Liberty as information entropy

[TealSpider]

Hello all. I would like to share a model that I have been developing that uses the language of math to describe liberty.

I propose that liberty, among other values, can be defined as a form of information entropy, measured in information units. In particular, liberty can be defined as conditional behavioral transition(action) entropy, or private freedom. The advantage of doing so is that it can be justified as an objective value by applying the principle of maximum entropy (first derived by E. T. Jaynes [I][II] in the 1950s) to the concept of value models.

This may allow a new field of study ("Libertology" if you will) where liberty can, in principle, be measured and studied (at least conceptually). Using mathematical methods, a "student of libertology" will have the autonomy to understand, check, and derive basic principles on their own without contradicting others using the same methods, or having to consult an authority. This could solve a lot of conflicts. A detailed description of the methods used can be found in the document in the following link:

S.E.E.

Feel free to download, read, and share it. As a note, there is a lot of math used, so there might be a bit of a learning curve. It is my hope that the methods and principles provided in the document can help support the cause of liberty by giving it a more rigorous conceptual footing.

Thank you for your consideration.

 

[ClaytonB]

[U R L="h t t ps://w w w.mediafire.com/file/sfy2x0spmmadi0a/Social_Entropian_Ethics_00.pdf/file"]S.E.E.[/U R L]

I ain't clicking on that crap.

there is a lot of math used, so there might be a bit of a learning curve.

Information theory is my stomping-ground. While you could argue there are some connections at a symbolic/metaphysical level, I don't think info theory itself is going to be very enlightening for understanding the root causes of slavery and tyranny throughout human history. How many ways a message can be encoded can be called "degrees of freedom" but the "freedom" there is only very very loosely connected with any concept of human freedom. It's an analogy, at best.

Also, the wrap-up smear on libertarian political philosophy not being very "rigorous" is a nice touch. No other political philosophy out there can even touch libertarianism. Libertarianism is the Michael Jordan of political philosophy. Everybody else might as well just go sit on the bench, they're just props.

 

[TealSpider]

So you are not open to it? Humans, and groups of humans, are physical, thermodynamic systems and as such are capable of carrying information. On some level information has to apply to human relations, or are we entirely exempt from such, aloof from physical reality?

Maybe I'm a complete idiot on the topic. If I am so deluded then perhaps you can enlighten me as to how I am wrong applying your expertise, or if you don't have the the time, I can wait for someone else to discuss it.

Libertarianism may be the Michael Jordan of political philosophy, but I have yet to see any definition of liberty or freedom from other libertarians that connects in any way to physical reality, or defined in any way other than in black and white terms. The recent pandemic has shown the dangers of such inflexible thinking and has led many people, wrongly, to reject libertarianism completely, including former libertarian "icons" like Penn Jillette. People nowadays are being woo'ed by the pseudo-rationality of utilitarianism and technocracy because they at least pretend to try and quantify what they are promoting. We need to be able to properly define liberty in a way that connects with reality and up our game or we lose in the current environment.

 

[ClaytonB]

So you are not open to it? Humans, and groups of humans, are physical, thermodynamic systems and as such are capable of carrying information. On some level information has to apply to human relations, or are we entirely exempt from such, aloof from physical reality?

Of course information theory applies to humans and human behavior, but you have to choose the right tool. It's silly to try to use physics to analyze the development of clothing fashion or the Top-40 hit list. To say there is no connection whatsoever is obviously incorrect, but you can't process the googolplex physical variables that would be required to describe these massive, diffuse systems at the degree of precision required to draw any kind of meaningful conclusion. That's what abstraction is for. Abstraction is intentionally throwing away information -- some of which we know is technically connected somehow -- in order to be able to make meaningful progress in studying our subject. Classical geometry abstracts away every physical consideration and imagines space as nothing but points, lines, planes and other geometrically simple surfaces like spheres, ellipsoids, etc. No human has ever held a geometric cube in their hands. But geometric cubes (and other 3D geometric objects) are absurdly useful in describing physical volumes, despite the fact that they throw away almost all the information about them!

Maybe I'm a complete idiot on the topic. If I am so deluded then perhaps you can enlighten me as to how I am wrong applying your expertise, or if you don't have the the time, I can wait for someone else to discuss it.

Information is not completely unconnected. Network theory, for example, certainly has connections to the study of things like decentralization, money, distributed cooperation, and many other topics that are relevant to political philosophy.

Libertarianism may be the Michael Jordan of political philosophy, but I have yet to see any definition of liberty or freedom from other libertarians that connects in any way to physical reality, or defined in any way other than in black and white terms. The recent pandemic has shown the dangers of such inflexible thinking and has led many people, wrongly, to reject libertarianism completely, including former libertarian "icons" like Penn Jillette. People nowadays are being woo'ed by the pseudo-rationality of utilitarianism and technocracy because they at least pretend to try and quantify what they are promoting. We need to be able to properly define liberty in a way that connects with reality and up our game or we lose in the current environment.

There is a zeitgeist in the modern world along the lines that any form of broad disagreement is the result of not applying a sufficiently powerful microscope. Gottfried Leibniz coined the now-famous phrase, Let us Calculate! which later morphed into a mythos surrounding Feynman supposedly saying, "Shut up and Calculate!" It's an interesting thought, and I wouldn't discourage continued human development in this direction (ultimately, you're talking about something like a Metaverse). Digital computers were thought of long before the transistor made modern digital computers possible and, while they could imagine the potential of digital computers, you have to actually have a machine that can go fast enough before you can do those things you can imagine doing with such a machine!

My point is that hand-waving is not a substitute for actual computation. If you want to have a "Let us Calculate!"-showdown, then you're going to have to build an exhaustively detailed simulator that can effectively simulate the entire globe (including all human activity in it) down to the resolution of every dust-particle and every glint of light. But the idea that you're just going to sketch some information-theory equations on a blackboard and solve political philosophy is ridiculous.

A formal subject that is more relevant to political philosophy is game theory. Austrian economics is basically game-theory applied to human choices in the unconstrained environment (i.e. thinking of the economy as a game with no explicitly specified rules), and without concern towards game-equilibria, mechanism design, and related topics that mathematical game theorists tend to care about. From this starting point, libertarian political philosophy is more or less obvious and that is why most Austrians tend to be libertarian -- at least minarchist, if not night-watchman or full-blown anarchists.

Austrian theory is explicitly anti-quantification. The modern mindset is obsessed with quantification under the assumption that everything can be meaningfully quantified. In economics, however, quantification is useless, at best, and usually harmful. Consider a game of chess. Let us treat this game in the Misesian means-ends framework -- each player has the end of checkmating his opponent, and the means available to them are their chess pieces (their legal moves). In chess, we can assign a numerical (quantified) value to any given position, ranking that position in terms of an abstract "pawns" unit, as chess-engines do. This measure of the position really is objective, and so it makes sense to evaluate any given chess position this way and we can expect that rational chess-players of sufficient skill will arrive at a roughly similar evaluation of any given position, unless it's extremely complicated/subtle. Indeed, this is exactly what we see that grandmasters do... "black is best in this position, by about 3/4ths of a pawn." You might get a little bickering over whether it's 0.8 pawns or 0.7 pawns, but there will be broad agreement in any group of grandmasters for any sufficiently clear position.

But the real world is absolutely unlike this. What is the "utils" of a performance of Beethoven's 5th symphony? Supposing that I love classical music a lot, I might be willing to pay several hundred dollars. But if you hate classical music, you might even be willing to pay not to be forced to sit through such an event! So, the very same "board position" has almost diametrically opposite evaluations. We can choose any polarizing good or service -- what is the "utils" of sushi, or acupuncture, or a Jackson Pollock? So, there is no solution but to acknowledge that my "util scale" and your "util scale" cannot be the same, nor are they even "roughly the same", they are simply independent. For this reason, most economists since Jevons have agreed that value is subjective.

Most economists agree that value is not objective, but isn't it at least cardinal? That is, can't my "utils" of a grapefruit at least be compared to my "utils" of sushi? If I love grapefruit and hate sushi, can't we assign something like 10 utils to grapefruit and -10 utils to sushi? And the answer is... no, it doesn't make any sense. First of all, my "utils" for the very same good or service are not the same, day to day. If I've just been to the chiropractor, my "utils" for a chiropracty session are... approximately zero. All the joints have been reset, they don't need to be re-reset. So, even if my "utils" for a chiropracty session were 10 yesterday, they are 0 today. And, in any case, what we're really interested in is not assigning some kind of "God's number" to every possible good and service, we're really trying to ask -- given some set of available goods and services -- which will I choose to consume at any given time. Even more broadly, we can choose to forego consumption altogether and engage in other activities, so what we're really interested in is not merely the set of all available goods and services in the market but the set of all available choices. And that's the starting point of Misesian economics. Each individual chooses, moment by moment, from the set of all available choices, that choice which he or she deems, in their subjective determination, to be the best means for achieving their highest end or ends. That is human action in a nutshell. As you can see, quantification is of little use since we are really talking about subjective, ordinal ranked-choice, not objective, cardinal quantity (utils).

Many more economics fallacies can be raised but the point is that the modern mainstream way of thinking about human choice -- whether in economics or political philosophy more broadly -- is in such bad disrepair that there is little use talking with most mainstreamers about anything beyond the foundations. They need to examine their foundations first, then, after addressing the many cracks in the foundations of their worldview, they will be ready to talk about more complicated topics....

 

[TealSpider]

To say there is no connection whatsoever is obviously incorrect, but you can't process the googolplex physical variables that would be required to describe these massive, diffuse systems at the degree of precision required to draw any kind of meaningful conclusion. That's what abstraction is for. Abstraction is intentionally throwing away information -- some of which we know is technically connected somehow -- in order to be able to make meaningful progress in studying our subject.

This is what physicists do . Even if processing the vast number of variables involved in the behavior of each particle in the universe is effectively impossible, one can still derive some basic principles and approximations (rules of thumb) to guide us in our interaction with the universe. Physicists do this with a great deal of success.

My point is that hand-waving is not a substitute for actual computation. If you want to have a "Let us Calculate!"-showdown, then you're going to have to build an exhaustively detailed simulator that can effectively simulate the entire globe (including all human activity in it) down to the resolution of every dust-particle and every glint of light. But the idea that you're just going to sketch some information-theory equations on a blackboard and solve political philosophy is ridiculous.

It may not be possible to simulate the globe down to dust particles. Doing so would require recruiting every dust particle to do the calculation. Then you run into the paradox of the earth simulating itself, so all we are left with is abstraction as you call it; deriving rules of thumb from basic principles.

A formal subject that is more relevant to political philosophy is game theory. Austrian economics is basically game-theory applied to human choices in the unconstrained environment (i.e. thinking of the economy as a game with no explicitly specified rules), and without concern towards game-equilibria, mechanism design, and related topics that mathematical game theorists tend to care about. From this starting point, libertarian political philosophy is more or less obvious and that is why most Austrians tend to be libertarian -- at least minarchist, if not night-watchman or full-blown anarchists.

So you apply game theory with an open ended game. This sounds similar to what I am proposing. I could be wrong though.

Austrian theory is explicitly anti-quantification. The modern mindset is obsessed with quantification under the assumption that everything can be meaningfully quantified. In economics, however, quantification is useless, at best, and usually harmful.

I thought money and the price system served as a quantifying medium. Again, I could be wrong.

But the real world is absolutely unlike this. What is the "utils" of a performance of Beethoven's 5th symphony? Supposing that I love classical music a lot, I might be willing to pay several hundred dollars. But if you hate classical music, you might even be willing to pay not to be forced to sit through such an event! So, the very same "board position" has almost diametrically opposite evaluations. We can choose any polarizing good or service -- what is the "utils" of sushi, or acupuncture, or a Jackson Pollock? So, there is no solution but to acknowledge that my "util scale" and your "util scale" cannot be the same, nor are they even "roughly the same", they are simply independent. For this reason, most economists since Jevons have agreed that value is subjective.

Correct. The value of specific states of affairs is highly subjective, which is why i am not a utilitarian. There does, however, need to be a mechanism to resolve conflicts when two persons' subjective values clash. Applying maximum entropy, the value that is the most open ended for the group should win out as there is no reason to believe that one state of affairs is superior to another, mutually exclusive, state of affairs of equal information content. This would favor freedom by default over subjective utility.

One consequence of this is freedom from association, or independence, as forced association results in coupling that reduces overall freedom.

 

[ClaytonB]

This is what physicists do . Even if processing the vast number of variables involved in the behavior of each particle in the universe is effectively impossible, one can still derive some basic principles and approximations (rules of thumb) to guide us in our interaction with the universe. Physicists do this with a great deal of success.

But you're not grappling with the scale-difference. Yes, the LHC is very impressive but, despite its massive size, it's a microscope that is examining an interaction that is occurring in an extremely tiny volume, smaller than a cubic-micron. We (probably) don't need that level of detail to build a convincing simulation of the real economy -- but, in economics, we need scale, in addition to resolution. Furthermore, even after you have both scale and resolution (which you acknowledge below, is infeasible), you still have the problem of subjectivity.

I thought money and the price system served as a quantifying medium. Again, I could be wrong.

Money does not quantify anything except money itself. Some other heterodox economic theories out there (such as classical Keynesianism) try to treat money as a proxy for utils, for various purposes. But it's a non-starter. This is a common economic fallacy that arises from misunderstanding the double-coincidence of wants.

Correct. The value of specific states of affairs is highly subjective, which is why i am not a utilitarian. There does, however, need to be a mechanism to resolve conflicts when two persons' subjective values clash.

OK, and that mechanism already exists, and it is called law. Sadly, law is one of the most neglected subjects in libertarian philosophy. David Friedman has done a lot of good work in this area, and I highly recommend Machinery of Freedom, Law's Order or any of his online lectures to learn more.

I know that what you want to do is build some kind of Leibnizian "Let Us Calculate!" machine. But until you've understood the existing solutions in law, you will not be able to understand (a) why they largely fail to achieve the obvious goals that we pretty much all agree law should achieve, and (b) how it might be possible to build something better.

Applying maximum entropy, the value that is the most open ended for the group should win out as there is no reason to believe that one state of affairs is superior to another, mutually exclusive, state of affairs of equal information content. This would favor freedom by default over subjective utility.

Well, I can make a strong argument that there is such a thing as undesirable freedom. I don't mean this politically -- all political freedom for the individual is desirable. But blindly applying mathematical equations to humans and human society is extremely dangerous because, by definition, you have no mechanism to measure alignment between your equations and human eudaimonia (Greek for "flourishing", which is the broadest definition I will accept for "the good", that is, the good of humanity and life, generally.) Suppose it is possible to be conscious outside of the body/brain system and, from this bubble of root consciousness, you have maximal degrees of freedom. But if you do not have the "onboard know-how" of your body (how your body did all the things for you, that you just took for granted), you are at the mercy of the Cosmos. In this situation, I think the fact that higher-temperatures correlate with greater degrees of freedom (higher entropy) becomes relevant, and we are looking at something that is a lot like what the Bible calls, the lake of fire.

One consequence of this is freedom from association, or independence, as forced association results in coupling that reduces overall freedom.

To be sure, it's very pretty on the chalkboard and makes for good hand-waving over coffee. But a rigorous theory of anything, it is not.

 

[TealSpider]

Thank you, ClaytonB, for your feedback.

I haven't heard of David D. Friedman until now. A quick look-up shows that his father was Milton Friedman who I have seen videos of. I will look into the books Machinery of Freedom, and Law's Order that you have recommended (if I can find them for a reasonable price).

Chaos theory would indicate that most consequentialist ethics may be untenable. Finding a precise optimized value for everyone from now into the far future would be like trying to hit a 1 cm radius target 10 km north of you with a single arrow when there is turbulent west-east crosswinds. This daunting task has led many utilitarians to adopt an approximation of act utilitarianism in the form of rule utilitarianism. However, setting up simple rules wouldn't be sufficient to hit the target so rule utilitarianism would deviate considerably from act utilitarianism. Entropian ethics might have an advantage here since it is more open ended. It would be like trying to hit the broad side of a northern mountain. A simple rule would be to aim north and not south. The turbulence would have less effect on obtaining the goal. Perhaps I should then explore rule social entropianism. This would sacrifice a lot of the rigor in exchange for workability.

As for entropianism leading to a hot hellscape, most of the universe is cold (2.7 K) and concentrating heat in one part the universe will require removing it from elsewhere. Humans already live in a privileged hot paradise (which would be hell to lifeforms accustomed to lower temperatures). Under entropian ethics, entropy is considered a right and not necessarily a mandate, so there is no need to turn Earth into a hot hellscape (although if someone wanted absolute liberation of all atoms in their body, they can always visit the sun, another privileged hotspot).

Thank you for your consideration.

 

[ClaytonB]

Thank you, ClaytonB, for your feedback.

I haven't heard of David D. Friedman until now. A quick look-up shows that his father was Milton Friedman who I have seen videos of. I will look into the books Machinery of Freedom, and Law's Order that you have recommended (if I can find them for a reasonable price).

You can find web draft versions on his website for free, see MoF [PDF] and Law's Order.

Chaos theory would indicate that most consequentialist ethics may be untenable. Finding a precise optimized value for everyone from now into the far future would be like trying to hit a 1 cm radius target 10 km north of you with a single arrow when there is turbulent west-east crosswinds. This daunting task has led many utilitarians to adopt an approximation of act utilitarianism in the form of rule utilitarianism. However, setting up simple rules wouldn't be sufficient to hit the target so rule utilitarianism would deviate considerably from act utilitarianism. Entropian ethics might have an advantage here since it is more open ended. It would be like trying to hit the broad side of a northern mountain. A simple rule would be to aim north and not south. The turbulence would have less effect on obtaining the goal. Perhaps I should then explore rule social entropianism. This would sacrifice a lot of the rigor in exchange for workability.

Rigor is too often confused with formalism. Formalism has to do with how you communicate scientific, mathematical or other technical results. It's an interface/protocol. Rigor is, well, did you really do your homework? Did you really get down to the root problem? Did you really grasp the issues involved? Formalism generally requires or presupposes rigor, but not the other way around. To put it succinctly, a brilliant mathematician may fully understand the subject of math that he has taken to studying while using their own private notation that nobody else understands. After a bit of negotiation over syntax and terminology, they would be able to talk about the subject with a standard mathematician. Formalism is like notation, terminology, processes -- it's what prevents science from getting too silo'd, so that it's generally possible for most experts in a field to talk to most other experts in that same field.

Despite its many benefits, formalism can sometimes be an obstacle to clear thinking. Sometimes, the reasons why you care about a particular subject are so far removed from the reasons that most people in that field care about it, that their standard thinking patterns (or "narratives") can actually be more of a hindrance than a help. In such a case, it's possible to throw away formalism, while retaining rigor. In metaphysics, this is more the rule than the exception. Take a word like "objectivity" -- in metaphysics, what exactly we mean by this word depends enormously on the context. In many cases, we might be using the same word but discussing entirely separate concepts. This is an unavoidable problem in respect to overloading the meanings of words (there are vastly more concepts than there are words and the dictionary can only become so large before it becomes useless). But the point is that it is possible to be completely clear about what you're thinking about (rigor) without necessarily adopting or proliferating a standardized terminology (formalism).

As for entropianism leading to a hot hellscape, most of the universe is cold (2.7 K) and concentrating heat in one part the universe will require removing it from elsewhere. Humans already live in a privileged hot paradise (which would be hell to lifeforms accustomed to lower temperatures). Under entropian ethics, entropy is considered a right and not necessarily a mandate, so there is no need to turn Earth into a hot hellscape (although if someone wanted absolute liberation of all atoms in their body, they can always visit the sun, another privileged hotspot).

The surface of the Sun would be an example of "too many degrees of freedom", certainly from my standpoint it is...