Free will

I would like to address the issue of free will:
The question I ask is "what influence do I have on events happening in the world?"
On the one hand my everyday experience shows that when I decide to do something (such as pick up the coffee mug from the table) I see the effect. When I decide not to ( and leave the coffee mug on the table) then indeed the previous effect does not (usually) happen. The only relevant factor in many things happening around me seems to be my own decisions.
On the other hand, the scientific point of view tells us that everything around us can be reduced to the interactions of the fundamental particles which make up the universe. The classic approach tells us that the interactions are deterministic in nature. Knowing the initial conditions, we can predict everything that is going to happen in the future. The modern quantum approach, if I understand correctly, says the interactions are non-deterministic and the predictions can only be made approximately. Both ways "I" does not have a say in anything that happens.
How do we resolve this apparent paradox?

The compatibilist approach says there is no contradiction. If both approaches coexist then they are compatible. OK, fair enough, but how so?

If the world is deterministic then all I need to do is lay back and enjoy the show. No worries. No aspirations. Everything will just happen on it's own. But wait... isn't that a decision I just made?

There seems to be something very paradoxical when switching from the point of view of the individual to that of the objective observer... this makes me wonder about the meaning of describing things from a "point of view". In one perspective the viewer is a passive observer. In the other the viewer is an active agent.
In the active agent point of view there is an inherent paradox: An agent wishing to model the world around it has to include itself in the model. Doesn't this lead to infinite regress? If we believe the regress stops at a certain point (and I do believe this is the case) then there is an inherent limitation to our ability to model the world(It is analogous to the halting problem).
The passive observer view has it's limitations too. It seems that a passive observer can indeed model everything outside it. But it is missing a description of itself.(Perhaps this is God, just a passive observer, knows everything but can do nothing about it...)
So is the scientific point of view a fictitious one? Maybe there is no objective description of reality.
Another question which comes to mind is the following:
We saw that any one point of view is limited. Do we improve anything by adding more observers? Can many observers reach a more coherent description of reality than any one alone?

Structure vs. Content

I have been playing around in my mind for quite a while with a theme that seems to recur in many contexts. I still have not figured out a way to spell it out exactly or what it actually means and I am sure I have seen variations on the subject on other places (probably in D.Hofstadter's G.E.B). Maybe his post will help me figure it out...

I am speaking of the Structure vs. Content duality. What is the difference between the structure of, let's say, a piece of text and it's content? Other names for this duality might include:

• essence vs. form
• code vs. data
• syntax vs. semantics
• Deontological vs. consequentialist ethics.

I would like to gather some examples of this theme and maybe define it better.

It recently occurred to me in a post by R.J.Lipton where he suggested an automatic program to predict acceptance chance of academic papers to some theoretical computer science conference. The point was to make both the job of the committee and of the the authors easier by automating the process of paper submission.
Though not spelled out explicitly, it seems that a paper has two 'layers' - one is the structural layer. This might include the sectioning of the paper so it includes "introduction" and "conclusion" or "discussion" sections. It might include the element of sufficient reference to previous work etc...
The other layer is the "essence" layer. That is the "crux" of the paper. What it actually wants to say (present a new proof to some conjecture for example).
So to rephrase the goal - the suggestion is a two-tier submission process. The first stage which analyses the structure of the paper and is done by a machine, and a second stage which analyses the content of the paper which is done by a human committee.

Sounds reasonable enough. I started to wander though if there is clear distinction between the two layers? The suspicion is raised by such remarks made by Lipton (he refers to the paper-checking program as "site"):

It is a stretch to expect the site to check the correctness of proofs in the papers, but I feel it should be at least feasible to build a site that measures the “hotness” or relevance of the paper

Well, is it easier to check the "hotness" or "relevance" of a paper than the correctness of the proofs? probably ... But it seems to me there is a scale of difficulty there rather than a phase transition. Structure lying in the lower end and essence in the upper end.

Why we do what we do

"woke up this mornin'
and-a all that love had gone
your papa never told you
about right and wrong"

One of the recurring themes in debates between atheists and theists is the seemingly unjustified (from the atheist point of view) nature of many of the restrictions/actions which believers are obliged to by their religion. Some examples include abstention from pork, alcohol or praying.
I recently had one such debate where the point was raised followed by this remark from my religious counterpart:

The fundamental reason that a person follows any of the Torah is his/her will is to have a relationship with God. That's the value. Relationship is based on doing His commandment. Therefore, by not eating pork I achieves this goal by definition

The context to this remark was a discussion of the way values(moral and others) are derived and justified.
An atheist has a hard time coping with such a statement (the discussion almost reaches a state of paralysis at that point). This post is an atheist perspective on that statement.
At first it would seem like a dead end:
Theists believe in God. God said this and that. Conclusion: this and that is true and we must do as God said.
An atheist thinks: Pfff!... this is silly! God does not exist, therefore this and that is rubbish and there is no reason on earth for doing it!

As an atheist, I think that in a way religious people are given a "hard time" on this issue for no good reason (but in another way I think there is a very good reason, which I'll leave to another post). This is not because I think that perhaps there is a slight chance that God does exist, so maybe what they are doing might make sense. What I mean is that we are all religious in our beliefs and actions, even without believing in God.
It is a consequence of people's innate tendency to follow. As children we tend to follow what our parents tell us, imitating their behavior. Growing up we are all the time surrounded by authority figures which tell us what is right and what is wrong. As grown ups we adopt the codes of conduct of the society we live in, and in our working place we assume the role we are given without asking much questions.
It is built into us.
Hard wired into our brains.
That is the way evolution designed us. Obedient creatures are better adapted to living in a society. Social creatures are better survivors. That is why there are codes of conduct in any social living being.
Well, you might say, so what?! humanity has reached a stage where we can transcend those primeval urges. Science and rationality are now the driving forces of the modern man. And I say - nay. I think there are many situations in life in which most of us are blind followers, as rational as we would like to think we are. Our first instinct is to merge in and assume the position given to us, and only then, maybe, to rationalize about it. This is most evident in political discussions, where any laymen has an opinion, but when confronted with the opposite stance will find it hard justifying his views.

It is impossible to act completely rational all of the time. This realization should be emphasized more in atheist-theist discussions, as it is a step towards bridging the seemingly uncrossable gorge between the sides, and is an interesting point to analyze on it's own.

Levels of description

I am a big fan of Douglas Hofstadter. One of the most profound and beautiful ideas I encountered while reading the books of Douglas Hofstadter is that of looking at phenomena at different levels of abstraction and the emergence of pattern.
The first thing to note, which is somewhat trivial but we don't often spell it out explicitly, is that many phenomena in nature can be perceived at varying granularities. A human being for example can be viewed as a single atomic entity, with rules(social/psychological) dictating it's behavior. This is the level in which we are used to relate to ourselves and the rest of the people around us. Beneath this level there is the biological level, which is the view we might switch to when we are ill while that upper level is insufficient. In that view an individual is a collection of smaller functional units (either organs or in an even lower level a bunch of cells). Beneath it are the chemical level and the atomic level and so on... What is the correct level to describe a human being? What does "correct" mean in this context?
Indeed the question needs context, and I would replace "correct" with "useful" as well. As mentioned, in everyday life we usually have no need for for the lower levels and so a sufficient understanding of our social surrounding can be obtained by our high level model of human beings. Why is it useful? well think about trying to predict your friend's behavior (how is he going to react to you telling him you just bumped into his car in the garage?) from the physical level? You would need to simulate in your head the interaction of billions of friend-atoms, updating their state after each time frame, for millions and millions of frames. I assume we would need brains the size of football stadiums to do these calculations.
The beauty of it is that many situations do not require going lower. Despite the strong dependence of the levels , there is a sense in which they are completely independent of each other. You could completely replace the lower level with another and the higher level would stay unchanged.
This is a truly marvelous idea and I always enjoy watching the way it manifests itself in Conway's Game of Life. Here is an example:

On the low level you have the simple rules of the game and the square grid elements. On a higher level (which our mind always prefers) you start seeing other patterns emerge. We start talking about gliders, spaceships, boats etc... these higher elements have their own rules to how they conduct themselves in this world. Higher level elements are not special to the exact rules which Conway chose (in spite of him choosing them quite selectively). There are modified rules which bring about similar spaceships moving around the world in a similar manner. This is indicative of the independence between the levels of abstraction.

Musical musings of a bum

I am a hi-tech computer geek that has been struck quite hard by the recent economic crisis. The situation, though rather shitty, has given me some time to step out of the mad race and look at life from a different perspective.
One amusing analogy to my situation has sprung to mind a few days ago. In this analogy we are all playing a game of musical chairs. About a year ago somebody took out many of the chairs and stopped the music.
I am waiting for someone to play the music and put some more chairs back in.