesn't accept it is being irrational. It's attitudes like that that turn Rationalism (with a capital R) into a cult.

---

[1] https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/04/on-shadow-photons-and-re...

(Note that I wrote this 16 years ago, so not everything is 100% accurate, but I stand by the central point.)


That blog post associates for me with the indirect observation of branching that I mentioned. Double slit experiment with one detector has a seemingly impossible phenomenon when the interference pattern disappears without measurement in our branch, so without branching this phenomenon can't be explained as "pattern disappears due to measurement", because measurement didn't happen. In MWI in this case the pattern disappears due to measurement in the other branch, that branch splits from our with the measured part of the photon and the pattern disappears in our branch. Our branch isn't privileged in this case, actually it's affected by the other branch, and the situation is symmetric: when measurement happens in our branch, pattern disappears in the other branch without measurement there. Well, technically if the other branch is destroyed by measurement there, the result for our branch is the same I guess. And if this phenomenon can't be explained without branching, then it's almost direct evidence for branching.


> Double slit experiment with one detector has a seemingly impossible phenomenon when the interference pattern disappears without measurement in our branch

Then you don't understand quantum mechanics at all. You should read this:

https://flownet.com/ron/QM.pdf

The TL;DR is that measurement and entanglement are the same phenomenon. A particle can become entangled with a detector even if the detector doesn't register anything.

But that is neither here nor there. Why do you get interference with no detectors? Your theory is that a detector at one slit is somehow paired with a "virtual detector" in a parallel branch at the other slit. But why would that "virtual detector" go away when the real detector is removed? Why is it never the case that there is a "virtual detector" at either slit unless there is a real detector at one of them?


Before measurement it's one detector, then it interacts with half photon, which is superposition |photon>+|no photon>, and the detector's state splits, the first state interacts with the |photon> state and measures it, nothing happens to the second state, because there's nothing to measure in the |no photon> state, but the first state splits away from the second state and leaves it alone, that's how the second state ends up alone with pure |no photon> state, but this really was done to it by the first state, the second state can't do it by itself. For this to happen in the second branch you need measurement to happen in the first branch, so when you are in the second branch, the first branch still needs to exist even though you don't see it, otherwise your branch won't be able to be as it is.

When you remove detector and start next measurement, you start with your one branch, branches from previous measurements don't affect it, the phenomenon happens during decoherence, nothing happens after it.

Your article explains this with branching without saying the word.


There is no such thing as a half photon.


It's a part of photon's state at the slit with detector, the other part is at another slit. It's superposition of photon near detector and no photon near detector.


A superposition is not "half a photon". You are talking nonsense.


In MWI the Born rule is a tendency of statistics of a long string of measurements. You tried to get this statistics from one measurement, which didn't work. If you want to see how MWI produces the Born rule, you should calculate statistics of a long string of measurements and see that this statistics is asymptotically close to Born statistics.

Other branches can be demonstrated indirectly by 1) quantitatively verifying unitary dynamics, 2) indirectly observing branching, 3) demonstrating that other theories are wrong. Branches are just superposition, if you want to eliminate branches, you should eliminate superposition with pilot wave or superdeterminism or something like that. This kind of unobservability isn't unique to MWI, in general theory of relativity we observe only a part of the universe, the rest being beyond event horizon and is unobservable. Do you believe only observable part of the universe exists and beyond it nothing exists?


> You tried to get this statistics from one measurement

Huh??? When?

> Other branches can be demonstrated

Sure, that's just QM 101. What you cannot demonstrate experimentally, not even in principle, is the existence of other branches with different macroscopic configurations than our own. Such branches are IPUs.


>Huh??? When?

In the blog post you linked above:

>No, it isn't because it can't account for the Born rule. See:

>https://blog.rongarret.info/2019/07/the-trouble-with-many-wo...

>What you cannot demonstrate experimentally, not even in principle

I provided 3 ways to demonstrate it experimentally, even in principle, not sure what problem you have.


> In the blog post you linked above

Again, huh??? Where in that blog post do I try to "get this [sic] statistics from one measurement"?

> I provided 3 ways to demonstrate it experimentally, even in principle, not sure what problem you have.

No, you didn't. You apparently don't understand what is meant by "branches with different macroscopic configurations than our own" and I don't have time to explain it to you. Sorry. Go read up on decoherence, and then come back and describe an experiment that can demonstrate the existence of a fully decohered branch. You can't, because if you could it would by definition not be fully docohered.


>Where in that blog post do I try to "get this [sic] statistics from one measurement"?

In the discussion how different people place bets on A and B outcomes of experiment. Well, you didn't state clearly why you believe that MWI doesn't account for Born rule. MWI accounts for Born rule as statistics of measurements, and the discussion of bets is the closest this in that blog post to consideration of statistics of measurements, but that discussion seemingly considers one measurement, that's why it doesn't see statistics.

>Go read up on decoherence, and then come back and describe an experiment that can demonstrate the existence of a fully decohered branch.

It looks like a logical problem to me. You suggest that decoherence both produces and doesn't produce fully decohered branches? Violation of the law of excluded middle? If the law of excluded middle doesn't work, I don't think experiments can demonstrate anything.


> you didn't state clearly why you believe that MWI doesn't account for Born rule

That's what the whole post was about. The MWI doesn't account for the Born rule unless you add additional, questionable assumptions like branch indifference to the SE.

> You suggest that decoherence both produces and doesn't produce fully decohered branches?

No, that is not even remotely what I am saying. You are beginning to sound like a troll.


If you insist that MWI must mean "a discrete number of clearly separated worlds", then yes, such interpretation would have a problem with the Born rule.

(That is apparently the definition the author of the linked article uses, guessing by his reaction: "Wait, what??? There is no 'well defined notion of how many branches there are?'")

I can only say that I have never met a proponent of MWI who meant this.


I am the author.

> I can only say that I have never met a proponent of MWI who meant this.

What can I say? There are a lot of MWI proponents who profess to believe this. Here, for example, is Sean Carroll answering the question, "How many parallel universes are there?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tQiy5iCX4o

Of course, he doesn't actually give a concrete answer, but he very strongly implies that the question has an answer, i.e. that the question is a meaningful one to ask, and that implies that the MWI does in fact mean that there is a discrete number of clearly separated worlds.

In fact, I challenge you find a single example of a prominent MWI proponent saying something in public (which is to say, in a public forum or a publication whose target audience is the general public) that even implies that the many-worlds of the MWI are not distinct, countable entities. I only know of one example, and it is very well hidden.

There is a more fundamental problem: if the MWI does not mean "a discrete number of clearly separated worlds" then it fails as an interpretation of QM, i.e. as a solution to the measurement problem. The whole point is that measurements appear to produce discrete outcomes despite the fact that the math says that everything is one big quantum superposition. If all you have to say about this is, "Yeah, it's all one big quantum superposition" then you have failed to solve the problem. You have simply swept the hard part under the rug.


> Of course, he doesn't actually give a concrete answer, but he very strongly implies that the question has an answer, i.e. that the question is a meaningful one to ask, and that implies that the MWI does in fact mean that there is a discrete number of clearly separated worlds.

In the video, Sean Carroll talks to a non-expert audience, so he must simplify some things, and then it is your or my guess about what the unsimplified version was supposed to be. He says something like: "we don't know, even whether it is finite or infinite, but if it is finite it is a very large number such as 10^10^123". But notice that he also uses as an analogy an interval from 0 to 1, which can be split to half as many times as you need.

You see this as him believing in discrete separated universes, of which there is a definite number (potentially infinite). Yes, that makes sense.

I see another possible understanding, that he is talking about "meaningfully different" universes, because that is what we care about on the macro level. To explain what I mean, imagine that we observe two particles. Any of them can be in a huge number of possible positions, moving in a huge number of possible directions, at a huge number of possible speed. But if we ask whether those two particles hit each other and transformed into another particle, that kinda collapses this huge possibility space into a "yes / no" question. Out of practically infinity, two meaningfully different options.

On a macro level, either the cat is alive or it is dead. Those are two meaningfully different states. If we focus on one particle in the cat's body, there is a continuum of where precisely that particle could be, and what momentum it has. So from the particle's perspective, there is a continuum of options. But from the cat's perspective, and the cat's owner's perspective, this continuum does not matter; unless it changes the macro state, i.e. the particle kills the cat, or at least maybe hits its neuron and makes it do something differently. So it seems possible to me that Sean Carroll talks about the number of worlds that are different from human perspective.

Then there is another problem in physics that we don't know how/whether the very space and time are quantized. We use the mathematical abstraction of a "real number" that has an infinite number of digits after the decimal dot, but of course that infinite number of digits can never be observed experimentally. We don't know. Maybe it is something like what Wolfram says, that on a deep level, spacetime is a discrete graph evolving according to some rules. If something like that would be the case, that would reduce the possible number of states in the universe, even on the micro level, to a huge but finite number. And the mixed state of the multiverse would consist of this finite number of branches, each of them assigned a tiny complex amplitude. So that's another way how things could get finite.

And I am saying this just as a random guy who never studied these things, I just sometimes read something on the topic, and some ideas feel to me like obvious consequences of the stuff that is "in the water supply". So I believe that if I see a solution to a problem, then if it makes sense, someone like Sean Carroll is 10000x more likely to notice the problem and the solution, and develop it much further than I ever could. Or when you make a survey, and a half or a third of people who study quantum physics for living say that some version of MWI seems like the correct interpretation to them, I don't believe there is a simple devastating argument against it that all of these people have simply missed.


> I am saying this just as a random guy who never studied these things

OK, well, let me tell you as a non-random guy who has studied these things extensively that the MWI is very commonly misrepresented. It is not a case of simplification for a lay audience, it is flat-out lying, at least most of the time. The math does not say that there are parallel universes. All the math tells you is that in order to recover the results of experiments you have to throw away some of the information contained in the wave function. MWI proponents interpret this by saying that the discarded information has to correspond to something real, and they call that thing "parallel universes". But there are three problems with this. First, the MWI does not explain the Born rule. Second, the math doesn't tell you whether or not the discarded parts of the wave function describe something real or not. It is possible that mathematical operation of discarding parts of the wave function actually corresponds to real physical phenomenon, i.e. that whatever is described by the discarded parts of the wave function actually ceases to exist. This is a tenable scientific hypothesis. It's not easy to actually make it work, but it can be done and has been done. It's called GRW collapse [1]. So anyone who tells you that the MWI is the only possible scientifically tenable interpretation of QM is lying. And anyone who leaves open even the possibility that the "parallel universes" contained in the wave function are discrete is also lying. The only MWI proponent I've ever seen being intellectually honest about this.David Deutsch in his book "The Beginning of Infinity" chapter 11.

The third problem with the MWI is something called the "preferred basis problem". This one is harder to describe succinctly, and some people claim it has been solved, but I don't agree with them. In a nutshell, all two-state QM experiments rely on some macroscopic apparatus to split a particle into a superposition of two states. But if you model the entire universe as a quantum system, this apparatus is itself a quantum system that can be in a superposition of states, so you can't say, "The polarizing beam splitter is aligned vertically or it is aligned horizontally" any more than you can say "the cat is alive or it is dead" without begging the question.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghirardi%E2%80%93Rimini%E2%80%...


You got the preferred basis problem backward. It's one branch interpretations that have this problem, since the extant branch is absolute reality and its basis is absolute reality basis, hence the problem of privileged basis. In MWI all branches are relative and none is absolute reality, so their basis can't be thought of as absolute reality basis, branches and basis exist, but they are equal to others. This produces other criticism: universal wave function thus becomes spaghetti in which classical behavior is difficult to see when you look at it from outside, because the basis of classical behavior isn't privileged.


No, MWI has this problem too because it still has to account for the branch I am in.

The only interpretation that does not have this problem is the NCI because in that interpretation I am part of the fundamental ontology, at least some of the time.


>Second, the math doesn't tell you whether or not the discarded parts of the wave function describe something real or not.

The math tells that there are no privileged parts of wave function.

>So anyone who tells you that the MWI is the only possible scientifically tenable interpretation of QM is lying.

Didn't you admit yourself that if MWI works it's a big deal and will kick the chair from under other interpretations?


> The math tells that there are no privileged parts of wave function.

That's true. But my senses tell me that there is a privileged part of the wave function, namely, the branch that I'm in.

The way I think about it nowadays is that QM is like a Necker cube. You can look at it in two different ways. You can take the God's-eye view and look at the entire wave function, or you can take the mortal's eye view and look at only a proper subset of the wave function (which is necessary in order to recover classical reality). But you can't do both at the same time. For my day-to-day life, I have no choice but to take the mortal's-eye view because I am a mortal. All of the things that matter to me depend on classical reality, and so depend on my suspension of disbelief and acting as if my branch of the multiverse is privileged, even if I can intellectually jump out of the system momentarily and recognize that the mortal's eye view is necessarily incomplete.

> Didn't you admit yourself that if MWI works it's a big deal and will kick the chair from under other interpretations?

That depends on what you mean by "works". If someone can derive the Born rule from the Schrodinger equation that will be a big deal, a slam-dunk Nobel prize. But no one has done it, and I'm pretty sure it can't be done. I'm pretty sure that the Born rule is an emergent property of our branch of the multiverse. I believe the same is true of the Second Law and even three-dimensional space. You can slice-and-dice the wave function to give you physical spaces with any number of dimensions, but three is the magic number that gives you atoms and stars and planets with stable orbits [1] and so on. So I'm pretty sure the Born rule can only be explained by the anthropic principle. There's probably a Nobel prize waiting for the person who turns that intuition into a theorem.

---

[1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/50142/gravity-in...


>But my senses tell me that there is a privileged part of the wave function, namely, the branch that I'm in.

You could also sense that your location is privileged, because the observable universe is neatly centered at it, but science will prioritize Copernican principle over your senses.

>But you can't do both at the same time.

This doesn't match what you do. Tracing extracts mortal's-eye view from God's-eye view, so in God's-eye view you have both.

>depend on my suspension of disbelief and acting as if my branch of the multiverse is privileged

If your branch exists, it's sufficient for your day to day life, there's not much else to disbelieve. There's no need for it to be privileged. Do you worry that Earth isn't more privileged than Mars?

>But no one has done it, and I'm pretty sure it can't be done.

But quantum physics doesn't allow it. It's quantitative science where all observed phenomena are computable. If they aren't computable, then quantum physics doesn't predict them and thus diverges from observation. And Schrödinger equation is how predictions are made, collapse and measurement only act on what already exists before them and don't create anything new. So if Born rule is an observed phenomenon, it must be computable from Schrödinger equation. Also if Born rule holds with certainty, then it's a pure state, and observation won't do anything to it, so Born rule can't be created by observation.

>There's probably a Nobel prize waiting for the person who turns that intuition into a theorem.

This was argued by Max Tegmark https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9702052 I thought it's a famous diagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spacetime_dimensionality....


> You could also sense that your location is privileged, because the observable universe is neatly centered at it

Yes, that's right. This is not an easy problem to solve. This is why it took thousands of years for mankind to realize that the earth is not at the center of the universe. The difference between that and the MWI is that there is actual evidence against geocentrism. There is no evidence against my-branch-centrism. Not only that, but the theory itself predicts that there cannot possibly be any such evidence. So the MWI is self-defeating. The only way there could be evidence for it is if it's wrong.

> in God's-eye view you have both

Nope. The mortal's-eye view is fundamentally incompatible with the god's-eye view. This is the reason that the measurement problem is a thing in the first place.

> if Born rule is an observed phenomenon, it must be computable from Schrödinger equation

Only if the SE is a complete description of reality, and it manifestly is not.

(If you want to argue that the Born rule is not "an observed phenomenon" then I don't know what to tell you. Maybe go hang out with the flat-earthers and lunar landing denialists. You may find kindred spirits there.)

> This was argued by Max Tegmark

Yes, the 3-D space part. That is old news. It's the Born Rule that (AFAIK) no one has yet derived.


I think there's evidence for MWI and it's of the same character as evidence against geocentrism, you just question it, because evidence isn't airtight and geocentric prejudice is compelling because you reject Copernican principle and don't believe in relativity. But evidence against geocentrism isn't airtight either and can be questioned, and geocentrism can be hypothesized and is internally consistent, so why not, especially if you reject Copernican principle.

One branch interpretations are based on geocentric prejudice that the observer's state isn't changed much by observation (because observer doesn't feel change), and when the observer's state doesn't change much, we get geocentrism. But mathematics of quantum physics shows otherwise: the observer's state suffers decoherence and splits into macroscopic superposition, which is a big change and thus debunks assumption of unchanged observer's state. When observer's state changes significantly, observation becomes subject to relativity effect just like in case of spinning Earth.

>The only way there could be evidence for it is if it's wrong.

And what it means when there's no such evidence?

>The mortal's-eye view is fundamentally incompatible with the god's-eye view.

But then tracing must be fundamentally unable to extract mortal's-eye view from god's-eye view. What you say doesn't match what you do.

>If you want to argue that the Born rule is not "an observed phenomenon" then I don't know what to tell you.

I argue that Born rule is an observed phenomenon, and all observed phenomena are purely quantitative physical processes computable from Schrödinger equation, Born rule is the same, otherwise quantum physics wouldn't predict observation of Born rule.

Formally you might need measurement, but the trick is to convert the given problem into a problem of certainty, then measurement is trivial, and prediction is completely calculated from Schrödinger equation. Coincidentally Born rule is such a certain fact, so it doesn't matter if you measure it or not, measurement doesn't do much to certain facts, it's sufficient if you only calculate this certain fact and leave it as is without measuring it.


> observer doesn't feel change

It's not just that the observer doesn't feel change, it is that no experiment can demonstrate this change, not even in principle.

> tracing must be fundamentally unable to extract mortal's-eye view from god's-eye view

Why? Because that is manifestly not the case.

> Born rule is the same

Again, you are manifestly wrong. If someone had figured out how to derive the BR from the SE it would be Big News [1].

---

[1] https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/the-scientific-method-pa...


It’s probabilistic at all length scales. For example our solar system may suddenly come undone according to simulations.


There is no local realism. That doesn't at all add up to all-in-the-head idealism.


That's true. There is a metaphysical reality "out there", but it is radically different from what we perceive. Hence: an illusion. Note that an illusion is emphatically NOT the same thing as a delusion. Illusions are real sensory experiences common to nearly all humans. They just happen not to correspond to reality.


How would you know? If all that's known is either known through the senses or drawn out by reason from what is known through the senses, then by declaring that sense data do not reflect reality, you've cut yourself off form the possibility of knowing reality altogether.


> How would you know?

Because that is the best explanation for what I observe.

> by declaring that sense data do not reflect reality, you've cut yourself off form the possibility of knowing reality altogether

That is true, but only in the uninteresting sense that I can never completely eliminate the possibility that I am living in the Matrix. So yes, it's possible that I'm wrong about the existence of objective reality. But if objective reality is itself an illusion, it's a sufficiently compelling illusion that I'm not going to go far wrong by acting as if it were real.


> That is true, but only in the uninteresting sense that I can never completely eliminate the possibility that I am living in the Matrix. [...] But if objective reality is itself an illusion, it's a sufficiently compelling illusion that I'm not going to go far wrong by acting as if it were real.

That seems squishy, as what constitutes "going far wrong" is not meaningful under skeptical assumptions.

A better stance is one of cognitive optimism that avoids the irrationality of skepticism. Skepticism is irrational, because it leads to incoherence, and because there is no rational warrant to categorically doubt the senses. For doubt to be rational, there must be a reason for it. To doubt without reason is not to be rational, but to be willful, and willful beliefs cannot be reasoned with; they are not the product of evidence or inference — and they certainly aren't self-evident — but rather the product of arbitrary choice. The logical possibility of living in the Matrix is no reason for doubting the senses, just as the logical possibility of there being poison in your sandwich is no reason for doubting you'll survive eating it.

The difference between our positions is that I begin from a position of natural trust toward the senses and toward reason as the only rational possibility and default. I have no choice but to reason well or to reason poorly. I recognize that my senses and my inferences can err, but it does not follow that they always err. Indeed, the very claim that they can err presumes I can tell when they do.

So, if my inferences lead me to a position that undermines their own coherence, then I must conclude that my inferences are wrong (including those that led me to adopt a certain interpretation of, say, scientific measurements).

> Because that is the best explanation for what I observe.

But if your explanation involves contradiction of what you observe, then that is not only not the best explanation, but no explanation at all! An explanation cannot deny the thing it seeks to explain. Thus, by denying the objective reality of what you perceive, you are barred from inferring that denial.


> what constitutes "going far wrong" is not meaningful under skeptical assumptions.

I can be more precise about this. It means that the predictions I make on the basis of this assumption are very likely to be correct.

> Skepticism is irrational

No, it isn't. The vast majority of my beliefs about the world are not a result of direct observations, but nth-hand accounts. I believe, for example, that the orbit of Mercury precesses, but not because I've ever measured it myself, but rather because I heard it from a source that I consider credible. But assessing the credibility of a source is hard and error-prone, especially nowadays. There is always the possibility that a source is mistaken or actively trying to deceive you. And even for things you observe first-hand there are all kinds of cognitive biases you have to take into account. So skepticism is warranted.

> I begin from a position of natural trust toward the senses

That will lead you astray because your senses are unreliable.

> if your explanation involves contradiction of what you observe

But it doesn't. At worst it involves a contradiction of what I think I observe.


It can't be that different, either, or our senses would be of no practical use.


That's not true. What our senses perceive (classical reality) is an emergent phenomenon of the underlying metaphysical truth (quantum mechanics). Those two things are about as radically different as you can get. That's why the measurement problem is a thing. But that doesn't mean our senses are of no practical use.


“ There’s no free will and everything is determined.”

Objects without free will aren’t able to come to conclusions like this.


I'd like to believe that there is no such thing as free will, but I just can't decide.


Look into Chaos Theory - the universe is not deterministic, you're good.

Or for a tldr look for the three body problem or try to find a solution to a double pendulum!


To the contrary, here's a series of essays on the subject of evolutionary game theory, the incentives created by competition, and its consequences for human wellbeing:

https://www.lesswrong.com/s/kNANcHLNtJt5qeuSS

"Moloch hasn't won" is a lengthy critique of the argument you are making here.


That doesn't seem to be on point to me. I'm not talking about being "caught in bad equilibria". My assertion is that rationalism itself is not stable, that the (apparent) triumph of rationalism since the Enlightenment was a transient, not an equilibrium. And one of the reasons it was a transient is that self-styled rationalists believed (and apparently still believe) that rationalism will inevitably triumph because it is rational, because it is in more intimate contact with reality than religion and superstition. But this is wrong because it overlooks the fact that what triumphs in the long run is simply reproductive fitness. Being in contact with reality can be actively harmful to reproductive fitness if it leads you to, say, decide not to have kids because you are pessimistic about the future.


> it overlooks the fact that what triumphs in the long run is simply reproductive fitness.

Why can't that observation be taken into account? Isn't the entire point of the approach accounting for all inputs to the extent possible?

I think you are making invalid assumptions about the motivations or goals or internal state or etc of the actors which you are then conflating with the approach itself. That there are certain conditions under which the approach is not an optimal strategy does not imply that it is never competitive under any.

The observation is then that rationalism requires certain prerequisites before it can reliably out compete other approaches. That seems reasonable enough when you consider that a fruit fly is unlikely to be able to successfully employ higher level reasoning as a survival strategy.


> Why can't that observation be taken into account?

Of course it can be. I'm saying that AFAICT it generally isn't.

> rationalism requires certain prerequisites before it can reliably out compete other approaches

Yes. And one of those, IMHO, is explicit recognition that rationalism does not triumph simply because it is rational, and coming up with strategies to compensate. But the rationalist community seems too hung up on things like malicious AI and Roko's basilisk to put much effort into that.


This argument proves too much. If rationalism can't "triumph" (presumably over other modes of thought) because evolution makes moral realism unobservable, then no epistemic framework will help you - does empirically observing the brutality of evolution lead to better results? Or perhaps we should hypothesise that it's brutal and then test that prediction against what we observe?

I'm sympathetic to the idea that we know nothing because of the reproductive impulse to avoid doing or thinking about things that led our ancestors to avoid procreation, but such a conclusion can't be total because otherwise it is self defeating because is is contingent on rationalist assumptions about the mind's capacity to model knowledge.


The point being made is that rationalism is a framework. Having a framework does not imply competent execution. At lower levels of competence other strategies win out. At higher levels of competence we expect rationalism to win out.

Even then that might not always be the case. Sometimes there are severe time or bandwidth or energy or other constraints that preclude carefully collecting data and thinking things through. In those cases a heuristic that is very obviously not derived from any sort of critical thought process might well be the winning strategy.

There will also be cases where the answer provided by the rational approach will be to conform to some other framework. For example where cult type ingroup dynamics are involved across a large portion of the population.


> Having a framework does not imply competent execution,

Exactly right. It is not rationalism per se that is the problem, it is the way that The Rationalists are implementing it, the things they are choosing to focus their attention on. They are worried about things like hostile AI and Roko's Basilisk when what they should be worried about is MAGA, because that is not being driven by rationalism, it is being driven by Christian nationalism. MAGA is busily (and openly!) undermining every last hint of rationalism in the U.S. government, but the Rationalist community seems oddly unconcerned with this. Many self-styled Rationalists are even Trump supporters.


> Being in contact with reality can be actively harmful to reproductive fitness if it leads you to, say, decide not to have kids because you are pessimistic about the future.

The fact that you can write this sentence, consider it to be true, and yet still hold in your head the idea that the future might be bad but it's still important to have children suggests that "contact with reality" is not a curse.


You got Darwinism exactly backwards. Darwinism and nature do not select like an algorithm. There is no cost function in reality and no population selection and reproduction algorithm. What you're seeing is the illusion of selection due to selection bias.

If gender equality and intellectual achievement don't produce children, then that isn't "darwinism selecting rationality out". You can't expect the continued existence of finite lifespan organisms if there are no replacement organisms. Raising children is hard work. The people who believe in gender equality and intellectual achievement made the decision to not want more of themselves, particularly when their belief in gender equality entails not wanting male offspring. The alternative is essentially freeloading and expecting others, who do not share the beliefs, to produce children for you and also to teach them the "enlightened" belief of forcing "enlightened" beliefs onto others (note the circularity, the initial conditions are usually irrelevant and often just a fig leaf to perpetuate the status quo).


> no population selection and reproduction algorithm

I never said there was. Darwin said it because he didn't know anything about genes, but that mistake was corrected by Dawkins.

> If gender equality and intellectual achievement don't produce children, then that isn't "darwinism selecting rationality out".

Why not?

> The people who believe in gender equality and intellectual achievement made the decision to not want more of themselves

That's the wrong way to look at it. Individuals are not the unit of reproduction. Genes are. Genes that build brains that want to have (and raise) children are more likely to propagate than genes that build brains that don't, all else being equial. So it is not rationality per se that is the problem -- rationality can provide a reproductive advantage because it lets you, for example, build technology. The problem is that non-rational brains can parasitically benefit from the phenotype of rational brains, at least for a while. But in the long run this is not a stable equilibrium.


Couple of point to that, mainly why should one have to follow darwinian evolution just because we are a product of that. It's similar to the natural law argument against homosexuality, that unnatural sex is wrong. The argument against that is natural biology does not inform what is good or what we should do.

I'm sure you would be able to predict what a rationalise will say when you ask them what future they prefer: one where we maximises for the number of humans or one with fewer humans but better lives


> why should one have to follow darwinian evolution

That depends on what you mean by "follow". You have to "follow" Darwinian evolution for the same reason you have to "follow", say, the law of gravity. That doesn't mean you can't build airplanes and spacecraft, but you still have to acknowledge and "follow" the law of gravity. You can't just glue feathers to your arms, jump off a cliff, and hope for the best. (Actually, rationalists aren't even gluing feathers to their arms. They are doing the equivalent of jumping off a cliff because they just don't believe gravity applies to them.)

[UPDATE]

> unnatural sex is wrong

The problem with that argument is that homosexuality is not unnatural. Many, many species have homosexual relations. Accounting for this is a little bit challenging, but the fact is undeniable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals


Pointing to other species can be futile since they also eat their young and are horrible partners :)


Well, yeah, the whole "against nature" argument is bogus to begin with. But I think a counter-argument is stronger if it can be made even while accepting the other side's premises.


An issue with this line of reasoning is that Darwinian evolution fails to accurately describe real evolutionary processes.

A counterexample is meiotic drive, where alleles disrupt the meiotic process in order to favour their own transmission, even if the alleles in question ultimately produce a less fit organism.

Whilst this is not an inherently positive observation, I think it does illustrate that the fatalistic picture you're painting here is incorrect. There's room for tentative optimism.


> Darwinian evolution fails to accurately describe real evolutionary processes.

That is not correct. Darwin did make a mistake, but it was not the fundamental dynamics of the process, but that he chose the wrong unit of selection. Darwin thought that selection selected for individuals or species when in fact it selects for genes. Richard Dawkins is the person who figured this out, but Darwin knew nothing about genes (OoS was published only three years after Gregor Mendel's work) so he still gets the credit nothwithsanding this mistake.


I don't think you've understood my point. I'm not suggesting that selection doesn't occur, but rather that selection is only part of the story. Have a look at gene flow or genetic drift if you want to know more, they're both examples of non-selective processes that influence the genetic makeup of a population.


> selection is only part of the story

Of course. Variation is the other part.

> gene flow or genetic drift

Those are two mechanisms by which variation occurs. This is not something Darwin got wrong, he just didn't have all the data. Genes were unknown in Darwin's time.


Which of selection or variation does meiotic drive fall under?

Clearly it isn't Darwinian selection, because it can favour transmission of genes which are not conducive to survival.

Clearly it isn't variation, because it tends to reduce the degree of genetic polymorphism within a population.


Meiotic drive is selection.

> it isn't Darwinian selection, because it can favour transmission of genes which are not conducive to survival

This is the one thing that Darwin got wrong: he thought that the unit of selection was the organism, but it's not. The unit of selection is the gene. Richard Dawkins is the one who figured this out. Meiotic drive is not Darinian selection, but it is selection. But Darwin could not possibly have known this because genes were unknown at the time.


Darwinism isn't a weakness of rationality, teleology has fine tuning problem, while darwinism is minimally fine tuned to work from scratch, which can be said to be optimal. Also darwinism doesn't select for reproductive fitness, it's only a proxy goal; true goal is survival, so you can produce more offspring only in a way compatible with true goal.


> Darwinism isn't a weakness of rationality

I didn't say it was. I said that the Rationalist community is not taking the implications of Darwinism into account when they choose where to focus their attention. This is what leads them to fixate on hostile AI and the MWI when what they should be worried about is the rise of MAGA. But not only is that not what they are worried about, many self-styled Rationalists are Trump supporters.


> If you are a gene, you can probably produce more offspring in an already-industrialized environment by making brains that lean more towards misogyny and sexual promiscuity than gender equality and intellectual achievement.

The fact that humans are intelligent at all and Enlightenment peoples currently dominate the world suggests otherwise.


> Enlightenment peoples currently dominate the world

Huh??? How do you figure? AFAICT the world is dominated by Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin (if you reckon by power) or Christians and Muslims (if you reckon by population). None of these individuals or groups can be properly categorized as "Enlightenment peoples", certainly not with a capital E.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment


Western nations have dominated the world for centuries, in science, technology and cultural dominance. Russia is a bit player and has been for some time. Even if China were to ascend to equal prominence as the US, it would be an outlier in an otherwise clear trend.


> Western nations have dominated the world for centuries

I guess that depends on what you consider "the world". It makes no sense to even talk about the West dominating "the world" before 1492. The first truly global Western empire was Britain, but it was also the last. It was replaced by the U.S. but it was never really global. Even at the height of its power after WW2 the USSR was a credible rival. After the fall of the USSR in 1991 the U.S. was the sole undisputed superpower for a little while, but that came to an abrupt end on September 11, 2001 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I think you are over-extrapolating the past into the future. The mindset and culture that produced U.S. hegemony in the 20th century seems to me to be mostly extinct. The U.S. was indeed ruled by rationalism (more or less) from the time of its founding through the mid-to-late 20th century, but there is precious little of that left today. Certainly the power structure in the U.S. today is actively hostile to rationalism, and I don't see a whole lot of rationalism in play in the opposition either.


But rationalism , if the modern sort, isn't supposed to be descriptive, it's supposed to be normative -- rationality lets you win.


The problem is not with rationalism, it's with Rationalism (with a capital R), the cult-like phenomenon that has grown up around rationalism that fetishizes things like Bayes's theorem, hostile AI, Roko's basilisk, and the MWI.


I hesitate to nitpick, but Darwinism (as far as I know) is not really the term to use because Darwin's theory was limited to life on earth. Only later was the concept generalised into "natural selection" or "survival of the fittest".

I'm not sure I entirely understand what you're arguing here, but I absolutely do agree that the most powerful force in the universe is natural selection.


The modern understanding of Darwin's theory (even the original theory, not necessarily neo-Darwinian extensions of it) apply to the origins of life and non-biological systems as well. Darwin himself was largely concerned with biology and restricted his published writings to that topic, but even he saw the application to the origin of life, and implications for religion. Even if he hadn't, we generally still use the discoverer's name to a theory even when applied to a domain outside their original area of concern.

The term "survival of the fittest" predates Darwin's Origin of Species, and was adopted by Darwin within his lifetime, btw.


The term "Darwinian evolution" applies to any process that comprises iterated replication with random mutation followed selection for some quality metric. Darwin himself would not have defined it that way, but he still deserves the credit for being the first to recognize and document the power of this simple process.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: