Mission Statement

To better understand the world through kindness, persistence, and curiosity in order to improve it.

Philosophy

This section is meant to briefly outline key elements of the philosophy with which I view the world. My thoughts here are in a continual work in-progress and will undoubtedly need to be revised.

Ontology

Arthur Schopenhauer, Charles Peirce, Bishop Berkeley, and others provide arguments that materialism cannot be proven. As all I have access to are my perceptions and a proof of materialism would require me to go beyond those perceptions, I am unable to make progress here. In a more modern illustration of this idea, I cannot prove that I am not in a computer simulation. As proofs of necessity for materialism or idealism (or others) seem unlikely to come about, it appears to me that one must make an assumption as the starting point. I assume a materialist framework from a pragmatic perspective. Whether I live in a computer simulation or am the figment of some being, ultimately does not matter. I do not have access to that ‘other level’. I must make decisions in the context I am in and those decisions always have had consequences in ‘this level’, so I want to make the best decisions in the context I have access to. When I return to my office after the weekend, I expect all my items to be in the places I left them (I am surprised when they move, but it always seems to have a causal explanation accessible to my level).

My preference for a materialist framework came about after reading Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge. While Berkeley had the opposite intention in his work, my preference comes about from the following thoughts after reading his work:

• Conflict resolution under materialism seems possible (i.e., we can argue over an external object, independent of us). Berkeley seems to rely on the existence of a deity to organize perceptions to cohere between different minds. Without intervention of such a deity, it is unclear how we can resolve conflicts (if we both just have perceptions, then neither of us is wrong and both are right). By having an external world that we perceive as our foundation, we then have a reference point to make progress on resolving disagreements. How (and whether) those disagreements can be solved is another issue entirely, but materialism offers an opportunity to.
• Scientific progress appears to be better justified under a materialist framework to me. If all that is, is perceptions, then I’m not sure what science or observations hopes to capture. If we instead are viewing an external world through (distorted) perceptions, then it seems like science has something it can say. The success of science seems to give the adoption of materialism weight.

While I choose to adopt a materialist viewpoint, I recognize this is a singular assumption one can make regarding their ontology. I could have instead chosen an idealist viewpoint. Such an opposing view may allow scientific progress not otherwise possible under a materialist viewpoint (I do not find this to be likely, hence my materialist preference, but I am open to being shown that I am wrong).

Epistemology

I find epistemological anarchism, or ‘anything goes’ appealing to allow myself (and others) flexibility in scientific progress.

Causal Model

The causal model I operate under is Jamie Robins’s FFRCISTG (Finest Fully Randomized Causally Interpreted Structured Tree Graph). While this model agrees with Judea Pearl’s NP-SEM (Non-Parametric Structural Equation Model) for most of my work, I adopt FFRCISTG as I am skeptical that natural direct and indirect effects can be identified. As such, I choose FFRCISTG. While the FFRCISTG is incapable of handling effects of truly continuous treatments, I do not believe that truly continuous variables (and thus treatments) exist. I think continuous variables are a nice mathematical approximation, but that is it. So, I do not adopt the MCM (Minimal Causal Model) of Richardson and Robins.

Probability

I continue to struggle with what ‘probability’ is, despite using it all the time. I recognize the objections to frequentism and some of the flaws it has. However, I am also not a Bayesian. To me, Sir David Cox’s objection described in Theoretical Statistics (i.e., there is no guarantee that any answers obtained are connected to the truth of that system) seems quite damning. My current interest lies in viewing probability as information, and probability as an extension of logic to uncertainty. My ideas here are not fully formed.

Moral Philosophy

Morally, I adopt a utilitarian framework. Deriving maxims (without error for all eternity) seems hopeless to me (as even Kant couldn’t), especially since it seems easy to get trapped in the ‘morality of your time’. I recognize the possible errors of a utilitarian framework (e.g., the utility monster), but I do not think these objections as disastrous. Instead, I think that we should be careful in how we define utility. The best way to safeguard appears to me to be a democratic society.

Consciousness

I find the emergent property explanation to be convincing. So, animal consciousness and machine consciousness are also accepted as possible. I believe that animal’s do have a form of consciousness at varying degrees that likely depends on their sensory perceptions. Regarding machines, I do believe it is possible (I take von Neumann’s point that the limitation of making a machine ‘think’ is our not knowing what ‘thinking’ actually consists of). However, I do not believe that the current generation of LLMs (large languages models) are close.