News: The Quest for Unknown Unknowns

How important are 'the latest news'? What would it mean to ignore most news and to concentrate on our present goals?

These days many people are following an enormous amount of news sources. I myself notice how skimming through my Google Reader items is increasingly time-consuming.

Is there maybe more to it than just curiosity and leisure?

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things
We know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

— Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

As long as we embed ourselves into the collective intelligence of 'the sphere of human thought', as long as we are a part of the growing Noosphere, we will be nourished. But we have to keep care not to be drowned. The balance between an ill-nourished information diet and gluttony is unsteady.

Google and its kind are the first representations of the wonders of our possible future. They are slave-Gods at our disposal, all the time ready to serve us. Google is a literal-minded information genie, there to satisfy our desires indifferently of the consequences that might arise for us.

Thus we have to learn how, when and for what to ask the right questions. But the underlying nature of unknown unknowns does not permit us to question them. The impossibility to know the possibilities that lie ahead is the dilemma we face. For that we know about, or rather assume, the possibility of prospects or possible possibilities that we don't know we don't know about.

How much of what you know and do has its origins in some blog post or other kind of news item. Would I even know about Space Collective if I wasn't the heavy news addict that I am?

Have I already reached a level of knowledge that allows me to get from here to everywhere, without exposing myself to all the noise out there in hope of coming across some valuable information nugget which might help me reach the next level?

How do we ever know that there isn't something out there which might trump our current goals? Just one click away a new truth might shift our preferences.

Is there a time to stop searching and approach what is at hand? Start learning and improving upon the possibilities we already know about? What proportion of our time should we spend on the prospect of unknown unknowns?

Sat, Mar 20, 2010  Permanent link

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The self-evident nature of simple tools = Ignorance

How much does the average person know about how one of our simplest tools work, the knife?

What does it mean to cut something? What does the act of cutting accomplish? How does it work?

We all know how to use this particular tool. We think it is obvious, thus we do not contemplate it any further. But most of us have no idea what actually physically happens. We are ignorant of the underlying mechanisms for that we think we understand. We are quick to conclude that there is nothing more to learn here. But there is deep knowledge to be found in what might superficially appear to be simple and obvious.

If any one of you will concentrate upon one single fact, or small object, such as a pebble or the seed of a plant or other creature, for as short a period of time as one hundred of your years, you will begin to perceive its truth.

– Gray Lensman

More:
No One Knows What Science Doesn’t Know
Minds that Make Optimal Use of Small Amounts of Sensory Data

Sat, Mar 20, 2010  Permanent link

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Why choose the future over the present?

Why choose the future over the present? A reason to do so is if we perceive the present not to be worthy and thus try to change it. Always picking the future over the present could be defined as making the journey the reward.

People who read and participate in lesswrong.com and overcomingbias.com seem to care most about the fate of a possible galactic civilization, we have to help to rise, and our infinite future. But you don’t have to look that far, most people are devoting a big part of their life's to think about and work for their future selves. Both ideas have something in common, they are both based upon imaginary entities.

But what we do has not to be bound to be about pleasing other beings, much less possible beings.

The only reasons we care about other people is either to survive, i.e. get what we want, or because it is part of our preferences to see other people being happy. Accordingly, trying to maximize happiness for everybody can be seen as purely selfish. Either as an effort to survive, by making everybody wanting to make everybody else happy, given that not you but somebody else wins. Or simply because it makes oneself happy.

There does exist no goal that is of objective moral superiority.

It’s all about your preferences. It is up to what we want. And what do I want? You tell me? Nope, it will come to me naturally.

The ultimate purpose on which all meaning is based is the subjective first-person knowledge of volition. A truth which is self-evident. Volition is a truth that is adequately proven by circular reasoning. I want what I want, by reason that’s what I want. Consequently, any action that helps to enforce your will is the only preferable action.

The questions are if you are happy with the present, or else, what you want to achieve. Not what is possible. It’s possible that you’re just the tribesman who’s happily trying to improve his hunting skills but ignorant of the possible revolutions taking place in a city only 1000 miles afar. Your preferences, what you really want, change as your knowledge and understanding grow. Is what we’ve been doing as kids still intellectually demanding and satisfying?

You see, what is possible is too large to be taken into account. At what point are we going to stop and enjoy? Isn’t there always more to learn? How do we ever know if there isn’t something out there that is more worthwhile, valuable, beautiful, something that makes us happier?

Thus, can there be any goals except enjoying the present or the infinite seeking of knowledge and wisdom?

But are those considerations of your future self and our collective future as a galactic civilisation not too important, too big to be ruled over by the present, by our temporal position of power?

Your continuous existence is not irrelevant to you. You care not to be wiped out. But considering future possibilities regardless of the present is missing the only piece of information that is relevant to estimate the true value of these possibilities, namely what you want right now. It means to take a look from the outside, or in other words, take an objective view and thereby deduce that the present is of no value, that our current existence is irrelevant compared to the future. Of course, from the point of view of a fictional galactic civilisation or your possible infinite future this is true. From an imagined, made up viewpoint, created to give the desired result that the future is too big to be ruled over by the present.

If you are dead, there is no will, indeed everything is irrelevant to you. Taking this standpoint and deduce that if everything is irrelevant from that point of view, it is also irrelevant from any other position is the same as preferring the future over the present for that it is larger.

Just because you can imagine that as seen from outside of your first-person view thyself might be of no relevance, it doesn’t make it true. You will never “really”, “objectively” take that position, because it does not exist!

Note: The above is not a viewpoint that I espouse but a problem, or problems, that still appear to be nebulous to me. In other words, I have no good intuition, or contradicting intuitions, reasons and motivations regarding this topic.

Fri, Mar 19, 2010  Permanent link

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