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Problems concerning Reductionism. Degenerate energy levels. Degeneracy plays a fundamental role in quantum statistical mechanics.

Degenerate energy levels

For a N-particle system in three dimensions, a single energy level may correspond to several different wave functions or energy states. These degenerate states at the same level are all equally probable of being filled. The number of such states gives the degeneracy of a particular energy level. Mathematics[edit] , then the scalar λ is said to be an eigenvalue of A and the vector X is said to be the eigenvector corresponding to λ. Reductionism (sequence) Future of Humanity Institute Machine Intelligence Research Institute Center for Applied Rationality Back to LessWrong Reductionism (sequence) From Lesswrongwiki Jump to: navigation, search How to take reality apart into pieces... and live in that universe, where we have always lived, without feeling disappointed about the fact that complicated things are made of simpler things.

Reductionism (sequence)

Reductionism. Followup to: How An Algorithm Feels From Inside, Mind Projection Fallacy Almost one year ago, in April 2007, Matthew C submitted the following suggestion for an Overcoming Bias topic: "How and why the current reigning philosophical hegemon (reductionistic materialism) is obviously correct [...], while the reigning philosophical viewpoints of all past societies and civilizations are obviously suspect—" I remember this, because I looked at the request and deemed it legitimate, but I knew I couldn't do that topic until I'd started on the Mind Projection Fallacy sequence, which wouldn't be for a while...

Reductionism

But now it's time to begin addressing this question. And while I haven't yet come to the "materialism" issue, we can now start on "reductionism". First, let it be said that I do indeed hold that "reductionism", according to the meaning I will give for that word, is obviously correct; and to perdition with any past civilizations that disagreed. So is the 747 made of something other than quarks? How An Algorithm Feels From Inside. Followup to: Neural Categories "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

How An Algorithm Feels From Inside

" I remember seeing an actual argument get started on this subject—a fully naive argument that went nowhere near Berkeleyan subjectivism. Just: "It makes a sound, just like any other falling tree! "" Mind Projection Fallacy. Followup to: How an Algorithm Feels From Inside In the dawn days of science fiction, alien invaders would occasionally kidnap a girl in a torn dress and carry her off for intended ravishing, as lovingly depicted on many ancient magazine covers.

Mind Projection Fallacy

Oddly enough, the aliens never go after men in torn shirts. Would a non-humanoid alien, with a different evolutionary history and evolutionary psychology, sexually desire a human female? It seems rather unlikely. To put it mildly. The Argument from Common Usage. Followup to: Feel the Meaning Part of the Standard Definitional Dispute runs as follows: Albert: "Look, suppose that I left a microphone in the forest and recorded the pattern of the acoustic vibrations of the tree falling.

The Argument from Common Usage

If I played that back to someone, they'd call it a 'sound'! That's the common usage! Guardians of the Truth. Followup to: Tsuyoku Naritai, Reversed Stupidity is not Intelligence The criticism is sometimes leveled against rationalists: "The Inquisition thought they had the truth!

Guardians of the Truth

How An Algorithm Feels From Inside. Qualitatively Confused. Followup to: Probability is in the Mind, The Quotation is not the Referent I suggest that a primary cause of confusion about the distinction between "belief", "truth", and "reality" is qualitative thinking about beliefs.

Qualitatively Confused

Consider the archetypal postmodernist attempt to be clever: "The Sun goes around the Earth" is true for Hunga Huntergatherer, but "The Earth goes around the Sun" is true for Amara Astronomer! Explaining vs. Explaining Away. Followup to: Reductionism, Righting a Wrong Question John Keats's Lamia (1819) surely deserves some kind of award for Most Famously Annoying Poetry: ...Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

Explaining vs. Explaining Away

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine— Unweave a rainbow... My usual reply ends with the phrase: "If we cannot learn to take joy in the merely real, our lives will be empty indeed. " Qualitatively Confused. Problems concerning Reductionism. •Cleantes Unmoderated Member Usergroup: Unmoderated Member Joined: Jun 28, 2012 Location: Somewhere in the universe Total Topics: 45 Total Posts: 363 Posted Jan 28, 2013 - 10:26 AM: Subject: Problems concerning Reductionism Two main features of reductionism are:

Problems concerning Reductionism

Condition of possibility. Condition of possibility (Bedingungen der Möglichkeit) is a philosophical concept made popular by Immanuel Kant. A condition of possibility is a necessary framework for the possible appearance of a given list of entities. It is often used in contrast to the unilateral causality concept, or even to the notion of interaction. For example, consider a cube made by an artisan. Evolutionary algorithm. Evolutionary algorithms often perform well approximating solutions to all types of problems because they ideally do not make any assumption about the underlying fitness landscape; this generality is shown by successes in fields as diverse as engineering, art, biology, economics, marketing, genetics, operations research, robotics, social sciences, physics, politics and chemistry[citation needed].

In most real applications of EAs, computational complexity is a prohibiting factor. In fact, this computational complexity is due to fitness function evaluation. Fitness approximation is one of the solutions to overcome this difficulty. However, seemingly simple EA can solve often complex problems; therefore, there may be no direct link between algorithm complexity and problem complexity. Evolutionary computation. In computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence (more particularly computational intelligence) that involves continuous optimization and combinatorial optimization problems. Its algorithms can be considered global optimization methods with a metaheuristic or stochastic optimization character and are mostly applied for black box problems (no derivatives known), often in the context of expensive optimization.

Evolutionary computation uses iterative progress, such as growth or development in a population. This population is then selected in a guided random search using parallel processing to achieve the desired end. Such processes are often inspired by biological mechanisms of evolution. As evolution can produce highly optimised processes and networks, it has many applications in computer science. Problems concerning Reductionism. •Flannel Jesus crab meat Usergroup: Members Joined: Aug 01, 2011 Total Topics: 18 Total Posts: 691 Posted Jan 29, 2013 - 2:39 AM: apokrisis wrote:That seems obviously wrong.

You couldn't say anything definite about the next state of the hardware without knowledge of the program driving the action. No, he's totally correct. What do you think programs are? No, programs are 1s and 0s encoded into the hardware. So, yes, he's totally correct, the next state of the computer follows from the previous state and the laws governing the matter and energy therein. A biosemiotic conversation: between physics and semiotics. Available at. Problems concerning Reductionism. Entropy, Free Will and Hegel. 0210527. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism.

Problems concerning Reductionism. Permutation. The 6 permutations of 3 balls In mathematics , the notion of permutation is used with several slightly different meanings, all related to the act of permuting (rearranging) objects or values. Lagrange multiplier. Figure 1: Find x and y to maximize f(x, y) subject to a constraint (shown in red) g(x, y) = c. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Strien, on the origins and foundations of Laplacian determinism. Inheritance Systems. Causal Determinism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Problems concerning Reductionism. Measurement in Quantum Theory. Measurement problem. Interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Aristotle on Causality. Four causes. Sheffer stroke. A Hierarcical framework for levels of reality: Understanding Through Representation, Axiomathes_19_(2009)_87-99. Laplace's demon. Holonomic constraints. Holonomic system. Nonholonomic system. Lecture5. Lecture5. What is a nonholonomic constraint? The physics of symbols: bridging the epistemic cut. 91-09-037. Zero energy trajectories - a thread to discuss this topic (Page 1) / Interplanetary transportation / New Mars Forums. LunarGateway. Interplanetary Transport Network. 11%20Pattee-Kull. Strong vs Weak emergence. Emergence. Rayleigh–Jeans law.

Fermi–Dirac statistics. Bose–Einstein statistics. Machine code. Bose–Einstein condensate. Laws of science. Natural law. Pattern. Philosophy. Reductionism. N Murphy: 2 species of reductionism. Noether's theorem. Reality and Mathematics. PF thread reality and mathematics. Problems concerning Reductionism. How well Do Semi-classical Approximations Explain Classical Physics? Semiclassical physics. WKB approximation. Multiple-scale analysis. Schrödinger equation. Reductionism.