This is how intelligent folks think and write

Just to share how some of the best minds (of white Americans) think and communicate their thinking.

Wissai

canngon.blogspot.com

Begin forwarded message:

From: via WPDG <wpdg@wpdg.info>
Date: August 13, 2016 at 4:26:14 PM PDT
To: 'Steve 'WPDG' <wpdg@wpdg.info>, ross@ross.mayfirst.org
Subject: [WPDG] OT science, etc.
Reply-To: arWPDG <wpdg@wpdg.info>

I changed the subject line here since this thread has wandered far from ROI and poker and not everyone in the group gives a fig about the topics we've wandered into.

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Ross: Coming in from another discipline (cognitive psychology with a secondary focus on the philosophy of science) I agree with Steve on this issue. If a proposition is not testable and potentially falsifiable then it's not a candidate for a scientific principle. The idea of a multi-verse is fun to contemplate but so are topics like reincarnation and faster than light travel. That's why science fiction is so popular -- and especially among scientists!

On the antenna bit: We evolved sensory systems for the blatantly obvious reason that any organism that locomotes has to have information about the world it traverses. The input has to be that which can be processed by biological structures and it has to be useful and veridical. 

For example, we are sensitive to light waves between roughly 400 and 700 nanometers. The reason is because these wave lengths go through things we can go through -- air, water. It would not be useful to be sensitive to wave lengths that go through solid materials (X-rays) like trees and, not knowing they were there, we would bump our noses. Other species do have sensory systems that extend into other realms for other reasons (bees and ultraviolet light for differentiating flower types; bats and high frequency sound for echolocation).

Every one of the dozen or so sensory systems (there aren't five senses as most folks think) evolved because it provided information that gave the species an evolutionary edge. 

The antenna metaphor strikes me as an unhappily messy way of talking about this issue.

As for how the brain makes the mind … well, that's another topic indeed. FWIW, I just published a paper on the general issue of the origins of consciousness. If anyone cares, the abstract is here and, if you wish, you can download the full paper:

http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss11/1/

Cheers,

Arthur

 

From: WPDG [mailto:wpdg-bounces@wpdg.info] On Behalf Of Steve Selbrede via WPDG
Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2016 3:51 PM
To: ross
Subject: Re: [WPDG] Equity, ROI and EV

 

Actually, I am (or was) a physicist. I understand the multiverse concepts. Though the math may allow a multiverse interpretation for some  (string) theories, that doesn't mean the theory is correct. I just checked out the Wikipedia page for this: "The physics community continues to debate the multiverse hypothesis. Prominent physicists disagree about whether the multiverse exists." Stephen Hawking thinks it does. Steven Weinberg thinks it does not. Steve Selbrede agrees with Steven Weinberg. I agree with those physicists who believe that the multiverse is not a legitimate scientific theory because it is not falsifiable (testable). I also doubt that even those physicists who think the multiverse exits think that it is "highly probably".

When I was doing astrophysics research, my area was Black Holes, not multiverse cosmology. My objection has nothing to do with the math, or whether a vote of cosmologists mostly believe or don't believe in it. My objection is on philosophical grounds. No untestable scientific theory can be called "scientific". It becomes more like a religion: based on faith only. Since we can't test it, we are free to believe what we want. 

Having said this, I think a multiverse is an intriguing concept for overcoming some cosmology problems. But it's too easy. It solves EVERY problem, since there must be a universe somewhere where things turned out the way we see ours. "Highly Probable" is the phrase I object to.
 
Steve Selbrede

-----Original Message----- 
From: ross via WPDG 
Sent: Aug 13, 2016 3:11 PM 
To: WPDG 
Subject: Re: [WPDG] Equity, ROI and EV 

Actually, what I said is that current theoretical physics suggests it's highly probable that the multi-verse exists.  At least the theoretical physicists I talk to tell me this.  I will never understand the math, so it's pretty much all jibberish to me.  Nevertheless, that's what they tell me, and I promise you, they know way more than you do about it Steve.  Unless you are, in fact, a theoretical physicist.  In which case, you should be talking to your colleagues.

 

Also, re the antenna question.  It's important to differentiate the mind from the brain or extend your understanding of the brain.  Either the brain is composed of all it's sensory inputs, e.g. the entire nervous system, or the brain is just the gray matter and the mind is that plus all the sensory inputs.  Without sensory inputs, the gray matter brain, does not develop into anything we would call a full thinking human.  So again, the brain is nothing without antenna.  If the brain is considered the full spectrum of the nervous system, then by definition it is at least part antenna.  We do not, however, know what the antenna might receive.  Some people can know a storm is coming long before it hits, because their arthritis acts up under certain barometric conditions.  Some people can pick up radio stations from the fillings in their teeth.  All of our physically made antenna are basically prosthetics to extend our consciousness to forms of information transfer our physical bodies cannot capture, and in so doing, allow us to capture those transfers.  Those prosthetics also mean we have expanded our consciousness.  And it's not unreasonable, given things like the Hubble Space Telescope, to suggest that expanded consciousness is cosmic or at least cosmological. 

 

As far as the nurture/nature debate goes, what neurologists have discovered regarding neuro-plasticity is that some environments inhibit and/or trigger the activity of certain genes that directly effect the structure of the brain.  Sort of like this environment triggering our Gene!  Some of what is "in" our DNA only becomes part of our cognitive system if certain environmental conditions are met or not met.  Even though we may have the "savannah grass" gene, how and if that gene expresses itself may be contingent on whether or not we grow up in the steppe.  In addition, and maybe more importantly for this conversation, whether or not we respond to waving grass as fearful survivors or intrigued scientists very much depends on whether or not our mothers touched us enough.  This is an excellent example of how cognitive bias depends on environment.  A seasoned meditator can see both positions in herself and make a decision in the moment from a non-reactive place by understanding how those positions might both be true and biased.

 

 

On Sat, 2016-08-13 at 00:25 -0700, Steve Selbrede wrote:

Actually, the current physics thinking does not claim that a multi-verse exists. It is merely conjecture, consistent with some versions of string theory and is mostly an attempt to explain away the anthropic principle. "Why are the laws of physics tuned so that live is possible?" Answer, because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here to ask the question. So if a universe can have any variation of basic physics constants, why does our own favor life? One answer is that there are an infinite number of universes, and therefore, many with the correct properties for life. Another answer is that God set it up that way. 

 

It's a basic foundation of science that a theory that can not be falsified is not a scientific theory. It's just metaphysics. (Falsifiability means that the theory could be proved wrong if it is indeed wrong.) A multiverse, by its very nature, could not be proven wrong (as far as we know), so it is just science fiction.

 

I didn't say Gene's email was jibberish, only that it was jibberish to me. Just like quantum mechanics is to Roy.

 

When Gene was talking about the brain as an antenna, I don't think he was thinking about light or sound. Even for light, the brain isn't the antenna, the eyes are. For sound, the ears are the antenna. The brain just processes the signals. But cognitive bias is sort of a subroutine in the brain's software that allows us to make short-cut sense out of our sensory inputs. Without the shortcuts, we would be frozen in inactivity while the brain tried to sort things out. Our ancestors saw the savannah grass move and assumed it was a lion rather than the wind. This became a hardwired reaction, otherwise their DNA wouldn't have survived to produce us. Humans are a mass of inherited as well as learned reactions to inputs. That's what cognitive bias is. 

 

It is simply not true, as Dave claims, that we are aware of 99% of them. We might be aware of some of them, and when we are, we either are happy with them or change them until we are happy with them. So we end up being satisfied with the biases we think we know about. And we will rarely challenge them to see if our bias is correct. This is why Republicans and Democrats have different world views. One side might be correct about a particular issue. But it is also common that both sides have biases that are incorrect.

-----Original Message----- 
From: ross via WPDG 
Sent: Aug 12, 2016 11:41 PM 
To: wpdg@wpdg.info 
Subject: Re: [WPDG] Equity, ROI and EV 

Just to put science in perspective.  The current thinking in theoretical physics suggests it's highly probably that the multi-verse exists.  If this is accurate, then it's also almost certain that a technology sophisticated enough to simulate a universe exists as well in at least some of these multiple universes.  Once such a technology exists, it becomes much easier to simulate a universe than actually create a universe and thus more simulated universes exist than actual universes in the multi-verse.  Given this, it seems much more likely that we are in a simulated universe than an actual universe.  So it's really a matter of which jibberish you're into, no?

 

Also, the mind, as an embodied reality, is pretty much the definition of an antenna.  When the eye sees, it collects waves of light.  When the ear hears, it collects waves of sound.  When the body feels the desert wind, it collects waves of air.  These waves are transcoded into electric waves which the brain then adds meaning to.  The mind is both antenna and receiving station. While what is possible to receive may be up for debate, I find it fairly clear that the mind is nothing if it is not first an antenna.

 

Finally, check out the book "Train The Mind, Change the Brain."  It's a rather provocative exploration into neuro-plasticity and how the process of meditation (among other things) literally changes the structure of the brain.  Not new age hoodoo, this book emerged from a concerted effort between a group of neurologists working with the Dalai Lama to discover what meditation actually does to the brain.  I should add, it does some rather extraordinary things...

 

 

On Fri, 2016-08-12 at 17:23 -0700, Steve Selbrede via WPDG wrote:

To me, this is just jibberish. That is not to mean that meditation isn't valuable. But these new age explanations make no sense to me; they are simply the mind's way of finding images in a cloud formations. 

 

The mind is not an antenna. There is no greater, universal consciousness. How the mind emerges from the biology of the brain is a fascinating subject, and I don't know how it happens. But whenever I hear somewhat (like Deepak Chopra) try to explain this kind of stuff, I am deeply skeptical..

-----Original Message----- 
From: Gene Hull via WPDG 
Sent: Aug 12, 2016 4:51 PM 
To: WPDG 
Subject: Re: [WPDG] Equity, ROI and EV 

Om    (Google it!)

 

 

 

The brain is an exceptionally developed antennae where a conscious mind coalesces.  Still the mind and tune into the moment. The thoughts of the mind are like the breaths of the body. We take in our thoughts and we release them.  Perhaps the brain does not create consciousness, but rather the brain is a transceiver for a larger consciousness that pervades everything.  Perhaps great masters of meditation (stilling the mind) are able to tap into this holistic consciousness. If they can do it . You can do it.

 

Science is typically interested in taking a measurement and categorizing all the pieces that create experience.  Is everything we experience a conglomerate of many, many parts that make the whole, or is what we are experiencing one thing that we have subdivided into many, many parts through observation and measurement?  Science is determined to find the smallest part of what we are observing.  Maybe there is no smallest part.  While calculus gives us a method to work with infinities and infinitesimals it still does not answer the philosophical questions that remain. 

 

It is a fun (for some) and interesting discussion to have. In the end it may not matter, but I can tell you that the more connected you feel to everything around you the deeper and more meaningful the experience. (at least for me)

 

Ancient Zen Proverb: 

 

Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

 

Gene

On Friday, August 12, 2016 11:19 AM, ross via WPDG <wpdg@wpdg.info> wrote:

 

On Thu, 2016-08-11 at 08:57 -0700, Steve Selbrede via WPDG wrote:

I doubt the validity of your second paragraph, but perhaps that is just the result of my own biases. Personally, since biases are unconscious, we can't generally detect them without outside help. This could be in the form of study, which points out something contrary to the way we normally view something. This could be followed by analysis and perhaps some math or statistics that point out where we might have been wrong. This is a very difficult process and is probably the main reason that people rarely change their mind about deeply held opinions, poker-related or not.

 

Given what you've now stated about cognitive bias, I think that meditation (in some form) may, in fact, be the only way to overcome cognitive bias.  Since scientific study cannot actually remove cognitive bias, but can only demonstrate that it exists.  Some dedicated training of the mind is likely the only method such biases might be disrupted or understood by a particular person to be what they are; an accumulation of imperfect perceptual systems that lead to a fantasy of self-contained autonomous activity.  Basically, the entirety of Buddhist though suggests a method of over-coming cognitive bias, though it's usually framed as "seeing the world clearly or as it is."  

 

This is precisely why all the good poker psychologists recommend meditation.  Not only might it help one with tilt problems, but it also can help one see clearly when forced to evaluate situations in the moment.  When your mind is clear, your awareness expanded, and your urges visible to you, it becomes possible to understand when your desire to win the pot is causing you to misuse concepts like fold equity, EV, or SPR just to justify shoving into the nuts.  I personally do not know of any approach to training the mind more effective for perceptual clarity than meditation.