
Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning - ggreer
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/
======
andyjohnson0
Scott Aaronson's post on Kolmogorov, mentioned in the post above, was
discussed on HN a couple of months ago [1].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966002)

------
otakucode
There is a very large problem with comparing these sorts of issues between
pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment cultures. Prior to the
Englightenment, all knowledge was religious knowledge. Astronomy was the study
of how God arrayed the heavens. Geology was the study of the firmament and how
God created it. Physics was the motion God gave to every object. Agriculture
was when God wanted you to plant your crops. Biology was how Gods morality was
reflected in the living things in nature. There was no difference between
religious ideas and ideas about reality - there was no separation whatever.

The Enlightenment was significant because it gave us a wedge. It allowed us to
say 'religion is about the spiritual, about the ephemeral and ineffable, and
science is about material reality'. That is a difference larger than modern
people can easily understand. If your religious beliefs are beliefs about your
everyday life and the visceral world you live in, you see things very
differently. You can't simply live next door to someone with a different set
of beliefs from your own. That person is an agent of evil, a soldier fighting
in the cosmic and Earthly war between Good and Evil which will either see an
eternity of peace and paradise (here, on this planet, not somewhere else) or
an eternity of suffering depending upon who wins the war.

While Kolmogorov might have been able to build a bubble, those before the
Enlightenment could not. It was impossible to defer judgement to some never-
to-come 'afterlife'. It was impossible to extend to others a tolerance for
their differing views. It was impossible for considering different ideas about
how reality worked to not have a moral and religious consequence. The
Enlightenment was so profoundly and deeply successful that those who grew up
in societies where it took root can't even conceive of how different it would
be to believe that everything which occurs in the world is the direct and
immediate expression of the will of a god which suffuses all things and which
the material world is but a slim skin over.

------
adiabatty
> But politically-savvy Kolmogorov types can’t just build a bubble. They have
> to build a whisper network.

The trouble with whisper networks, though, is that they breed poorly-supported
misinformation (fake news?) that may or may not have anything to do with
whether thunder or lightning comes first.

Seems like if you want to reduce the incentive to create fake-news-breeding
whisper networks, you should do what you can to not incentivize whisper-
network creation.

~~~
lmm
Well, obviously the best thing is to ensure that all truths are politically
acceptable. But given that we live in a society in which certain truths aren't
acceptable, what's the best course that individuals can pursue on the margin?

~~~
Symmetry
I worry more that the problem isn't that certain truths aren't acceptable but
rather that certain truths aren't generally representable. People in general
don't understand probabilities and in political races this means that in
practice predictions get simplified down to "Candidate A is certainly going to
win" or "It's a toss up!".

------
rocqua
This talk of many people knowing the orthodoxy is wrong kinda reminds me of
the predictability crisis as described in this HN post from a week ago [1].
Only here, people did eventually speak out against the orthodoxy and seemed to
have some effect.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15509347)

------
nl
For such a smart person, it surprises me that he seems to have missed the
point of what is going on in <insert politicized debate of the day here>.

In modern Western thought, voices aren't suppressed. Instead, they are
politicized and used to put the speaker on a "side". Then the people on that
side will defend their side (although not always the speaker) using that
person as a proxy for their side.

We see this in global warming, in nuclear power, in gender equality, in free
speech rights, in gun rights, in nurture vs nature.

I can think of only two examples where something similar to the behavior
called out in this article occurs in the modern West. The first is the "neural
network conspiracy" where CIFAR funded research for years, until they suddenly
won. The other is cold fusion, where there are persistent rumors that this
wasn't perhaps the dead end it was made out to be (I don't have the expertise
to evaluate that and tell if it is crackpots or not though).

~~~
TeMPOraL
He didn't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past.

It's not true that voices aren't suppressed in the modern Western world,
though. The original post by Scott Aaaronson, the one from which this post
takes it title, was a response to present-day suppression of opinions. Both
Scotts have opted to write their posts in a very general tone (even though
they're obvious responses to some recent events), but I'll nevertheless spell
it out in concrete terms: if you express your disagreement with the current
feminist/social justice ideology on a public forum, you risk losing your job
to an angry Twitter mob.

~~~
nl
_He didn 't miss that; in fact, he wrote about it frequently in the past._

Can you point to that?

 _if you express your disagreement with the current feminist /social justice
ideology on a public forum_

While I agree that kind of behavior is what he is referring to, I'd note that
is a perfect example of exactly what I said.

In the case of Damore specifically, yes, he lost his job but in return picked
up numerous speaking engagements and is now a player in the culture wars.
That's a long way from being executed!

He's suing Google, and being represented by Harmeet Dhillon, "a prominent San
Francisco Republican who was considered for a post in the Trump
administration" who is "a member of the Republican National Committee". Is it
possible to be more entrenched in the mainstream culture wars than that?

Far from being Kolmogorov or Giordano Bruno, it seems to me he is closer to
Kanye West circa the 2006 "Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" interview, or
the Dixie Chicks anti-war comments, or Judith Miller's pro-Iraq war NY Times
columns. All made some people really, really mad, and had some consequences
for their authors, but long term just solidified their position for the other
side.

~~~
asddddd
If you're genuinely interested in how someone could view the situations as
equivalent, here's one post (regrettably long, but I haven't found better):
[http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html)

Kolmogorov also becomes more relatable if you consider Damore's computer-
science-related activities at Google _science_ , and the role he's now cast
into as _politics_. We don't execute, but we can blacklist and exclude.
(Consider what might happen if he wanted to present a paper at a conference.)

~~~
nl
That linked article was too long to read properly sorry.

 _In the history of American democracy, if you take the mainstream political
position (Overton Window, if you care) at time T1, and place it on the map at
a later time T2, T1 is always way to the right, near the fringe or outside it.
So, for instance, if you take the average segregationist voter of 1963 and let
him vote in the 2008 election, he will be way out on the wacky right wing.
Cthulhu has passed him by._

Clearly 2009 and 2017 are pretty different worlds.

 _We don 't execute, but we can blacklist and exclude. (Consider what might
happen if he wanted to present a paper at a conference.)_

This is precisely my point. There is no _we_ \- there are multiple groups, and
while some may exclude others will welcome him.

As a specific - real world - example I'd note the rapturous reception any
anti-climate change paper gets, and how authors get _invited_ to present at
anti-climate change conferences.

Yes, they maybe excluded and blacklisted from orthodox scientific conferences,
but they have an entire separate world open to them. That's very different to
being suppressed.

~~~
saint_fiasco
If all you care about is the camaraderie of people who think like you, that is
fine. But many people care about other things too.

For example if you believe that climate change is a conspiracy by the Chinese
to weaken the American economy, then even if you can go to anti-climate change
conferences and be popular among climate change denialists, you won't be very
happy because you will believe that in the end the Chinese are still going to
destroy your country.

You could gain some social power but lose all your structural power[1]. For
the sort of people who care more about objective reality than about popularity
contests, that is a bad deal.

[1]
[https://squid314.livejournal.com/354385.html](https://squid314.livejournal.com/354385.html)

------
sanxiyn
Lightning comes before thunder.

Sue me.

