[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Your insistence to see morality from human individual's point of view makes you conclude that more inclusive moralities don't exist.

Even if they do,  if they are to be universal they must be applicable to humans, so the quickest test of universality is its applicability to humans.

It might contain sulfur or chlorine, but if it doesn't turn litmus red, it isn't an acid!

Of course they are. At least for now, humans are important parts of a superorganism conscious system known to exist in the universe. But it's important to acknowledge that it is not always the case. It was not the case in the past, before humans exist. It won't be the case when humans go extinct, or evolve into different species.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Fleas are happy
When they bite us

Why deny them our blood
When it makes fleas feel good

Your insistence to see morality from an individual's point of view makes you conclude that every individual has the same significance to morality. At least for now, humans are important parts of a superorganism conscious system known to exist in the universe. If all humans suddenly extinct now, this conscious system would stop functioning. It's a different story if the fleas are the ones which go extinct.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

A moral value is a meme. It will compete with other moral values for their existence in the minds of conscious agents.

There are at least 3 strategies they can adopt to survive. First by spontaneously generated into existence. It's only feasible for simple moral values, which usually come from more basic mechanisms, such as instinct. Another strategy is by helping their media, which are conscious agents, to survive and thrive. The other strategy is by infecting other conscious agents.

Individual moral values in the mind of a conscious agent will compete with collective moral values, such as family, tribe, region, nation, species, planet, etc. Each type of moral value draws a boundary between in-group and out-group of self. Individual moral value is the most exclusive one, which put everything except the individual conscious agents themselves as out-groups, which makes their well-beings ignored in decision making process. In the more inclusive moral values, there are more things included into in-group, and less things are left as outgroups.
The universal moral value put the maximum limit of inclusiveness. It leaves non-conscious things as outgroups. Pushing the boundary further would lead to nihilism, which belief that life is meaningless, because we would no longer differentiate between conscious and non-conscious things.

[alancalverd]

superorganism conscious system known to exist in the universe.

Evidence?
If humans are an essential element, at what point in the evolution of homo sapiens did this superorganism suddenly appear?

Us fleas are the key element of universal consciousness. Humans are merely an irritation that tries (unsuccessfully) to commit flea genocide.  But if dogs were to suddenly disappear, we'd be in real trouble.

Less vanity, more science, please.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

superorganism conscious system known to exist in the universe.

Evidence?
If humans are an essential element, at what point in the evolution of homo sapiens did this superorganism suddenly appear?

Us fleas are the key element of universal consciousness. Humans are merely an irritation that tries (unsuccessfully) to commit flea genocide.  But if dogs were to suddenly disappear, we'd be in real trouble.

Less vanity, more science, please.

AFAIK, we still haven't found any conscious system coming from extraterrestrial origin.
The superorganism which we currently have is a growing system, which keeps getting bigger over time. It's enabled by realtime communication system which is continuously improved. This system is the product of merger of smaller systems which independently evolved previously. It doesn't appear suddenly.
How do fleas affect the currently existing universal consciousness? Can they maintain or improve its functionality?

As you wish, since you asked politely.

35C3 - Information Biology - Investigating the information flow in living systems

From cells to dynamic models of biochemical pathways and  information theory, and back.

How to apply Shannon's information theory to biology.

Cells, from bacteria to human cells, constantly take up, store, retrieve, communicate and make decisions based on information. How they realise all this computation using very unreliable components is still largely an open question. Instead of transistors they have to employ proteins, but proteins constantly degenerate and are re-built making their numbers fluctuate. If cellular signalling is impaired severe diseases can be the result, for instance cancer or epilepsy.

As cellular communication is so pervasive and essential, researchers start to look into this information flow in biological systems in more detail. My research group at the BioQuant centre, Heidelberg University, is also active in this area, an area which I would call Information Biology — the study of how biological systems deal with information.

I will show you how you can apply Shannon's information theory to biological systems. For this we need three ingredients, namely dynamic models of biological pathways, stochastic simulation algorithms (that take into account intrinsic fluctuations in molecular numbers), and, of course, Shannon's theory of information.

I will give brief and user-friendly introductions to these three ingredients. After that I am going to talk about a number of use cases, such as:

How much memory does a bacterium have? And how long can it remember things?
How many bits per second can a liver cell process via its calcium signalling pathway?
How must signalling pathways be constructed, structurally and dynamically, for certain stimuli to be decoded?
and others…


I will also give links to (open source) software that is being developed in my group, which you can use to simulate and play around with biochemical pathways, and also to estimate information flows and do information biology.

FYI: The research I am talking about here is part of a research area which is called Computational Systems Biology. Systems Biology is a field which studies biological systems not by reducing them to their constituent parts, such as single receptors, genes, molecular complexes etc., but by viewing them in the cellular or organismal context and, importantly, as (dynamic) systems. And Computational Systems Biology is Systems Biology done with the help of mathematical models and simulation/analysis algorithms.

https://sciworthy.com/the-information-flow-of-life/

Atoms make molecules and molecules make proteins, like the keratin in your hair or hemoglobin in your blood. These proteins interact in complex ways to create movement, metabolism, consciousness, and everything we call life. But there is a vast divide in complexity between the simplest amoeba and a human being. How do those chemicals self-assemble to breathe and communicate? Information control is one of the key hallmarks of life, but we don’t know a lot about how information is organized in biology, or how information is held in chemistry. There is a fascinating complexity gap that is begging to be understood, and this is why Sara Imari Walker does science. I got the chance to chat with her about ways of thinking about this complexity gap to further our understanding on this question.

When trying to understand how the interactions of life came to be, Sara and her lab start by looking at the networks of life. There are gene networks that control how and when our body makes proteins, protein networks that create tissues and organs, and organ networks that create individuals. Individuals interact to create populations, and social networks of those populations form communities, and those communities form ecosystems. There are also non-living networks, such as computer networks. The big question to ask here is, what are the key parallels between a living network and a non-living network?  Are there common features among these networks that will give us a universal blueprint for life?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

If biology is the study of self-replicating entities, and we want to
understand the role of information, it makes sense to see how information theory is connected to the 'replicator equation' - a simple model of population dynamics for self-replicating entities. The relevant concept of information turns out to be the information of one probability distribution relative to another, also known as the Kullback-Liebler divergence. Using this we can get a new outlook on free energy, see evolution as a learning process, and give a clearer, more general formulation of Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Here is another one.

If biology is the study of self-replicating entities, and we want to
understand the role of information, it makes sense to see how information theory is connected to the 'replicator equation' - a simple model of population dynamics for self-replicating entities. The relevant concept of information turns out to be the information of one probability distribution relative to another, also known as the Kullback-Liebler divergence. Using this we can get a new outlook on free energy, see evolution as a learning process, and give a clearer, more general formulation of Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection.

[alancalverd]

The big question to ask here is, what are the key parallels between a living network and a non-living network?

The non-living network is created for a purpose. The living network evolves in response to its environment. The parallels are of no importance.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The non-living network is created for a purpose.

The purpose is a response to the environment of its creators.

[alancalverd]

The difference is in intentional design versus the survival of random variants with no purpose. Evolution of living things is unbelievably wasteful compared with the design of nonliving things.

If I want 36, I can write down 36 - purposive design. Or I can throw 6 dice 50,000 times and write down the answer each time - evolution.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The difference is in intentional design versus the survival of random variants with no purpose. Evolution of living things is unbelievably wasteful compared with the design of nonliving things.

If I want 36, I can write down 36 - purposive design. Or I can throw 6 dice 50,000 times and write down the answer each time - evolution.

Design is an information optimization process done in virtual environments, such as human brains, beaver brains, computer memory. Design may contain trial and errors, but since they are done in virtual environments, they can be done more efficiently, i.e. use less energy, less time. Selecting components and tuning the parameters in designing reusable rockets or competitive electric cars involve a lot of trial and error process.
On the other hand, biological evolution is an information optimization process done in physical environments. There are a lot of restrictions in this process, which makes it take longer to get the desired results. It's not a purely random process, hence rolling dice analogy is not representative for this.
Genetic algorithm is a similar process to biological evolution, but done in a virtual environment. It is widely used in design process involving many parameters which form complex interplay.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

What is Impossible in Evolution?

Could humans ever evolve to have wings? Why don’t fish have propellers? Why don’t tigers have wheels? Why don’t zebras have laser turrets? These might all seem like stupid questions (and maybe they are!) but they can teach us a lot about how evolution actually works, and how it doesn’t work.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

If I want 36, I can write down 36 - purposive design. Or I can throw 6 dice 50,000 times and write down the answer each time - evolution.

Just like languages, numerical writings have evolved too.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Thomas Sowell - A Conflict of Visions - Animated Book Review

Dr. Thomas Sowells book, A Conflict of Visions, discusses the ideological roots of modern day political battles. He argues that many of modern day political battles are merely a distant reflections on what we believe human nature is capable of.

The Constrained Vision believes that human nature is unchanging, that we can try all we want to make humans inherently smarter or better, more moral people, but that is doomed.

The Unconstrained Vision believes human nature is capable of continuous improvement. That if we simply put enough effort into ourselves, we’d be ables to make a perfect world.

Its important to note that Constrained & Unconstrained are not the same as Conservative & Liberal.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

There is a test that is more powerful than any IQ test, that measures you resilience against making simple investing mistakes. Technically the test is called the CRT (or Cognitive Reflection Task) & it measure the likelihood of tripping over common behavioral biases.

I was inspired to make this video after rereading The Little book of Behavioral Investing by James Montier.

There are a lot of books out there on Behavioral thinking, you’ve probably heard of Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

Moral decision making such as in trolley problem involves quick information processing to estimate costs and benefits of each available options. Using shortcut thinking and intuition may be helpful some times. But if we want to minimize regrets, a more thorough analysis is necessary.

[alancalverd]

Could humans ever evolve to have wings? Why don’t fish have propellers? Why don’t tigers have wheels? Why don’t zebras have laser turrets? These might all seem like stupid questions (and maybe they are!) but they can teach us a lot about how evolution actually works, and how it doesn’t work.

Winged mammals exist but the surface/volume ratio of a mammal doesn't allow for large ones to fly - you need  to redesign the sternum, pectoral muscles, lungs and bones, and you end up with something like an albatross.

Freely rotating systems are extremely rare in nature due to the difficulty of supplying nutrients to and extracting waste from the distal part.

Why would a zebra benefit from projecting coherent light? Fish and fireflies emit incoherent light sufficient for their purposes.   

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Why would a zebra benefit from projecting coherent light?

In the video depiction, the laser turrets can ward off predators.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The Constrained Vision believes that human nature is unchanging, that we can try all we want to make humans inherently smarter or better, more moral people, but that is doomed.

The Unconstrained Vision believes human nature is capable of continuous improvement. That if we simply put enough effort into ourselves, we’d be ables to make a perfect world.

It should have been obvious that my view falls into unconstrained vision category. Human can improve through genetic or memetic changes. We can only say that some changes are improvements if they get us closer to our terminal goals.

[alancalverd]

Why would a zebra benefit from projecting coherent light?

In the video depiction, the laser turrets can ward off predators.

OK. Evolution is a very slow process. Let's see what happens.

Human can improve through genetic or memetic changes.

But radical genetic change would produce a new species, so it wouldn't be human improvement but human replacement.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

But radical genetic change would produce a new species, so it wouldn't be human improvement but human replacement.

Why is that bad? Humans evolved from other species anyway. Some of our cousins may haven't changed a lot since humans split from our common ancestors. What makes us better than them? Are we already perfect?