“philosophy”

For my sister, Alex, who will start her Economics major this July

Economists are philosophers of human action.

They’re close to psychologists, neurologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and ethicists.

But psychologists focus on the mind behind the human action, neurologists focus on the underlying brain, sociologists on the surrounding society, anthropologists on the enveloping culture. Ethicists focus on the aesthetics of human action, on what human action should be.

Economists, on the other hand, focus on the actions themselves, on trying to understand them in their own terms. They ask questions like:

What patterns does human action follow? What different kinds can we usefully distinguish? Why are these actions taken? What are the goals behind these actions? What would the consequences be of these actions? Why do these actions have these consequences? In other words, what is the interplay between goals, conditions, actions, and consequences? If someone took these actions what actions are others expected to take? How will these actions affect others? What are the best actions to take given these goals? How best to organize and coordinate human action? What are the limits of human action? How to improve human action?

I studied math in college because I didn’t believe it. Never could understand how or why someone would come up with the stuff we were being teached. Thanks to some innate verbal ability and motherly discipline, I was thankfully “good” at it though, good enough to realize that what we were “learning” was nothing but mindless regurgitation.

Just that, an emotion. Often sudden, arbitrary, and against our (as opposed to our gene’s) best interest. Not a revelation nor the distillation of reason nor its conclusion—whence this fancy that reason leads somewhere? “Gut feeling” is, you guessed it, nothing but a feeling. Just as we have unique emotions about concrete things—say, lust—, we have unique emotions about abstract ideas and statements—say, certainty. Emotions, concrete or abstract, are enzymes, catalysts: they shortcircuit dillydallying, they trigger action. Ruminating all day without acting makes as little evolutionary sense as ogling all day without fucking. Hence lust, hence certainty.

That, in a nutshell, is On Being Certain’s premise, and though I have but skimmed it in one of my epic B & N skimming marathons, I was certain of its truth the moment I read it.

I can barely believe that this blog has been up for 2 years already (!) and I had’t yet posted this quote, which is one of all my all time favorites.

To be is to change
    for how can something that never changes itself or others be said to exist?
    one might as well call it even with nothingness
To change is to die
    for something else always results
    something always is no more
To die is to birth
    for something else always results
    something new always is

This strange text above was inspired by Greg Egan, who has in a few months become my favorite author, and who in all his novels I’ve read—Schild’s Ladder, Permutation City, Diaspora—is obsessed by identity in far deeper and more interesting ways than everything I’d found, thought, or imagined before—how to grow up without being replaced by a stranger, asks Tchicaya? how to be immortal without changing to death, asks Peer? how not to unravel without bounding oneself, asks Yatima?

This was a couple of weeks ago but I had to write about it because I was so happy through it: Steve Omohundro’ s wonderful talk, AI and Transhuman Morality, organized by the Sillicon Valley transhumanist meetup. I brought Mauro with me and I was very nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. A couple of days ago I had gone to an AI meetup in the same room (in the wonderful TechShop) and it had been confusing and somewhat disappointing: we watched an overly long video, had some haphazard if interesting discussion, and it all ended up abruptly without me being able to make up my mind of the strange event (where these people quacks? mad geniuses? autists? were all meetings this awkward?).

Anyway, we went and I’m happy we did because I enjoyed Steve’s wonderful two-hour presentation so much I was smiling like an idiot the whole time (at one point, I even clutched Mauro to tell him simply, “I am happy”—and it was true). As I said, it was more than two hours long but I honestly didn’t want the presentation to end, particularly when so many of the interventions where, wonder of wonders, relevant and interesting of themselves.

The presentation was divided in 2 halves. The 1st for reviewing what we know of human morality, the 2nd for contemplating what AI morality will be like. Both were fascinating and chock full of surprising, cutting-edge ideas (and book recommendations!), but it was the 2nd where I was truly overjoyed, for, you see, it was when Steve plunged into how an AI’s morality might be structured.

I was struck by how the utility function ethics he considered for AIs were exactly the kind of ethics I had chanced on one day, not long ago, when in my desire to clarify how and for what I wanted to live, I thought, wrote, and rewrote about ethics with the most honesty and rigor I could muster. Heck, we even used the same examples! You have no idea how good it felt to finally find a fellow freak who  not only understood and care about my conclusions but who had arrived to them through entirely different paths (conclusions like how ethics hinge entirely on purposes or goals and how we’re in for an ethical ride when these become much more varied and malleable than they’ve ever been before). Back in Guadalajara I talked about this all the time but no one ever really got it (or much cared).

Ah, this kind of stuff was why I came to the bay area! (Mauro liked it a lot too, saying afterwards he had felt as one should feel after going to mass—full of awe and excitement.)

I’d rather be me, right now, right here —an upper middle class 22-year-old male Mexican in Guadalajara—, than any other human —emperor, king, sultan, noble, philosopher, artist, scientist, genius,...— from any time before, any place. We have been humans for some 15 thousands years and there’s no time past I’d rather be at.

I don’t mean this as some outburst of excitement, it’s just a calm realization that downed on me a while ago, out of the blue—a surprising measure of the reality of progress, the splendor of the present, the promise of the future.

Speaking of dogs, I wonder: if a dog is just about to be ran over by a car and you suddenly save her, would she be aware she almost became roadkill? Would she be shaken afterwards, replaying endlessly in her mind what could have just happened? Would she be grateful? Would she even understand what you just did for her? Could that be as life changing a moment for her as it could be for a person?

More than the past, the present, or the future, our true home as humans is the could. Even more, it is only by reflecting in it the past, the present, and the future that we can see them clearly. A near-death experience—an unhappening in other words—could well be a turning point in our lives, rearranging in one fell swoop our past, present and future. Could matters to us, its phantasmagoria walks among us, and it is or, fittingly, could be, a major component of every single issue that we care about.

Consider abortion
Consider sex
Consider death

Could matters.

Aristotle famously said that the mark of an educated mind was being able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Personally, I think the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain unrealities and see how they matter to reality, to be able to act and think dreams with open eyes.

(It is, by the way, my fascination with could that makes me a fan of science fiction and fantasy—could’s official literatures. Even more than sensawunda I crave sensacould.)

From Nick Bostrom’s Golden—a fictional interview of Albert, an uploaded dog. His cheeriness and good disposition are attributed to his being a golden retriever. His wisdom I attribute to Bostrom, who’s one fascinating philosopher (don’t miss the fable of the dragon tyrant!).

Boy, how much fun has this book been! Efrain Bartolome’s Educacion emocional en veinte lecciones [review] is exactly what the title implies —an emotional education, a coginitive-behavioral approach to learning to handle your emotions—, I just never thought it would be this much fun.

I stumbled on it combing the city’s book fair for books originally written in Spanish, as has been my custom for the last couple of years. It was a difficult choice, it was pricey ($200 pesos), had too facile a title and yet managed to be intimidating with its 300 pages of dense prose. It apparently lied somewhere between selfhelp and psychotherapy, both of which I dislike. But then its recency (2006), its being written by a Mexican UNAM professor, its initial quote:
its excellent typography (!), its suggestive index and its author being a renowned poet besides a psychologist made me put out.

I’m glad I did. Whatever the book’s merits the best compliment I can give it is that it has changed me, far more deeply that I can tell this close to the reading but I think and feel different ever since.

How not to love a book that manages to be densely precise and technical while still being fresh, humble, and (Mexicanly) casual—always struggling for clarity, for precision.

How not to love a book that manages to delve deep into theory while being chock-full of practical suggestions—always struggling to convince you, to change you.

How not to love a book that suggests buying a pornographic magazine as an exercise in selfcontrol, proposes a condom-buying dare, explains respiratory meditation, entrances you with the stream-of-consciousness of an addict, and finishes lessons by sprinkling a sufi story (the tale of the two brothers) or a beautiful metaphor (“Se como el sandalo que perfuma al hacha que lo hiere” / “Be like sandalwood that perfumes the axe that hurts it.”)?

If you care about selfhelp books this is by far the best I’ve ever read. If you care about psychotherapy this is by far the best I’ve ever read too (no Freudian bullshit!). I earnestly and sincerely recommend it, grab it wherever you can find it.

(I’m personally looking for extra copies to give away but Gandhi doesn’t have it in stock and its editor, Paidos, doesn’t list it online—do drop a message if you find it somewhere).