Positive and Negative | Ricardo Milkowski

There is a significant difference between what I will call ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ thinking. Positive thinking rests on the assumption that a solution’s past success (the ‘is’) guarantees or increases the probability of the solution’s future success (the ‘ought’): past success ought to show future success. Negative thinking, however, does not run into the is/ought problem: if a universal statement contradicts an existential statement, and the existential statement corresponds with the facts, then the existential statement is false.

I know very few things, but I do know that the future is both unknown and unknowable. If there is one thing I’ve tried to make clear, it is that past confirmation through experience teaches us nothing about the future success of proposals for action. Future problems are not identical to past problems, for they occur at different times, different locations, different circumstances. If the circumstances are similar, this can only be known retroactively, the recollections of their similarities may be in error, and even then similarity does not indicate that there are no confounding factors in play.

As in lower-order animal behavior, “habit” or repetition, is no guarantee of future success; it is a psychological drive towards the feeling of certainty about the status of a choice and a guarantee of failure when confronting a new and unexpected problem.

These positive think has the following dogmas:

1. infallibilism (certainty can be obtained, or at least approximated enough for practical use). Increasing the certainty in a proposal’s future success is actually a psychological burden.
2. justificationism (past success of theories indicates future success). The fact that the current success of a solution to a problem in no way guarantees its future success counters this dogma; furthermore, this means that corroborations do not increase the probability of a theory’s future successes.
3. dogmatism (ignoring the infinite number of alternative proposed solutions or criticisms). If one sticks to their expectations, they will reach a point when the solution is inadequate.On the other hand, negative thinking follows the negative proposition put forward by David Miller:
   

   “Refrain from any practical proposal that does not survive critical scrutiny as well as others do.”

   To behave rationally, one must openly and critically evaluate linguistically proposed solutions to pertinent problems. All attempts to solve a problem must necessarily be forms of trial-and-error elimination processes. The best way to solve problems is then through a cooperative (or competitive) effort of trial and error, uncovering the worst available solutions, eliminating these solutions from consideration, and retaining the solutions that survive criticism.
   (If it should turn out that this evaluation of solution was faulty (for we are fallible), we are implicitly accepting the objectivity of problems and solutions: some solutions are objectively better at solving problems.)
   If recent studies on brain structure and language acquisition tell us anything, it is that humans are born prejudiced. I mean that in the broadest sense: we pre-judge the face of a mother, the sucking reflex, the gripping reflex, the reflex to learn language, and so on. We are hardwired to behave in certain ways in response to the environment, and one of these behaviors is the ability to learn, to make guesses, and to eliminate guesses that do not solve our problems. Humans may want to confirm their prejudices, as in the child that refuses to use grammar in the culturally appropriate way, or they may want to correct their prejudices. This desire to correct prejudices leads to the negative theory of rationality, a mirror-image of positive theories of rationality.
   This negative thinking is then a biologically evolved predisposition to openness of different solutions to problems that thrives in specific cultural environments. It is the willingness to accept that a solution is unsuccessful in certain contexts. It abandons striving for certainty or even probability in the assessment of guesses. Thus, negative rationality is a different attitude towards background beliefs:
   
4. fallibilism (denial of certainty), which leads to an openness to criticism, and of appropriate responses to criticism;
5. negativism (exclusively negative method of testing), meaning that past success of a solution is irrelevant to future success;
   
6. skepticism (utter impossibility of ever justifying anything), since there is no way of telling in the present which of several solutions will be successful: only in retrospect will the best proposal be revealed.

Review of Boaz Miller’s ‘Rationality Principle Idealized’

Just found this review. It’s worth checking out.

It’s Worse Being Green

In It’s Not Easy Being Grue, I argued for skepticism — or at least incredulity — towards any inductive inference made solely by appealing to a posteriori evidence. Two hypotheses, as long as they have a logical content greater than the evidence and are not yet refuted are, as a matter of following the rules of logic, necessarily equally favored by the evidence. Even if one should appeal to one of the two hypotheses having a natural property, this problem still stands, since it cannot be uncovered through a posteriori investigation. Of course, more than two hypotheses fit this criteria — any number of empirically adequate hypotheses with greater logical content than the evidence may be constructed. In sum, favoring one hypothesis over another, even with an a prior warrant, cannot be determined from a posteriori evidence at all.

Jessica is different than James. She sees the failure of his program and preemptively seeks out some a priori warrant for favoring some inductive inferences over others. Is there an a priori warrant that would allow Jessica to favor one hypothesis over another? For the time assume that such a warrant exists. Assume that if Jessica finds this warrant, the problem is solved. I will not go into the other problems that face Jessica — whether or not she can know that she has the warrant, whether or not she can know that she knows that she has a warrant, &c.

Some predicates, such as ‘green’ intuitively (so it is said) fit the list of natural properties while others, such as ‘grue’, intuitively do not. Call those grue-like properties ‘ill-behaved’ properties for now. What metaphysical standard sets natural properties apart from ‘ill-behaved’ properties?

We might say that it is solely intuition that guides us; we reject ‘ill-behaved’ predicates like ‘grue’ because they are disjunctive: they involve spatio-temporal properties that, like a cat that turns into a dog after whistling, cannot function within our commonsense ontology. If we assume that we are warranted in rejecting disjunctive predicates due to our intuition, this does not solve the problem, since it begs the question as to why our intuitions are warranted. How then can we give warrant to our intuitions? But first, some historical case-studies:

1. We can take ‘leopard’ as not having spots before a certain time, and having spots after that time. Any other ‘Just-So’ story by Kipling is an example of a possible variation on English (call it ‘Kipling-English‘) that takes a number of animals as having a ‘ill-behaved’ list of properties.
2. Christians take transubstantiation, the transformation of bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ after a specific incantation by a priest, very seriously. The term ‘Eucharist’ is then an ‘ill-behaved’ property that has been ingrained into the English lexicon and the Western mind for almost one thousand years.
3. Aristotle took elements to be of two classes: the worldly elements would move linearly towards their natural place unless acted upon, while the heavenly element, known as ‘æther’, was incapable of change other than rotation. Natural motion was then for hundreds of years an ‘ill-behaved’ property as well: just in some cases linear, but in others rotational. It took the work of Newton and others, through imagination, scientific investigation, and questioning Aristotle’s metaphysics, to link these two classes under one unifying force.

Thus, the English language already has several well-established ‘ill-behaved’ spatio-temporal properties in its lexicon. Of course, they are few and far between, so this is far from a convincing argument. It might be said that they’re works of fiction, or strange imaginings, and do not belong to commonsense talk. However, the predicate ‘grue’ is a disjunctive predicate only according to the colors expressed in standard English. If there was an alternative history where all colors were expressed in predicates that are ‘ill-behaved’ in English (call it ‘Engrish’), the predicate ‘grue’ would not be disjunctive or ‘ill-behaved’ in that language; we could not say the same about the predicates ‘green’ and ‘blue’ in Engrish.

It is plausible that, had Engrish been the lingua franca today, we would intuit that any ‘ill-behaved’ property according to English was a natural property, since it did not express a spatio-temporal property, while any natural property according to English was ‘ill-behaved’. Imagine that Jessica and James both decided to base their favoring of one hypothesis over another on their list of (supposed) natural properties. As it so happens, Jessica speaks Engrish and James speaks English. Both Jessica and James see X number of emeralds. Jessica and James both look to their intuitions, and each of them decides that the emeralds are ‘grue’ and ‘green’, respectfully. Each claims that the other is adopting a language that functions with ‘ill-behaved’ properties. How can we decide?

We cannot say that our list of natural properties is obviously true, and choose between Jessica and James on the basis of this list. We are not an outsider with privileged access to the list of natural properties. This would immediately assume the solution to the problem at hand, since like Jessica, we could have been raised speaking Engrish and not English. An accident of birth, rather than a strong metaphysical or epistemological argument, is (as I see it) the only thing that leads to favoring one unfalsified hypothesis over the other.

Success and FailureSuccess and Failure

 

Things that succeed teach us little beyond the fact that they have been successful; things that fail provide incontrovertible evidence that the limits of design have been exceeded. Emulating success risks failure; studying failure increases our chances of success. The simple principle that is seldom explicitly stated is that the most successful designs are based on the best and most complete assumptions about failure. (Henry Petroski, Success Through Failure)

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

Italian painter born at Vinci, next to Florence, died at Chateaux de Cloux, in France, near Ambroise. He is mostly known as a painter, having authored the "The Virgin and the Child with St. Anne", "Mona Lisa", (also known as "La Giaconda"), "The Last Supper", "St. John the Baptist", "The Madonna Of The Rocks", etc.

Leonardo da Vinci was a savant sketch artist, a wonderful colourist, excelling at mixing mild tones with the technique of chiaroscuro. He was also a sculptor, a physicist, an engineer, philosopher, writer, poet and musician. He was distinguished in all these branches of art and science.

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most complete and accomplished geniuses of the Renaissance. Legend has it that he died in the arms of King Francois the 1st (the alleged scene serves as an inspiration for the painting "The Death of Leonardo" by Giroux). 

 Anatomical Study (heart and vessels) by Leonardo da Vinci, 1500

  The heart is a hollow muscle that pumps blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions. It is found in all animals with a circulatory system (including all vertebrates).^[1]

The term cardiac (as in cardiology) means "related to the heart" and comes from the Greek καρδιά, kardia, for "heart".The vertebrate heart is principally composed of cardiac muscle and connective tissue. Cardiac muscle is an involuntary striated muscle tissue found only in this organ and responsible for the ability of the heart to pump blood.

The average human heart, beating at 72 beats per minute, will beat approximately 2.5 billion times during an average 66 year lifespan. It weighs approximately 250 to 300 grams (9 to 11 oz) in females and 300 to 350 grams (11 to 12 oz) in males.^[2] 

Indonesia War Over Atjeh: The Last Stand of Mecca Porch | Ricardo Side

Aceh (/ˈɑːtʃeɪ/; [ʔaˈtɕɛh]) is a special region (Indonesian: daerah istimewa) of Indonesia, located at the northern end of Sumatra. It is close to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India and separated from them by the Andaman Sea. Aceh was first known as Aceh Darussalam (1511–1959) and then later as the Daerah Istimewa Aceh (1959–2001), Nanggroë Aceh Darussalam (2001–2009) and Aceh (2009–present). Past spellings of Aceh include Acheh, Atjeh and Achin. The province of Aceh has the highest proportion of Muslims in Indonesia, mainly living according to Sharia customs and laws.^[4]

Aceh is thought to have been the place where Islam was first established in Southeast Asia. In the early seventeenth century the Sultanate of Aceh was the most wealthy, powerful and cultivated state in the Malacca Straits region. Aceh has a history of political independence and fierce resistance to control by outsiders, including the former Dutch colonists and the Indonesian government. Aceh has substantial natural resources, including oil and natural gas—some estimates put Aceh gas reserves as being the largest in the world. Relative to most of Indonesia, it is a religiously conservative area.^[5]

Aceh was the closest point of land to the epicenter of the massive 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which triggered a tsunami that devastated much of the western coast of the province, including part of the capital of Banda Aceh. Approximately 170,000 Indonesians were killed or went missing in the disaster, and approximately 500,000 were left homeless.^[6] This event helped trigger the peace agreement between the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), mediated by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, with the signing of a MoU on August 15, 2005. With the assistance of the European Union through the Aceh monitoring mission as of December 2005, the peace has held.

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The Price of Freedom: The Unfinished Diary!

The value of a thing is not determined by what you can do with it, but by what price you are willing to pay for it.

Freedom means that we take full responsibility for ourselves, our people, and our country; freedom means that we maintain the distance that separates us from others; freedom means that we are no longer afraid of hardship, difficulties, privation or death: he who has learned how to die can no longer become a slave or a colonial subject.

He who wants to be free must always be ever ready to go to war and to die for his freedom.

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The God Delusion Richard Dawkins Free Download

The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling^[1] non-fiction book by English biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford,^[2][3] and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig's statement in Lila that "when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion".^[4]

As of January 2010, the English version of The God Delusion had sold over 2 million copies.^[5] It was ranked No.2 on the Amazon.com bestsellers' list in November 2006.^[6][7] In early December 2006, it reached No.4 in the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list after nine weeks on the list.^[8] It remained on the list for 51 weeks until 30 September 2007.^[9] The German version, entitled Der Gotteswahn, had sold over 260,000 copies as of 28 January 2010.

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Milan In Russian's Hell

MILAN – In football, evening’s like this are called turning points. In one of the hardest places in Europe to travel to, Milan come out 3-2 winners and get back the points dropped against Anderlecht. It needed a big performance from the players who started well and took the game back in hand after some difficult moments.

Milan started with the same 4-2-3-1 that we saw against Parma but with Emanuelson and Montolivo instead of Nocerino and Ambrosini. After kick-off Bojan turned well and Malafeev was called into action for the first time. Bystrov from distance failed to really test Abbiati and it was all Milan for the first 20 minutes. Emanuelson broke the deadlock on 13 minutes earning a free kick and taking it only for the ball to deflect off Shirnov giving Malafeev no chance. Allegri’s team kept pushing forward. Two minutes later a cross from Antonini and Emanuelson hit the side netting on the far post. On 16, El Shaarawy got the ball on the left side and left two defenders in his wake as before placing the ball past the keeper. 2-0 and it could even have been 3 on 19 minutes when Bojan was brought down in the area but no penalty was given. Abbitati was then called into action a few times. Then on 33 minutes he did well to push out a shot from Hulk for a corner. A superlative save came five minutes from the end of the first half from a frightening strike from the same player on the edge of the area. Abbitati pulled off a miracle to stop him celebrating the goal. Then, in the second minute of injury time, Hulk finally got his goal with a violent left footed shot. At half time Milan were up 2-1.

The home side pushed hard early in the second half and on 4 minutes Hulk won another corner and the Rossoneri defense found itrself unprepared. Shirokov brought his side back onto level terms. Pazzini then came on for Bojan and Milan gained more presence in the final third. On 9 minutes, Abate crossed from the right for Boateng but the header was off target. Allegri then brought on Nocerino for Emanuelson beefing up the middle of the field. Zenit dropped and Milan pushed on. With 15 left, Milan went back into the lead. Montolivo crossed from the right and Hubocan deflected the ball past his keeper when trying to get there ahead of Pazzini. Then Abbiati did his job well to ensure that Milan saw out the rest of the game without conceding any further goals. It was big win for the team and it has come right in the nick of time. Now for the derby.

THE NUMBERS

ZENIT-MILAN 2-3

GOALS: Emanuelson (M) on 13', El Shaarawy (M) on 16', Hulk (Z) on 46'fh; Shirokov (Z) al 4', O.G. Hubocan (Z) al 30'sh

ZENIT (4-3-3): Malafeev; Anyukov, Hubocan, Lombaerts (44'st Bukharov), Criscito; Shirokov, Fayzulin (34'st Kanunnikov), Witsel; Bystrov (27'st Zyryanov), Kerzhakov, Hulk. Subs: Baburin, Bruno Alves, Lukovic, Lumb. All. Spalletti

MILAN (4-2-3-1): Abbiati; Abate, Bonera, Zapata, Antonini; De Jong, Montolivo; Emanuelson (19'st Nocerino), Boateng (35'st Yepes), El Shaarawy; Bojan (7'st Pazzini). Subs: Amelia, Mexes, Flamini, Robinho. All. Allegri

REFEREE: Brych (German)

NOTES: Booked: Fayzulin, Anyukov, Hubocan, Shirokov, Bonera, El Shaarawy,