waserwill

An excerpt from one Jewish view of the Sabbath:

   The rubric under which all the actions prohibited on the Sabbath fall is referred to as melakhah. It is an expansive term, first used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the full range of activities which God engaged in to create the world. The only term which really approximates its scope is Jacques Ellul’s la technique, defined as “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.” The heuristic which the rabbis of the Talmud used to determine melakhah is simple: if the action was performed in the course of the building of the Tabernacle, which after all functioned both as a mikrokosmos in the technical sense and as a microcosm of human society, it was forbidden on the Sabbath.

https://www.athwart.org/notes-on-judaic-political-economy/

There's truth to this, but in a time and place. There are times being very specific about what you know and don't know is important, but most of the time we are learning little by little, and we benefit from saying things we aren't entirely comfortable with, if only to figure out whether they are true and/or socially acceptable.

My guess: if non-genetic heritable elements -- epigenetics (such as modifications to DNA) -- are necessary for proper development, then the DNA sequence alone will not be enough to develop thylacines. (There are caveats, notably that some modifications can be inferred). However, the scientists will also be experimenting with gestation and creating embryos from modified cells, so whether epigenetics specifically is a limiting factor will be hard to tell.

Domestication and breeding/husbandry aren't always done consciously, but even when they are, people produce selective pressures (e.g. selective breeding). Evolution is ambivalent to intelligent, conscious choice or natural selection, as long as the next generation's heritable traits are different.

I've seen similar things. Besides many experiments not being remotely worth the harm they cause (poor design, niche topics without applications, dead end checking-all-the-boxes, etc.), they leave a mark on the people who conduct them. Some leave that sort of research out of distaste or disgust, and some become callous. It struck me that it inculcates an inhumane indifference to suffering. And numb scientists. It ultimately damages both the people and the science. Yet incentives (monetary, career progression) can push people past boundaries, and with time, erase them.

The issue isn't with machines, but humans as just machines. You rightly point to the assumption: "If we built a human from scratch at atom level detail then it would be reasonable assume it would experience the world as we would." What's the reason the clone has to have experience?

I'm not sure whether this clone would or not, but we don't have a good basis for either. If we built one, we should act like it does experience things, but that's on moral, not scientific grounds.

If I had to guess: "You are a machine." It's reminiscent of Victorian authors describing the heart as pistons or the brain as strings being pulled. Less of a fact and more of a metaphor, a poetic interpretation.

Then, add on the entirely subjective experience each of us has of consciousness: it's not obvious that subjectivity is created or come from machines. Each of us has one good example, and the rest is intuition, induction. At best, "You can build machines like us, because we ourselves are the proof," is a wishful project, rather than a proof.

More horrifying is that our subjective experience is all that there is. Luckily, neither is easy to square with what we experience, and we probably shouldn't try to horrify ourselves anyhow

What's wrong with helping consciousness in the realm of poetry and religion? It's the most humanistic thing we can know, after all.

Consciousness, being internal and subjective, exists at odds with anything else that science considers. Sure, study cognition and neurology, but there's an ontological gap between those and experience.

Or at least tends to increase. Entropy can always spontaneously decrease, or can simply not increase for a moment. This was actually discussed a week ago! [1] As discussed in those comments, entropy isn't well-formulated outside of equilibrium states, and is subjective: it is a function of an observer's knowledge of the system (particularly microstates).

I'd say time is very real, and an inescapable part of experience (no experience without change). As for time being the most real, we only know it through experience, so I think of it as secondary, along with space, etc.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31164725

in case anyone is wondering:

- Open the app, and select the 'Shared' folder at the bottom

- Find the spam content, click the three dots to open a menu

- At the bottom, hit 'Report abuse', select an option, and confirm.

So far, I've only been able to do this one-by-one, though I receive a couple of these shared docs every day.

I'm not sure what sort of data could support this, but I'll just say this: there is a difference between reading quantity and quality. I'm merely echoing greater critics, but the quantity of books sold says little about their quality (markets see books as commodities and try to make make profit rather than spreading good literature, and this is understandable). Plus, judging by the number of unread books on my shelf, buying a book doesn't mean reading it. There is an aesthetic appeal to books, and though I want to read all I own, there will inevitably be books printed and sold but unread.

There are high literacy rates, but this says little about whether material has been grasped and digested. References to classics (e.g. in the English tradition, Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens) or even religious texts (e.g. Exodus) are rarely recognized, in my experience. Given how freely great orators of the recent past drew from these (e.g. the speeches of MLK Jr.), this is surprising.

For the entire US, the rate is not very high, and has been decreasing over the last few decades; it's similar to rates in the UK and France.

There's likely more variance, though, since some groups and individuals are much less likely to abort, whereas others are much more likely. The latter involves, partly: contraceptive perceptions, access, poverty, among others.

This is maybe similar to some Jewish equivalents to mediation. The focus is ultimately on better action (the concept of commandments places an emphasis on doing over having the correct mindset or beliefs). These forms of meditation range from contemplative (of the characteristics of G-d, mystical concepts, etc.) to self improving (e.g. going out alone in nature and just saying to G-d whatever comes to mind, or visualizing what one learned to engage again in the topic, for understanding or building virtues). Jewish prayer and study can also be meditative, and can be either communal or secluded, verbalized or silent. [0] [1]

There are certainly parallels in other Western traditions, particularly in Sufism [2] [3]. Personally, I think that the most effective form would be the one closest to a person's tradition; ideally, meditation is a practice that's embedded in a wider setting (of legends, language, ideas).

Some more info: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitbodedut [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_meditation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muraqabah [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm

I read this coming from a very different background (secular), but I've seen a lot of these issues around me too. Especially among people raised MO (the chasidish and litvish have similar problems, but frame them differently).

for what it's worth, 18forty has done several discussions on these themes, and they resonated with me: 18forty.org/rational (in particular, with Shmuel Phillips. Their discussions of OTD and mysticism are also very relevant.)

I'm interested in how culture changes and where it can go/is going. Knowing about what ideas or forms of thinking different media favor -- this seems useful to me. It's part of the 'selective landscape' of culture.

> But it is meaningless since they did not write about it not they stablished commerce

Depends on what you find meaningful! There was almost certainly exchange of goods between Polynesians and South Americans. The presence of early sweet potato agriculture in Polynesia and genetic admixture in both regions points to non-trivial contact. There are even parallels in terms of folk-tales [0]! (Though these are likely older events, more to do with ancient dispersal).

There are also possibly earlier relationships across the Pacific, but these would have been ancient and interesting largely from historical curiousity [1].

[0]https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-39445-9_...

[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav2621

Anything that needs carbon in its metabolism will, naturally, use what's available.

Biological systems are tricky, though. If you dump a huge amount of fruit into a forest, the animals will eat it and grow in number; then, so will their predators. Animals who don't eat the fruit but are eaten by the predators will be in a bad spot. That leads to consequences all over the food web. Plus, dumping large amounts every year also changes the soil chemistry and changes what grows there.

Similarly, higher CO2 decreases water pH (more acidic) and can cause fast-growing algae to bloom (which decreases light penetration to the water beneath, and the algae may produce toxins).

Even when high-level equilibria are reached (which they eventually would, one way or another), they won't necessarily be the same or come pleasantly.

This reminds me about a time when some geneticists tried to find genes associated with a particular disease, to try to unravel why it occurs. Complex trait, no single answer, so they genotyped thousands of people with and without the disease, and ran the stats. And... nothing.

What has one common name is actually several similar diseases, and the geneticists would have known that if they paid attention to the clinicians. Listening and incorporating knowledge is key.

[I'm thinking of an early glaucoma GWAS, IIRC, though there are similar cases.]

Convenience isn't a goal, per se. It's a by-product of sorts. When things work and are intuitive, they're very convenient. Economically, it can be useful to design many things this way.

A good doorknob is ready-at-hand: it's just about invisible to me until it breaks and, suddenly, it's present and bright in my mind. I've been in the woods and become unsafe: everything around becomes suddenly, viscerally present. That's not a feeling I want often. But individual things I attend to (like watching what I eat or trying to ID a bird by its song) make the world much more colorful, and make me feel more a part of it. Plus, as the comments here suggest, immediate convenience can lead to downstream perils (e.g. in terms of data collection).

If anyone is interested in Thiel's motivations and interests in politics, I recommend Geoff Shullenberger's discussions:

Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection: Broad discussion of Thiel's writing and actions pre-2016 (when the essay was written), along with his relationship to Strauss and particularly Girard.

https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/08/13/mimesis-v...

Theorycels in Trumpworld: Published recently, and on the role of postmodernist-adjacent figures, including Thiel, in justifying the politics of Trump.

https://outsidertheory.com/theorycels-in-trumpworld/

These are good questions. I care most about these sorts of definitions when teaching, since they can orient students and describe what it is you are talking about. Some criteria I was taught about life:

> 1. Reproduces itself/making things similar to itself (sort of; viruses are on the periphery, prions...).

> 2. Metabolizes chemicals for energy

> 3. to grow, and as a result,

> 4. produces waste.

> 5. Reacts to stimuli in the environment.

> 6. Maintains homeostasis (reacts to stimuli in itself and keeps 1-5 going).

I really like these, because while they are wrong on some level, they are pedagogically useful: they orient students to what life does, what we can learn about it, and what sorts of data we can collect. Plus, it points towards both ecology and evolution.

Your definition is more encompassing in a way, so it better describes any life-form, but so encompassing that it also describes crystalization! (The parallels between life and crystals are admittedly interesting, especially when thinking about abiogenesis.)

Just from a practical perspective, I would rather start from those criteria than from physical chemistry and physics. Then, come exceptions and complications, which are great! Even when learning physics, I recall every other lecture beginning with, "Those assumptions we made were wrong. Instead, ..."

The short of it: Turchin advocates for a field of 'cliodynamics' which tries to apply math to meaningfully describe and predict social trends, especially large ones such as collapse.

His own description from a decade ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/454034a A large project he directs and uses to study this: http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/ And has produced some interesting descriptive work such as: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/E144.full

Some of his group's work [0] has been criticized on methodological grounds [1]. While some of his work may produce overdetermined models (trying to model history, considering all of the possible variables, can be tricky), the sorts of things he is interested in have been developed a fair bit, of late [2].

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4 [1] https://github.com/babeheim/moralizing-gods-reanalysis [2] https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7846.full

Wait till you try to find the boundary between species!

Many plants, and some animals such as birds, can produce fertile hybrids after being separated for millions of years. Especially true for organisms that have reproductive barriers besides genetic and physical incompatibility (different pollinators, geographic separation, birdsong differences, etc).

The definition I remember being taught early on includes that, so that's on the right track.

From memory: 1. Reproduces itself/making things similar to itself (sort of; viruses are on the periphery, prions...). 2. Metabolizes chemicals for energy 3. to grow, and as a result, 4. produces waste. 5. Reacts to stimuli in the environment. 6. Maintains homeostasis (reacts to stimuli in itself and keeps 1-5 going).

I'm probably forgetting some and there are exceptions to all of these. Notably, in interesting cases like at the inception of life, or at the periphery of life: viruses, parasites, potential extraterrestrial chemical systems, and arguably cultural systems. But those criteria are still convenient.

I would caution that we biologists study more than life, but also its environment! So, the abiotic conditions of soil, the function of enzymes (including proton pumps :D), and even the culture of humans (and dolphins and orangutans, etc.).

It's true that life can't really be defined by some essentialist statement (i.e. it has properties that neatly divide X from not-X), and the family resemblance approach works better (things like rabbits and viruses and oaks and cyanobacteria), even though it's not as satisfying. Mind, it's OK to just tell kids in biology classes a more convenient definition.

I understand the source of people's fears here, though I'm not sure whether they are justified. In attempting to clearly articulate ideas, writers too often fall into cliches--the sort of pitfall that might be widely understood at the expense of predictability. Those, coupled with topics related to current events and sensitive topics, can be a dangerous brew.

Yet in a world where media are not centrally controlled (cf. N Korea), ideas can propagate without being direct. Philosophers and heretics have written indirectly for millennia to avoid being read by the authorities or by the public; even the Soviets were accompanied by a thriving culture of satirical literature (and more importantly, jokes/anecdotes) that were allegorical yet far-reaching. If there are meaningful truths that must be said, there is a way to say them without being blunt about it.

Re: definitions of shared DNA:

Some papers will use different definitions, and it can be confusing.

Between species (e.g. humans and chimps), it's most often considering "non-synonymous mutations," i.e. how many genetic differences there are in protein-coding genes (these are relevant to structure and function of the protein)

For distant relatives (e.g. humans and bananas), it's similar, looking specially at those genes which we can identify across many species (particularly those related to cell upkeep, DNA replication, structure, etc.).

For within-species, there are a few ways of doing it; you could model how much of the genome you expect came from each source (as this study did) (see admixture analysis, coalescence), and you could look for overall differences on the genome (of all existing variation in the species, how much is consistently different between populations) (see F-statistics for example)

Maybe you know this, but: Interpreting DNA methylation isn't straightforward. Since it's involved in gene regulation and cell differentiation, it's variable across cells. Due to regulatory networks, whether any particular methylated region is responsible for some outcome may also be unclear.

That being said, if you have reason to believe that the knowledge will help, or are just curious, feel free