Reddit Reddit reviews Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (A Bradford Book)

We found 12 Reddit comments about Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (A Bradford Book). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (A Bradford Book)
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12 Reddit comments about Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to Ethics (A Bradford Book):

u/moreLytes · 4 pointsr/DebateReligion

> (1) why am I so convinced that I could think something different?

You might be interested in Gary Drescher's account of free will, as it directly offers an explanation for your conviction. Specifically, he postulates that your intuition comes from an absence of a particular processing mechanism within your cognitive arsenal. The proposed mechanism, the "prejudiced-context principle", is responsible for preprocessing context-action-expectation schemas and removing paths that would mutually negate one another. While the principle could ultimately inform philosophical knots within volition, ethics, and Newcomb problems, Drescher argues that it was simply not selected-for across evolutionary time.

> (2) why would the truth value of any proposition I think matter?

What sort of significance are you inquiring about? What would happen if you learned that it probably doesn't matter, at least in the way you desire?

u/satanic_hamster · 4 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

> Yes and I agree, but some context here is they were also working with 1970s computers or just doing the calculations by hand down at the GOSPLAN building in downtown Moscow.

Yeah, I agree. But even then if you wanted to coordinate all that activity with an AI or something of that sort, it seems to me you'd still be doing it on the basis of mapping out all the various transactions and exchanges between people, and then just use Predictive Analytics or Markov Chains or something to predict the most efficient allocation of resources. It isn't an actual substitute for the Market like what the USSR did. It's just mapping it out.

> You see a lot of talk about A.I. for instance in the tech press and by Silicon Valley people but I don't see much productive investment going on in this sector -- at least nowhere near as much as there could be.

Well I do know a lot of research and mathematical breakthroughs are being made here and there. Particularly from people in the community like MIRI, independent contributors like Gary Drescher and Judea Pearl, etc. But maybe you had a different idea of productive investment. The idea of an AI Cold War is a very real and dangerous prospect that I think will be of greater concern in years coming.

> Yeah I have a lot to learn about it as well. But the commune system in the "production brigades" sense from what I understand largely went away with Deng's reforms. But there's been some new histories showing that it was really productive and good, and that getting rid of it was largely a political decision aimed at concentrating political power under Deng. And I think China has backslided on education in recent years in the rural areas -- trying to do something about that is one of Xi's big things.

Anything interesting you could point me to here?

u/23143567 · 3 pointsr/rational

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Good and Real - each could be considered a canon of rationalist thought on evolution of humankind and ethics respectively.

u/humpolec · 2 pointsr/science

>I'm guessing that every possible interpretation of a system would have to be conscious by extension, which is unrealistic IMO as it would mean that everything is conscious in an infinite number of ways.

Gary Drescher suggests that's not a problem because only some interpretations can possibly matter to us (he also refers to Dennet's intentional stance, but that I don't know anything about yet).

u/alexandrosm · 2 pointsr/atheism

I'd suggest Good and Real by Gary Drescher. Also take a look at lesswrong.com, especially the sequences

Sometimes I wish I could forget having read this stuff just so I could enjoy reading them for the first time again. Enjoy!

u/MoreAccurate · 2 pointsr/DebateReligion

I mostly have a lot of books that helped me, but here are the most influential ones that I've read recently:

u/160525 · 2 pointsr/LessWrong

It might have been the good and the real by Gary Drescher.

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Real-Demystifying-Paradoxes-Bradford/dp/0262042339

u/fredmccalley · 1 pointr/PhilosophyofScience

The first couple of chapters of "Good and Real" are helpful here.

u/wizardnamehere · 1 pointr/CapitalismVSocialism

> Well I do know a lot of research and mathematical breakthroughs are being made here and there. Particularly from people in the community like MIRI, independent contributors like Gary Drescher and Judea Pearl, etc. But maybe you had a different idea of productive investment. The idea of an AI Cold War is a very real and dangerous prospect that I think will be of greater concern in years coming.

Do you mean an AI cold war between American state backed tech firms and Chinese state backed tech firms?

u/PartTimeGangster · 1 pointr/philosophy

There is a book that goes through this scenario by accepting the Everett explanation of quantum mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Good-Real-Demystifying-Paradoxes-Bradford/dp/0262042339

I recommend that you don't read it: it will suck you in and torment you. Just enjoy life mate.