The Psychology Thread, I Guess...

  On 1/18/2017 at 12:00 PM, LimpyLoo said:

P.S. Chen, did you read my bit about the entropy of the world and un-suicide?

Because I didn't say that Benford's Law was an illusion or artifact exactly

I said:

 

Entropy (e.g. 'suicide' but no 'un-suicide') + Base-X = Benford's Law

Off to work but I'll reply to this later tonight.

He's just sharing information/thoughts that he finds interesting.

I'm finding some of it interesting and so are some others.

Not up to date on all that's been said here but when I have the time to catch up it'll be here and I look forward to it.

Why doesn't Benford's Law apply to (so-called) non-natural phenomena?

Possible answer:

Because those are closed artificial systems,

Where forces outside the system are manipulating it away from Entropy

(Almost by definition, no?)

(e.g.) "Total Suicides in 2017" is also a 'closed system'

But it's not being manipulated from the outside

(i.e. It's "random and natural")

And the whole reason Benford's Law is used by Forensic Statisticians to detect fraud

Is because someone is reaching into the 'closed system' from without

And manipulating it away from its natural entropy

(And so the system no longer acts like/by the 'natural entropy of the world')

  On 1/18/2017 at 1:55 PM, Raktorn said:

 

  On 1/18/2017 at 1:52 PM, LimpyLoo said:

Here's my rant for the morning:

 

"OMG Who Cares lol", Psycholinguistics, Wittgenstein

 

So, Wittgenstein said that when someone utters a phrase (e.g. "OMG Who cares?") that is like a social chess move (because hey, you were motivated to utter it aloud!), and that we are simultaneously playing multiple 'social games' at once. (Thus the 'literal/figurative' mismatch in sarcasm, irony, etc)

 

So there is the descriptive/analytic/explicit game of "here is a good description of the world"...for instance, the claim that "nobody cares"

And also the prescriptive/synthetic/implicit game of "shut up"

 

TL;DR = "I don't care, therefor (I'm telling you that) nobody cares, therefor shut up."

i bet you got thrown into the dumpster during grade school a lot

Why are you so interested in belittling me?

(Bah, I'm sure that says nothing about you and everything about me)

Again, if you don't like LimpyLoo posts

Maybe reading the LimpyLoo Thread is not for you

How about this, Raktorn:

Since it's so crucial that others in the thread know I'm a fucking idiot

We can ask a mod to add a "caution: LimpyLoo is a fucking idiot" tag to the thread title

So you don't have to work so hard in your selfless civic-duty of alerting everyone

(Because you shouldn't have carry the entire burden of alerting the world that I'm a fucking idiot...that's some Savior shit based on how much of a fucking idiot I am, and just how urgent it is to tell everyone)

P.S.

Raktorn, I fucked several of your family members

And it was all around a horrible experience

(Yeah, this nasty-petty-sarcasm shit is a good way to be in the world

Thanks for helping me to remember that)

  On 1/18/2017 at 3:42 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 1/18/2017 at 1:55 PM, Raktorn said:

 

  On 1/18/2017 at 1:52 PM, LimpyLoo said:

Here's my rant for the morning:

 

"OMG Who Cares lol", Psycholinguistics, Wittgenstein

 

So, Wittgenstein said that when someone utters a phrase (e.g. "OMG Who cares?") that is like a social chess move (because hey, you were motivated to utter it aloud!), and that we are simultaneously playing multiple 'social games' at once. (Thus the 'literal/figurative' mismatch in sarcasm, irony, etc)

 

So there is the descriptive/analytic/explicit game of "here is a good description of the world"...for instance, the claim that "nobody cares"

And also the prescriptive/synthetic/implicit game of "shut up"

 

TL;DR = "I don't care, therefor (I'm telling you that) nobody cares, therefor shut up."

i bet you got thrown into the dumpster during grade school a lot

Why are you so interested in belittling me?

(Bah, I'm sure that says nothing about you and everything about me)

 

It says more about him and the world and it says nothing about you

  On 1/18/2017 at 3:00 PM, LimpyLoo said:

Why doesn't Benford's Law apply to (so-called) non-natural phenomena?

 

Possible answer:

Because those are closed artificial systems,

Where forces outside the system are manipulating it away from Entropy

(Almost by definition, no?)

You may have indirectly stumbled across possible evidence for Ah-Puch, but be careful meddling with deities outside of the pre-recorded control machine

Equally, if you see this deity fucking the Corn God to death in dreams or associated metaphors, remain vigilant & wait on spring & the following success/failure of your local agricultural harvests

Can you explain your fascination with using obscure programming and math lingo to explain the natural world? It gives off a very cold and clinical vibe. Reading about your experiences being sampling errors or whatever sounds like you're trying to push me into some depersonalisation psychosis. It also feels like map=territory confusion.

23

!

  On 1/18/2017 at 6:35 PM, chim said:

Can you explain your fascination with using obscure programming and math lingo to explain the natural world? It gives off a very cold and clinical vibe. Reading about your experiences being sampling errors or whatever sounds like you're trying to push me into some depersonalisation psychosis. It also feels like map=territory confusion.

Answer 1)

I'm happy to talk as informally as anyone would like

But technical jargon carries information more densely than informal language

(You might even say jargon is a 'data compression algorithm')

Answer 2)

Maybe check out:

"Predictive coding"

And the general "computational/Bayesian psych" literature

Andy Clark "Perception is Prediction" lecture

and any John O'Keefe lecture about 'hippocampus/sampling theory/emotion' as usual

But hopefully wrt Benford's Law

It might be kinda hard to talk around the pre-existing jargon of statistics/system theory etc

But I'm happy to try!

  On 1/18/2017 at 6:34 PM, cwmbrancity said:

 

  On 1/18/2017 at 3:00 PM, LimpyLoo said:

Why doesn't Benford's Law apply to (so-called) non-natural phenomena?

 

Possible answer:

Because those are closed artificial systems,

Where forces outside the system are manipulating it away from Entropy

(Almost by definition, no?)

 

You may have indirectly stumbled across possible evidence for Ah-Puch, but be careful meddling with deities outside of the pre-recorded control machine

 

Equally, if you see this deity fucking the Corn God to death in dreams or associated metaphors, remain vigilant & wait on spring & the following success/failure of your local agricultural harvests

Why do Forensic Accountants use Benford's Law to identify fraud?

Because a person (i.e. 'outside force') reached into the bank account (i.e. 'closed system') and manipulated the numbers (i.e. away from the account's 'natural entropy').

(I do appreciate the sarcasm, though.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law

scroll down to Applications: Detect Account Fraud

Cwmbrandity,

Sorry if I use terms that signal to you 'this person is obviously a nutter lol"

I will pray to Ra to give me the strength to explain things in the most concrete possible way, so I don't use words that you are certain are meaningless woo.

*Account = 'system' not 'closed system'

reminds me of kolmogorov complexity. if you ask a person to generate a random sequence of numbers, they often create a sequence which is quantifiably different to an actual random sequence of numbers. actual randomness always has a certain degree of repetition, which people tend to avoid, because repetition goes against the intuitive idea of what random is.

can't find the specific definitions at the moment at the wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmically_random_sequence). but the guy who wrote the book on kolmogorov complexity (vitanyi) spent a complete lecture explaining this stuff

if you want to nerd yourself out: just google kolmogorov and you're on your way to catch aspburgers

edit: just found out i followed courses given by two people on that page. lambalgen as well. didn't even know he was into randomness... haha he was more into logic and cognitive science at the time.

  On 1/18/2017 at 8:11 PM, goDel said:

reminds me of kolmogorov complexity. if you ask a person to generate a random sequence of numbers, they often create a sequence which is quantifiably different to an actual random sequence of numbers. actual randomness always has a certain degree of repetition, which people tend to avoid, because repetition goes against the intuitive idea of what random is.

 

can't find the specific definitions at the moment at the wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmically_random_sequence). but the guy who wrote the book on kolmogorov complexity (vitanyi) spent a complete lecture explaining this stuff

 

if you want to nerd yourself out: just google kolmogorov and you're on your way to catch aspburgers

Dude, That is now on my list of things to understand

I've been seeing hints of that concept everywhere lately

Had no idea it was an articulated idea already

Cheers

Cwmbrandity,

So I consulted Ra, the I Ching, and the guts of a dead chicken,

And they told me how to autism-proof my words to your personal satisfaction.

For instance, instead of words like 'alchemy'

I'll just say "the discipline that produced what was later called 'chemistry'

Although even though it was given a separate name by who-the-fuck-ever

It was 'alchemy' all along!"

(Horror trope TL;DR = "turns out the chemistry was coming from inside the alchemy!")

Oh and of course 'alchemy' also kickstarted (what is now called) 'modern medicine'

And this little thing called 'Newton's Theory of Gravity' (or whatever its proper title is)

"But mate, 'alchemy' sounds so pseudo-scientific and new age-y"

Yeah I know mate...that's unfortunate, innit

Again, pretty sure there's a good story about a tower, and people's arrogance preventing them from understanding 'words of the ancestors' (CAUTION: FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE!!!!!!!) and having that prevent one from 'building a tower' from 'here' to Understanding...

(/petty sarcasm game)

  On 1/18/2017 at 10:41 PM, LimpyLoo said:

Again, pretty sure there's a good story about a tower, and people's arrogance preventing them from understanding 'words of the ancestors' (CAUTION: FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE!!!!!!!) and having that prevent one from 'building a tower' from 'here' to Understanding...

 

 

(/petty sarcasm game)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Totally!

(It's almost as if these stories that were formed and upvoted by humanity across thousands of years

weren't utter nonsense)

  On 1/18/2017 at 7:22 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 1/18/2017 at 6:35 PM, chim said:

Can you explain your fascination with using obscure programming and math lingo to explain the natural world? It gives off a very cold and clinical vibe. Reading about your experiences being sampling errors or whatever sounds like you're trying to push me into some depersonalisation psychosis. It also feels like map=territory confusion.

Answer 1)

 

I'm happy to talk as informally as anyone would like

But technical jargon carries information more densely than informal language

(You might even say jargon is a 'data compression algorithm')

 

 

Answer 2)

Maybe check out:

"Predictive coding"

And the general "computational/Bayesian psych" literature

Andy Clark "Perception is Prediction" lecture

and any John O'Keefe lecture about 'hippocampus/sampling theory/emotion' as usual

 

 

But hopefully wrt Benford's Law

It might be kinda hard to talk around the pre-existing jargon of statistics/system theory etc

But I'm happy to try!

 

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

  On 1/19/2017 at 12:48 AM, hello spiral said:

 

  On 1/18/2017 at 7:22 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 1/18/2017 at 6:35 PM, chim said:

Can you explain your fascination with using obscure programming and math lingo to explain the natural world? It gives off a very cold and clinical vibe. Reading about your experiences being sampling errors or whatever sounds like you're trying to push me into some depersonalisation psychosis. It also feels like map=territory confusion.

 

Answer 1)

I'm happy to talk as informally as anyone would like

But technical jargon carries information more densely than informal language

(You might even say jargon is a 'data compression algorithm')

Answer 2)

Maybe check out:

"Predictive coding"

And the general "computational/Bayesian psych" literature

Andy Clark "Perception is Prediction" lecture

and any John O'Keefe lecture about 'hippocampus/sampling theory/emotion' as usual

But hopefully wrt Benford's Law

It might be kinda hard to talk around the pre-existing jargon of statistics/system theory etc

But I'm happy to try!

 

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

I stand corrected

Nobel committee, revoke John O'Keefe's prize!

MacArthur Foundation, revoke Susan Murphy's fellowship!

(Seriously though...gimme like ~10 minutes to read it...cheers)

So I read the first half

And it's riddled with conceptual/linguistic missteps

I am genuinely happy to walk through the article and give my thoughts

But his relationship with language is bizarre

Yeah, when our experiences change our brain

It doesn't look 'computer-like' from any perspective beyond a metaphorical one

But good models (e.g. Computational Psychology etc) are good because they make badass predictions

Who cares how literally accurate the model/metaphor is

(Psychologists should study at least some linguistic philosophy and philosophy of science at uni)

P.S.I also read the first half of this really interesting response:

http://lukependergrass.work/blog/the-information-processing-brain

Cheers

P.P.S. If you really want my specific thoughts on the article, lemme know and I'll LimpyLoo it