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https://github.com/brainrake/consistent

consistent shit
https://github.com/brainrake/consistent

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consistent shit

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README 

          
# Consistent Shit



A unified account of why, how, and what.



## Introduction



Life and the world is full of shit. There's so much shit, it's hard to tell what shit is what. Hard to tell the true shit from the bullshit.



People don't know shit. Most don't even give a shit. I do. I want to figure this shit out.



None of this shit is new or great or anything. This work aims to explain some shit like meaning, existence, reality, consciousness and freedom, in a way that makes sense.



### Makes sense? What does that even mean?



Commonly used naturally evolved languages are stunningly efficient in human communication, yet in many cases they are notoriously ambiguous, highly context-sensitive and generally ill-defined.



Conversely, in formal languages and logic, meanig is given by definition, and by straightforward composition of small pieces into larger sentences. The information contained in, or the meaning of sentences is equivalent with the arrangement of symbols that make them up.



Logic can't tell you "what's out there". But given what you already know, it can help you figure out what you can (truthfully) say, what to expect, what makes sense, and what stuff means.



Seeming limitations (like [incompleteness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems), or the [liar paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox)) are in fact important discoveries about the fundamental structure of information and meaning.



#### A language with definite meaning



In order to properly discuss any matter of consequence, a formal language is required. Only then can we truly know what sentences mean and how to combine them in ways that make sense.



Without a formal, logical language, one can never be sure what things *really* mean, and everything is always up for interpretation.



Ironically, by defining stuff, it loses any meaning beyond the possible arrangement of symbols related to it. Like a crossword puzzle in a foreign language, using a dictionary. But that's the point. To explain is to explain away.



#### Humans should use formal logical languages



in all areas of life where choices have consequences, especially where public discourse is involved. Particularly:



- metaphysics (plz define god kthxbai)

- philosophy

- law (it's not fair if you don't know what it means, or if there are contradictions in it)

- programming (programs crash precisely when they don't make sense)

- public debate and politics (you can't be right if you don't make sense, and need a common language)

- life choices - health, consumption, ethics, altruism (if you want to live long and free, lead a healthy and virtuous lifestyle)

- everyday human interaction



but probably not for art or comedy. In fact, everything that isn't expressed in a consistent formal language, in a sense, is art.



### To detractors



Don't be lazy or a luddite. If you think this shouldn't be done, come up with something better than these:



#### Can't do it



It is impossible. Nope. It's just too hard. Human thinking is just too complex, or worse, magical (perhaps a mind separate from your body).



Well, have you tried? We formalized a lot of stuff, learned a great deal, and got shit done. Besides, if it isn't formalized, we can't be sure what it really means. So we have to try.



#### The humanity!



If we logic everything, we'll become mindless robot computers! We will lose what makes us human!



No we won't. We'll fulfill it. We're the only creature capable of abstract reasoning. We should put our biased shortcut-based animagical thinking behind us and build a just, logical, free society. We will have more time to enjoy life and art, with less to worry about.



To err is animal. To reason is human. To compute (fast) is machine. To verb is noun. Adverb.



## On the meaning of shit



What does it mean to exist? Do you have free will? What do you know and why?



Milennia of philosophy and we're still arguing about this shit. Let's try to make sense of it though. Maybe not so all-encompassing, but at least logical.



### The Human Decision Problem



There's a simple way to look at these difficult questions: from the outside. A behavioral approach that captures the complexity of human thought. Let us not look at the words themselves, but how people use them in sentences. Let's ask yes/no questions and see how people might answer them.



To find meaning, truth, or knowledge, it is often fruitless to ask oneself. Is it true? Why do I want that? How should I know? We have to consider the externally observable facts instead. We ask someone else. Or they ask us. It is in communication that these concepts are elucidated, because that's (the only way) how we _use_ them.



In a sense, we're never really asking "Is it true?" or "What is the meaning of this RNA?". We're asking, "What would you say if someone asked you if it is true?" or "What protein would a rhibosome build if I gave it this messenger RNA?". Words don't have meaning by themselves, only in sentences, in the act of communication and associated computiation..



There is no way I can find out wether you (really, freely) want something, what you know, or what you believe is true, other than just asking (if there is, please enlighten me). If what you say makes sense (together with what I already know), I have to assume that it is so. If it weren't, and I couldn't, there would hardly be any point to communicating, we might as well make random noises. Until I have reason to doubt your honesty.



#### Honest people make sense



Most of the time people don't make sense. And they lie. A lie is just a special case of nonsense, which would make sense except that in actuality its negation is true, which causes a contradiction.



Reasons that a person might lie (or equivalently, talk nonsense):

- fallible memory

- not understanding the question

- not realizing they are being inconsistent

- difficulty of expressing ideas formally

- being in a degraded mental state (distress, sleepwalking, delusion)

- knowingly interfering with the listener's beliefs,

    - usally because the listener knowing the truth would put the liar at a disatvantage



Formal languages make lying harder, incentivizing actions that can be acknowledged, leading to a more honest society.



For now we have to assume an honest conversation - participants don't lie and want everyone to agree on what shit they say means - so truthful logical discourse is the only real option.



## What there is



In a logical language, *existence* is not a predicate or a verb. It is a quantifier, a different kind of language element.



`My shit exists` is as meaningless to say as `A shit is ...`. Is what? The sentence is missing a part. Here's what makes sense though: `A shit is blue`.



Logically:

`There exists a shit such that it is blue.`

And it means exactly this:

`Not all shits are not blue`.

Nothing more, nothing less.



So there's no such thing as "to exist", only for some or all elements of a collection to "have a certain property". No "to be", just "to be ...".  The confusion stems from the limited way we treat human languages, treating "is" like a verb when it is a different type of language element. In english grammar, it behaves much like a verb, but _requires_ a logical predicate or relation (like greenness, or being the son of someone) to make sense.



More on this: first order logic defines the pair of [quantifiers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantifier_(logic)): the existential quantifier "There exists a ... such that ..." and the universal quantifier "All ... are such that ...". Only one is required, the other can be defined in terms of it, as above.



### What there _actually_ is



Modal logic introduces the pair of operators "possibly" and "necessarily". If something is necessarily true, it can not possibly not be true. Again, only one is required, the other follows. One may introduce "actually" to distinguish possible truths that are deemed true in the actual world (but don't necessarily follow from logical axioms or prior knowledge).



On this we can build the notion of possible worlds, meaning possible states of affairs: how things could have turned out, assuming some things were different than they actually are.



More on this: [Modal Logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_logic)



### What there _really_ is



All right then, but what is the difference between real persons and characters in a story? This one is solved by introducing two modes of predication, two ways of interpreting "is", in essence, two ways of combining things with properties (or relations).



Sherlock Holmes encodes being a detective. Allan Pinkerton exemplifies being a detective.



Add to this a distinguished property of "being concrete", intuitively meaning "having a position in spacetime", exemplified by "real" things, and you're pretty much set.



More on this: [The Theory of Abstract Objects](https://mally.stanford.edu/theory.html)



## Tha Truf



What does it mean for something to be true? Is there truth in the world? How can we find or verify it?



As usual, we can ask.



### Ask



About the empirical: there is no way to tell for sure wether someone is genuinely experiencing something. So we'll just have to accept it on good faith. Do you see red?



Conversely, there is logical truth. Tautology. Clear rules we can agree on about when we can *say* things consistently.



### What does it mean?



Fortunately we developed a rich set of tools for analyzing the purported truth of sentences, based on what things mean and how we combine them. We have constructed logics to explore concepts related to truth: consequence, proof, argument. We have formal languages to precisely state them, automated theorem provers and proof assistants to prove, disprove, find models or counterexamples, and analyze them.



So if we assume some basic propositions about our senses as true, we can use logic to:

- verify that they are compatible (they can all be true at the same time), or conversely reveal an error in formalization

- construct true sentences that are consequences of our assumptions

- explain what complex sentences mean, based on the meanings of the ones we took for granted



### Strange consequences.



To say that a sentence is true is nothing more than to say that sentence.



Example:

`I am full of shit`

is the same as

`It is true that I am full of shit.``



Yes, there are social implications of saying "True!" beyond meaningless repetition, like showing support. But we are concerned with logic now.



### Knowledge



How do you know that you really know something? How do I know that you know? Well, I have to ask.



For a long time *Justified True Belief* was the game. Gettier pointed out some cases where "justified" is more complicated than it seems.



The truth is, I can't really find out wether you know anything at all, other than by asking you. And when I do, the only thing I find out is that you *say* you know. But since there is no real way to tell, that's as good as it gets. So, as usual, let's try to find a rule for when people can consistently say they know something. We will assume this is what they mean when they say they know something, and we will adopt is as a rule to say when we know stuff.



The problem with knowing anything about the real world is that we have to take sense experience at face value.



However, everything else should be logically provable.



## Free Will



How do we know if someone has it? We can't really.



As usual, we can ask.



### Communicated Intent



is a clearly definable and intuitive concept that captures much of "free will". Here it is:



#### If you say you want to do something, I will conclude that you want to do it.



Example: **I am going to take a shit**.



In the end, it's just a way to assign blame. If I thought the bathroom is in use and waited for an hour with a full bladder just to find out that you were in fact playing Counter-Strike, I would blame you for my bladder discomfort.



### Inferred Intent



Where intent has not been explicitly communicated, but we infer it from context. It is a weaker form of intent, and the intender can not be held responsible for actions based on inferred intent.



If I thought you went to take the shit, but you didn't say you were going to, it's my fault for not checking wether the bathroom is free.



### It makes sense!



Example: You thought you chose freely but in fact were secretly influenced. Were you really free? Hard to answer consistently. Here are some easier ones using the concepts just introduced:



- Did you want to do it at the time? (read: Would you have said yes if I asked you if you wanted to do it?)

- If you had known that you are being influenced, would you have wanted to do it? (read: Would you have said yes if I told you about the influence and asked you if you want to do it?)

- Do you want to do it (again) now? (read: Would you say yes if I asked you if you want to do it now?)



### Strange Consequences



Explaining the reason for an intent amounts to removing the "free choice" behind it.



Example:

I am going to take a shit because I want to. (free choice)

vs

I am going to take a shit because I am literally full of shit and my rectum is bursting. (necessity)



Interestingly, saying "because I want to" is equivalent to giving no reason at all.



#### To be free means to not explain your actions



*Freedom is lack of communicated intent*. When you tell me why you want to do something, the freedom disappears. You must do it, for the reason you gave.



### That feeling tho



But it *feels* like I'm making this decision. Like I have the power. Me. I know what I want.



Well, it really feels like you don't have a blind spot near the center of your field of vision. But you [totally do](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)).



As we know, the universe is part deterministic, part random. There is no evidence of spirits, selves, or other spooky stuff independent of our bodies, influencing what actually happens. And our bodies are made of physics stuff. So what we end up doing is caused by previous interactions (DNA, brain structure, memories) and luck (randomness). The best we can do is to stack the odds in our favor.



It appears that the feeling of consious decision comes down to thinking about choices (before) and rationalizing them (after). There is no "actual" choice, just as there is no actual chooser, separate from our physicsy (causal+lucky) bodies.



### It's a trap!



So why play along? Especially since free choice doesn't amount to anything, in fact it is the _lack_ of information. The answer is, it's a benign, even useful story, like private property or colors. It lets us play the blame game. It's a rule of thumb we made up to decide who we can shun when shit doesn't happen the way we want. Ironically, this also reinforces the feeling of each individual that they are indeed making choices. In other words, the theory of free choice and responsibility is useful in its domain of applicability (social interaction), as real as basketball, compatible with physics, although its concepts are nowhere to be found in physics.



There is an even more general usefulness to the concept of free will. Wether we decide to or not, contemplating a choice is associated with better outcomes. We imagine that we can choose, so we think about the choices, and in doing so, discover the merits thereof, and perhaps think of new ones.



If people believe it, it's also a way to change their behavior, by changing the incentives. Eg. don't fuck children, you'll go to jail. If we find out. There are no children in jail, and your asshole is in grave danger. So yeah, you should know that in case you "decide" to do it. You can't really decide either way, but just knowing makes you less likely to do it.



Yeah, I know, it's creepy. I have no choice but to say that free will is a good thing. And you had no choice but to read this tripe. And if we hadn't, it would have been because of old shit or random shit.



## Consciousness and Personhood



It's an emergent, self-referential behavior of computational architectures. Mainly neural networks. Usually humans.



"I" come into being when I start talking about it.



Again, it's hard to pin it down. Let's ask though.



Is a baby conscious? Is it a person? How about a fetus? How about you when you're sleeping? A person in a coma? Braindead? How about a firm? (Yes, that's a thing, corporations are people, "legal persons", in most jurisditions. Wtf.)



So let's just leave it at that: being consious or being a person are things people say about (mainly) other people, to decide how to treat them (legally, ethically, etc). In any case, it's just convention, there's no magic to it.



## Science bitches! It works!



Science produces interconnected models of the external world, webs of truth woven from the fabric of reality. There's a method to it: question everything!



Scientific theories

- falsifiable

- attempted to be falsified, unsuccessfully (for a range of circumstances)

- confirmed by experiments that show the theory more probable if the experiment succeeds (in accordance with [bayesian inference](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference))



When we try very hard to show that a theory is false, and fail, we call it scientific truth. It's not truth in the logical sense, but as close as we can get.



Well, these are crutches anyway. The point is, we try as best we can to eliminate the possibility that we're wrong. And we have developed good ways to do it. We apply them to other areas of life and cringe.



## The laws underlying the physics of everyday life are completely understood



The equation representing them fits comfortably [on a t-shirt](http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/09/29/core-theory-t-shirts/).



It seems that knowledge of reality can be arranged in a [stack](https://xkcd.com/435/) of academic fields, with physics being at the bottom, and other fields building on it. While other theories can have different and even incompatible concepts, they must be consistent with our basic pyhisical description.