The Psychology Thread, I Guess...

[LimpyLoo]

lol @ the Vitruvian man of autism

 

I've spent a relaxing and enlightening evening catching up on this thread and devoting proper time to it, there is some really good stuff in here. Props to everyone who posted and for keeping the tone civil and such; I've actually printed out a lot of posts so that I can properly mull over a hard copy and have a reference to hand for whenever I get time to chase up some of the theorists and people mentioned herein.

Dude that's awesome

I'm really glad this thread/concept/thing is holding up

Cheers

[LimpyLoo]

Okay so, bear with me for a sec:

 

I've been trying to apply what I've learned about:

-modal logic (e.g. Bayes, Frege, Kripke, paraconsistent logic, etc)

-system-level analysis (e.g. system theory, Information theory, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, Chaos Theory, etc), and

-philosophy of math/science (e.g. Susan Haack, axiom-level discussions of math/science, etc)

 

...to some of the famous math anomalies kicking around. And so I thought I'd throw this out there for the math(s)-inclined folks* to help me with:

(*I'm hella jealous of all y'all's formal math chops btw)

 

Benford's Law (and all the rest of the Power Law shit)

TL;DR if you take a random sample of data from the natural world, the first digits of the samples (read: the numbers we use to describe the data) will be unevenly distributed across "1 through 9"

So you can look at it from the probability/aggregate/average angle, where a random sampling of data will be more likely to "start with" a 1 than a 9 (with a smooth distribution in between)

 

...that is the (supposedly) strange phenomenon. But is the natural world actually acting weird, or merely our symbols for representing it?

 

Base-X as a One-Way Street and the One-Way Entropy of the World

 

Let's say you're counting (e.g.) all the suicides in the town you live in for 2017:

You are not gonna have a 'so far' total of '17' one day, then '12' the next. People don't un-suicide. That is the 'entropy of the world' bit.

 

Base-x (e.g. base-10) has a strange structure:

Take a hallway from left to right (e.g. 1 to 9)

Climb the far-right stairwell up to the next floor

Boom, you're on the far-left again (e.g. 10)

 

Well, that is a weird skew that this symbolic language has, and so of course that's gonna be reflected in the data. Couple that with the fact that Time/Entropy is one-way, then of course you're gonna see (e.g.) Benford's Law.

[LimpyLoo]

So imagine playing musical chairs with people walking down a one-way hallway

(i.e. left to right)

Or taking random snapshots (read: 'samples of data')

Well, of course the 'data' is gonna skew/tip towards the left

Because everyone starts--and passes through--the left but not everyone makes it to the right

With a smooth (save for the sample-rate artifacts of your 'camera') distribution in between

 

But because base-x is self-similar/fractal no matter how much you zoom out

The same left-right skew will happen with 10-90 and 100-900 and 1000-9000 etc

And so yeah the 'data' is gonna be weighted towards 'numbers that start with 1' and away from 'numbers that start with 9'

 

 

And you see Benford's Law in every base-system, no?

[LimpyLoo]

And that's exactly what's happening with 'paradoxes' (e.g. Godel, Barber's Paradox):

 

The (dis)solution is Time/Entropy

In other words...paradoxes are just 'hidden temporality'

 

The problem is that temporality is not (conceptually or otherwise) reflected in linguistic objects like 'the barber'

Even though the 'the barber' is a different dude at the beginning of the story than he is at any other moment

 

 

So the (dis)solution is: modal logic, plus Parfit's 'slices' idea of identity across time

[LimpyLoo]

TL;DR =

Reality/Nature/Whatever is smooth, self-consistent and fractal

But Language is riddled with temporality-related 'rounding errors' (e.g. Benford's Law, Godel 'paradoxes', etc)

[mrfauxe]

Back to Jordan Peterson - This interview +copious amounts of caffeine was one of the most thought provoking experiences I've had in recent months...

 

[mrfauxe]

 

Speaking of which: Yesterday I was tempted to make a step-by-step case that Sam Harris and Glenn Greenwald both have genuine clinical high-functioning autism, as evidenced by their mannerisms, facial features, and social attitudes.

 

 

 

 

 

OMG

[chenGOD]

Okay so, bear with me for a sec:

 

I've been trying to apply what I've learned about:

-modal logic (e.g. Bayes, Frege, Kripke, paraconsistent logic, etc)

-system-level analysis (e.g. system theory, Information theory, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, Chaos Theory, etc), and

-philosophy of math/science (e.g. Susan Haack, axiom-level discussions of math/science, etc)

 

...to some of the famous math anomalies kicking around. And so I thought I'd throw this out there for the math(s)-inclined folks* to help me with:

(*I'm hella jealous of all y'all's formal math chops btw)

 

Benford's Law (and all the rest of the Power Law shit)

TL;DR if you take a random sample of data from the natural world, the first digits of the samples (read: the numbers we use to describe the data) will be unevenly distributed across "1 through 9"

So you can look at it from the probability/aggregate/average angle, where a random sampling of data will be more likely to "start with" a 1 than a 9 (with a smooth distribution in between)

 

...that is the (supposedly) strange phenomenon. But is the natural world actually acting weird, or merely our symbols for representing it?

 

 

 

Since Benford's law works in other bases, and since power laws describe phenomena that occur in the natural world, I'm gonna go ahead and say that the natural world is "acting weird".

[may be rude]

i would guess the bedfords law thing is explainable like this: it seems appropriate that 1 would be more likely than 9 as a leading digit, because larger numbers are less likely to appear in data, just because it's easier to collect data for smaller amounts. lets say it was incredibly difficult to count as many as 9 things, then the number 1 would be much more common. lets say it was incredibly difficult to count as many as 99 things, etc. the curve you see in the this picture

kind of represents a smoothing of the jagged steps of our orders of magnitude. the shape of the steps of our orders of magnitude (if you charted the numbers of digits in numbers, with x being the number and y being the number of digits in the number), is the result of the fact that our numbers are, arbitrarily, base-10. if they were binary, i dont think you would find the same unlikeliness in that first digit.

[zlemflolia]

Also quantities in nature that we count or measure tend to be lower-bounded rather than upper-bounded.  This could be causing the skew

[LimpyLoo]

 

Okay so, bear with me for a sec:

 

I've been trying to apply what I've learned about:

-modal logic (e.g. Bayes, Frege, Kripke, paraconsistent logic, etc)

-system-level analysis (e.g. system theory, Information theory, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, Chaos Theory, etc), and

-philosophy of math/science (e.g. Susan Haack, axiom-level discussions of math/science, etc)

 

...to some of the famous math anomalies kicking around. And so I thought I'd throw this out there for the math(s)-inclined folks* to help me with:

(*I'm hella jealous of all y'all's formal math chops btw)

 

Benford's Law (and all the rest of the Power Law shit)

TL;DR if you take a random sample of data from the natural world, the first digits of the samples (read: the numbers we use to describe the data) will be unevenly distributed across "1 through 9"

So you can look at it from the probability/aggregate/average angle, where a random sampling of data will be more likely to "start with" a 1 than a 9 (with a smooth distribution in between)

 

...that is the (supposedly) strange phenomenon. But is the natural world actually acting weird, or merely our symbols for representing it?

 

 

 

Since Benford's law works in other bases, and since power laws describe phenomena that occur in the natural world, I'm gonna go ahead and say that the natural world is "acting weird".

My point is that if we see it in other bases

(Meaning we could shuffle around 2017 suicide data into whatever base we want and still observe Benford's Law)

Then we're just seeing the weirdness of base-x

[LimpyLoo]

if they were binary, i dont think you would find the same unlikeliness in that first digit.

I think you see Benford's Law in every base system

Including base-2

So...

[LimpyLoo]

Also quantities in nature that we count or measure tend to be lower-bounded rather than upper-bounded. This could be causing the skew

There's a thought experiment called 'the presumptuous philosopher'

(Not a knock at you I swear)

That deals with this

The 'reductio ad absurdum' of that logic would be that you could comfortably bet money on natural occurrences without knowing anything about them

Because 'lower numbers' are more likely than 'higher numbers'

 

 

Entertain for a moment that numbers act like a language

And that only the ratios and relationships they describe are real

Not individual number-labels we attach to things

[LimpyLoo]

i would guess the bedfords law thing is explainable like this: it seems appropriate that 1 would be more likely than 9 as a leading digit, because larger numbers are less likely to appear in data, just because it's easier to collect data for smaller amounts. lets say it was incredibly difficult to count as many as 9 things, then the number 1 would be much more common. lets say it was incredibly difficult to count as many as 99 things, etc. the curve you see in the this picture

kind of represents a smoothing of the jagged steps of our orders of magnitude. the shape of the steps of our orders of magnitude (if you charted the numbers of digits in numbers, with x being the number and y being the number of digits in the number), is the result of the fact that our numbers are, arbitrarily, base-10. if they were binary, i dont think you would find the same unlikeliness in that first digit.

The 'jaggedness' has nothing to do with base-this or base-that

It comes from the fact that our sampling of the phenomenon is jagged

 

In other words, 'jaggedness' is just noise in the data

Caused by the 'noise floor' of our sampling/measurement method

So take 2017 suicide data (which is a morbid idea, sorry)

You are not also counting people who are (e.g.) suicidal or unhappy

You are measuring the things that fall into your category 'suicide'

And that category itself is not smooth

(i.e. the alive/dead category, like all categories, is itself 'jagged')

 

(I'll post a more thorough argument after I make coffee)

[LimpyLoo]

P.S. Chen, did you read my bit about the entropy of the world and un-suicide?

Because I didn't say that Benford's Law was an illusion or artifact exactly

I said:

 

Entropy (e.g. 'suicide' but no 'un-suicide') + Base-X = Benford's Law

[LimpyLoo]

So listen, if you're counting suicides in 2017

Your 'suicide counter' mechanism is 1-bit

It dings 'on' if (and only if) there's been a suicide, and that's it

It's not a granular/spectral measurement tool

So of course the 'data' it produces are 'jagged'

But that's not-at-all a good indication that the natural world is itself 'jagged'

[roasty]

[LimpyLoo]

And that holds true for all measurement of the natural world

You are picking a category/phenomenon to observe (read: places you would see Benford's Law aka 'Random sampling some of the natural world')

So you have your category of thing you're observing

And then you apply a 1-bit measurement tool to it

To exact your 'random sample of the natural world'

(Which again, Wittgenstein and pointing-fingers-and-moons)

 

But we don't even see that we're doing that in the first place

[LimpyLoo]

This thread might not be for you, mate

This is the 'LimpyLoo rants about whatever' thread

(As evidenced by the "I guess..." In the thread title)

 

But really, thanks for your criticism

I'll take it on board to improve myself

(Which I'm assuming was your intention,

And not some form of petty aggression to undermine anyone's confidence)

 

Cheers

[Raktorn]

this is my first post in this thread. i am now another step closer to becoming like watmm psychology savant dr. limpyloo PhD.

[LimpyLoo]

this is my first post in this thread. i am now another step closer to becoming like watmm psychology savant dr. limpyloo PhD.

I can't tell if you're being nasty and sarcastic

Or extremely generous and polite

Either way: welcome to the thread!

[LimpyLoo]

Here's my rant for the morning:

 

"OMG Who Cares lol", Psycholinguistics, Wittgenstein

 

So, Wittgenstein said that when someone utters a phrase (e.g. "OMG Who cares?") that is like a social chess move (because hey, you were motivated to utter it aloud!), and that we are simultaneously playing multiple 'social games' at once. (Thus the 'literal/figurative' mismatch in sarcasm, irony, etc)

 

So there is the descriptive/analytic/explicit game of "here is a good description of the world"...for instance, the claim that "nobody cares"

And also the prescriptive/synthetic/implicit game of "shut up"

 

TL;DR = "I don't care, therefor (I'm telling you that) nobody cares, therefor shut up."

[Raktorn]

Here's my rant for the morning:

 

"OMG Who Cares lol", Psycholinguistics, Wittgenstein

 

So, Wittgenstein said that when someone utters a phrase (e.g. "OMG Who cares?") that is like a social chess move (because hey, you were motivated to utter it aloud!), and that we are simultaneously playing multiple 'social games' at once. (Thus the 'literal/figurative' mismatch in sarcasm, irony, etc)

 

So there is the descriptive/analytic/explicit game of "here is a good description of the world"...for instance, the claim that "nobody cares"

And also the prescriptive/synthetic/implicit game of "shut up"

 

TL;DR = "I don't care, therefor (I'm telling you that) nobody cares, therefor shut up."

i bet you got thrown into the dumpster during grade school a lot

[KovalainenFanBoy]

that's your 3rd rant of the morning though

[LimpyLoo]

I'm okay with that,

Seeing as the entire point of this thread was so I didn't 'LimpyLoo' other threads.

 

(Why are people are telling me to stop 'LimpyLooing' the LimpyLoo Thread?)