Summary of the below:

You don't understand what you are talking about becaus you refuse to
actually try to know something.

Simple points:

It is proven that we can not prove everything.

Some things MUST be assumed to be true.

It is "best" if these assumptions come from what has been emperically
been shown to lead to logic that produces good results, verses logic
that produces "unreal" results.

Those assumptions, that have been proven over the test of time, are what
we know as the First Principles.

Yes, we can look at deviating from these, but we need to do this
DELIBERATELY and with CLARITY, and see what develops and perhaps broaden
our understand.

For example, at one point it was assumed as a First Principle that two
lines both a right angle to a third line, non-coincident, and co-planar,
would keep a constant distance from each other as far as you went.

At some later point, this concept was challanged, and thoght experements
were done imagining systems where this did not hold, and the results
analyized, which brough forward the concept of Non-Euclidian Geometry.

Similarly, by careful chalenging First Principles, we have gotten things
like Complex Numbers, Trans-Finite Mathematics of various flavors, and
even things like the Theory of Relativity.

There have also likely been many other attempts that didn't result in
useful findings, because the rules ARE more solidly fixed, or we haven't
thought of the right way they can be generalized. Most of these don't
get much notice, or just a notice as a Good Attempt, because the people
doing them make it clear what they are attempting to do, and the
ACKNOWLEDGE that they are INTENTIONALLY trying to deviate from the
accepted First Principles.

There are also people who just tried to ignore the First Princples, and
became known as laughing stocks because there work just didn't "work",
and it it clear that the failure was due to ignoring first principles.

You seem to be aimed at this last category

If you ARE actually looking at the Logic of the Rules, you should know
about the First Principles, and understand how they came about.

Yes, you might challange some of them, but you would do this not by
INGORING them, but by looking them straight in the eye and work on the
reason they WERE accepted in the first place. There are reasons.

As an example, yes, long ago, the existence of the Natural Numbers were
just taken as a First Principle (and many still do), but some people
were unhappy with that and worked on a way to reduce how much just
needed to be assumed to make them work. Thus came the various method to
"generate" the Natural numbers, which (generally) don't change the
nature of the Natural Numbers, but some of them show ways to generalize
them to broader concepts, sometimes even to including things like
infinitesimals.

On 8/13/22 11:16 PM, Skep Dick wrote:
> On Sunday, 14 August 2022 at 03:27:25 UTC+2, richar...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Burden of proof is on the one promposing change. First Principles are
>> the establish system, so the burden of proof is on YOUR side.
> I am not proposing any changes? I am proposing that the established system doesn't have first principles!
>
> It may serve various purposes and goals, but it has no "first principles".\
>
>> First Principle are those fundamentals that we find SO fundamental and
>> obvious that we accept them "universally" as Axioms, without proof,
>> because without them we have nothing to base a proof on.
> So what? In the words of Donald Knuth: Beware of bugs in the code - I have only proven it correct, not tried it!
>
>> principles that have stood the test of time and conditions, and have
>> been found to be UNIVERSALLY true in any system that actually turned out
>> to be useful.
> Are you actually going to show me those principles; or are you just going to keep endlesly talking about them?
>
>> You reject First Principles, therefore you have no accepted universal
>> axioms to base any of your proof on, so you can't actually "prove"
>> anything to be actually true, only that it seems to fit within your
>> system.
> Yes. I don't understand why this needs saying or repeating?
>
> I don't subscribe to your religious mindset.
>
> I am a pragmatist, not a foundationalist.
> The "universal principles" that worked yesterday stopped working today. Shit changed!
>
>> You have to "hope" that the things you "arbitrarily" chose as
>> your basis (since you don't have a first principle to guide what you can
>> choose) to actually work together and be useful.
> Yep! The more I practice - the luckier I get.
>
>> I will go with the Millenniums of testing as its proof.
> The test of time is not a proof. It's an empirical test.
>
> For all your insistence on "standard definitions" you still don't know the difference between the formal and the empirical.
>
>> The experiance of the ages.
> The experience of the ages, the knowledged passed down comes in the form of practical rituals - not in the form of principles.
>
> It's one thing to put principles to paper - it's another thing to act them out.
>
>>> Well, what makes your thumb-sucking better than my thumb-sucking?
>> Because it is based on the testing of ages.
> Oh yeah? And which ones survived?
>
>> And how do you actually test that if you don't have a foundation to
>> provide any data that is meaningful.
> I don't need a foundation. Just a system for collecting the data I need.
>
>> You are defining that your system is just symbolic, but "bad" is
>> semantic, so you need to know meaning to determine if something "bad"
>> will happen.
> Bad is not semantic. It's a judgment. If we could encode "badness" in semantics we would've
> worked out this whole "morality" stuff by now and left the AI to run the place.
>
>> You lost you definitions of things when you stripped the Theorems from
>> the foundations and put them on a new experimental one. You have no
>> actual basis to even define safety.
> You do understand that safety is not a definition, yeah?
>
> Maybe you don't...
>
>> I trust that UL testing is good enough,
> So you didn't prove any safety properties about the system.
>
> Thought so.
>
>> Note also, that definition isn't actualy correct, as there is NEVER
>> "absolute" safety in any "Real" system, as there are always dangers
>> beyound our ability to predict or mitigate. We can perhaps in limited
>> system show that as long as they are operated withing their
>> specifications, there are no hazards created by the system.
> Never mind that! There's at least two types of safety in every system!
>
> The kind of safety where as few things as possible go wrong.
> The kind of safety where as many things as possible go right.
>
>> In general, we accept relative safety, if the predictable dangers are
>> sufficiently small compared to the uncontrollable dangers, then it is
>> acceptable.
> Sounds like you are only interested in the first kind of safety.
>
>> But how do you know what it WILL do, with any measure of surity?
> How did the Wright brothers know their airplane will fly with any measure of surity?
>
> They didn't. Until they did.
>
>> Remember, you said you took the theorem out of the system, and didn't
>> take its foundation, thus you lost its meaning and rules that say how
>> and when it works.
> You mean exactly like the theory of how/why airplanes fly has changed 3 times over the last 100 years?
> But airplanes keep flying.
>
> You mean exactly how the rules of gravity changed twice in the last 500 years?
> But objects keep falling.
>
> You seem completely oblivious to instrumentalism in science.
>
>> Note, I suspect that you don't actually do what you said, but I need to
>> take you at your word that you do act as stupidly as you claim.
> Therein lies the crux, dumbo! Self-description and self-evaluation doesn't work!
>
> That's the entire point and implication of undecidability!
>
>> And if you can't do the logic, you can't have expectations that have a
>> reasonable chance of being correct.
> Way to equivocate the point. Yet again. Mr Logic.
>
> I expect my car to be exactly where I parked it. Is that a "correct" or an "incorrect" expectation?
>
>> And I suspect that you have lied about not importing the foundations
>> when you used the system.
> You mean software libraries? Those are not foundations.
>
> You said (or lied that?) fundations have to be consistent/free from contradictions.
> There is no software in existence which fits this definition.
>
>> No the symbol "10" could be the number Ten, it could be the number two,
>> It could even mean the number Eight in some older papers. (and the
>> meaning of Ten, Two, and Eight are dependent on other more basic
>> definitions),
> Great! So when I intentionally set you up to pretend that 10 is unambiguous you produced exactly the response I guessed you would. Which serves to perfectly demonstrate THAT there are no first principles!
>
> It is impossible to make everything explicit in language!
> There are (inherently and always) things left unsaid, unsayable and implicit.
>
> Because EVERY notation/syntax is arbitrary convention!
>
>> Because the words don't mean anything without the foundations.
> Uhuh. What's the foundation of the word "red"? What's the foundation of colors?
> What's the foundation of experience?
>
>> It seems the problem is that you DO have foundations, you just don't
>> know what they are, or if you are obeying the rules built into them.
> It really seems you don't understand the essence of Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox.
>
> No course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule.
>
>> It appears that you are just living a life of blissful ignorance, not
>> realizing how much you don't understand and just trusting that things
>> will work out.
> It appears you are as confused as always.
>
> I have a model of the world. It's an effective model. It's build upon experience and direct interaction with reality.
> It's built from the ground up.
>
> My mental model of how stuff works is NOT built from any "first principles".
>
> If I could build the model up from first principles I wouldn't have needed experience, or repetitive iteration, or trial&error.
>
>> And the world doesn't care what YOU think about it, or what you expect
>> out of it.
> Precisely! That's why there are no foundations.
>
> Our attempts to adapt to; and cope with an extremely complex problem-domain produces a bunch of hacks which help us cope with the situation. All models are wrong - some are useful.
>
>> It will give you what it will give you, and if you didn't properly
>> prepare for it because you ignored how it actually works because you
>> think you can just use whatever rules you want, some day you will meet
>> an unpleasent surprise.
> You don't know how anything "actually works" outside the explanation offered by your models.
> Which are always incomplete, and rather slow to adapt to; or incorporate new information.
>
>> Just shows you don't understand the first principles.
> You've spent A LOT of time talking about them. And zero time listing, or showing them.
>
> I wonder why ;)
>
>> If it keeps you from doing the things that break the system, yes.
> And if it keeps me from doing the things which stops the system from exploding?
>
>> Do you think it would make sense to issue everyone with a Gun and tell
>> them it was ok to do with it whatever they felt like?
> Do you think it would make sense to tell people how to use a gun; or train people how to use a gun?
>
> I've never sean anybody learn any practical skills from reading a book....
>
>> Sometimes restrictions improve things.
> And sometimes they worsen things.
>
> There is no first principle which tells you which time is when.
>
>> So, you think it makes sense to have the set of all sets that don't
>> contain themselves? (Is this set in that set?)
> The theoretical answer doesn't matter in practice unless it has practical implications.
>
> What would be different about the universe if it did; or didn't make sense?
>
>> Yep, you just scored one.
> Not possible. I am not playing a goal-scoring game.
>
>> No, you just don't see that you system HAS exploded, or has been
>> crippled to the point of not being useful for many things.
> Precisely!
>
> When an airplane explodes; or has been crippled the failure is overt.
> You are flat out admitting that the impact of logical errors on a system is barely detectable.
>
>
>