Bitcoin

Bitcoin has recently come into the news again because of the apparent collapse of its most important trading site "Mt. Gox".

I assume most people will know what Bitcoin is but in case you don't, it is supposed to be a kind of open source currency. It is neither backed nor controlled by any government or central bank, and it is supposedly untraceable, and apparently these features have made it very attractive to libertarians who are to varying degrees opposed to government regulation and taxation. And, one hears, also to other people who have even less wholesome reasons not to want their transactions traced.

Another feature of Bitcoin is that the maximum number of coins that can ever be generated is strictly limited. At the beginning it was very easy to "mine" additional coins, over time it gets harder, and at some point no more can be added to the system. This means that if Bitcoin gets used more and more, or even only if the economy grows, the value of this cyber currency will rise. In other words, Bitcoin has an in-built deflation mechanism, making all other goods cost less and less coins as time passes; the opposite of inflation. Of course this feature makes Bitcoin attractive to people with a somewhat gold bug-like psychology who believe that inflation is always bad if not downright evil.

With the problems of Mt. Gox news outlets have been discussing whether this will lead to the collapse of Bitcoin as a whole or whether the currency still has a bright future before it and is merely experiencing a hiccup. I am not an economist but I can imagine that it will recover; there surely appear to be enough True Believers out there to keep it going.

So it is well possible that Bitcoin will go on to be a success, the question is merely how you define success. Because it may well be a success as schmuck bait or an object of speculation, but it will never be a useful currency. And one does not have to be an economist to work that out.

Botany picture #143: Chrysocephalum baxteri

Chrysocephalum baxteri (Asteraceae), Victoria, 2012. This is one of my favourite everlasting paper daisies because it grows compact, is perennial in mild temperate areas, and produces many flowerheads. If we had a garden I would try to grow it there.

Folk understanding of Free Will, part 2: Hopeless confusion?

Continuing from here.

So, about those two studies on folk perceptions of determinism and incompatibilism; these are two different issues that need to be tested separately. First, do non-philosophers, do Joe and Jane Average believe that the world including ourselves is deterministic or do they believe that we have some magical ability of making decisions independently of cause-and-effect? Second, do they believe that free will, choice, moral responsibility and suchlike are still useful concepts under the assumption of determinism? In the second case, a yes would make them compatibilists, a no would make them incompatibilists. Both studies accordingly made an effort to test these questions one after the other.

The first study, Nahmias et al, presented its participants with a hypothetical supercomputer that could perfectly predict the future. It then first asked them whether such a scenario was possible. Subsequently, the participants were told to assume that all actions had been predicted by the supercomputer, and asked wether a hypothetical person called Jeremy acted out of his own free will and is morally responsible when predictably robbing a bank, going jogging or rescuing a child from death.

Results: The majority of participants answered that the above scenario was impossible. The overwhelming majority of participants answered that Jeremy had both free will and moral responsibility despite the determinist scenario they were told to assume.

The second study, Sarkissian et al, first presented its participants with two hypothetical universes: a universe A which is carefully described as deterministic and a universe B in which human decisions are "not completely caused by the past", and then asked them to decide "which of these universes is most like ours". Subsequently, the researchers asked the participants whether it is "possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for their actions" in the deterministic universe A. Note that this is a much less specific question than that used by Nahmias et al, and Sarkissian et al chose it on purpose, arguing that very specific questions such as about a bank heist would "trigger affective responses" instead of getting at people's theories of moral responsibility.

Result: The overwhelming majority of participants answered that universe B, the one in which human decisions are magically exempt from cause-and-effect, is most similar to our actual universe. The overwhelming majority of participants answered that "full moral responsibility" is not compatible with determinism. Interestingly, a determinist answer to the first question was very highly correlated with a compatibilist answer to the second.

Folk understanding of Free Will, part 1: Does it matter?

Over at one of my favourite blogs websites, two studies of folk philosophy have recently been discussed: what do average people, as opposed to trained philosophers, think about determinism and free will?

To recap, this is part of the greater controversy around compatibilism. Both compatibilists and incompatibilists assume that the universe we find ourselves in is essentially deterministic - with perhaps a bit of quantum randomness thrown in, but surely without any supernatural soul making decisions independently from the laws of physics.

However, compatibilists such as myself argue that even given complete determinism, there is still a significant difference between doing something voluntarily and doing something under coercion, or between doing something deliberately and doing it accidentally, or between being mentally sane and in control and being insane or drunk; and further, that terms like "free will", "choice" and "agency" are useful descriptors of these differences. Incompatibilists, on the other hand, do not believe that these terms make any sense given determinism.

As I have pointed out before, the funny thing is that all sane incompatibilists actually make the same difference in practice: they also treat an accident differently than harm that was caused deliberately, and they would also treat a lunatic but punish a sane criminal. So in practice every sane person is a compatibilist, and the only difference is semantic. Which is odd, because once you accept a difference, would it not be useful to have terms to describe it?

The argument made by incompatibilists for the rejection of these terms is ultimately that they are confusing, that they are loaded with supernatural meanings. They claim that when the average person hears "free will", they understand "supernatural soul doing things independently of deterministic laws of nature". And this is why we have to get rid of this terminology. I have never been able to accept this claim.

Why we are not getting killed by SkyNet any time soon

Computers are dumb.

For the benefit of non-German readers, this is a screenshot of the German Yahoo News site. The second paragraph starts with the phrase "the process initiated by her predecessor...", with the German word "der" being the direct counterpart of English "the" (for male nouns, that is, but let's not make this complicated).

Behind the German "the", some script has automatically inserted a share price at the Chinese stock market and a link to more stock market information. Why? The prominent box on the left provides the answer. It is not related to the article, which is not about stock markets at all but about the ministry of defense, nor is it some paid advertisement. Instead, the box has been added by the very same script, and it shows the recent development of share prices for a company called DER.

DER; "der Prozess". Get it?

It would be funny if it weren't so sad. (And annoying; let's not forget how annoying it is to have some stupid script clutter every text that contains the male definite article with irrelevant graphs and links).

And this is one of many reasons* why I am not afraid of a so-called technological singularity turning into Terminator: Rise of the Machines. Computers are idiots. Yes, they can do amazing things, but they are "oh look, she is trying feed herself with a spoon now, and most of it ends up in her lap, isn't that cute" amazing things, not "she is the greatest physicist of her generation" amazing things.

Of course, the computer is not really at fault, it is only a tool. Really one has to wonder about whoever wrote this script and thought it would be a great idea.

*) The other reasons are mostly variants on the observation that the singularity itself is a ridiculous idea.

Botany picture #142: Soliva sessilis

Soliva sessilis (Asteraceae), Victoria, 2012. Australia has got its own burr-daisies in the genus Calotis. Their fruit are covered in spines, often barbed, that will stick to your clothes and are particularly nasty when stuck between the inner side of your shoe and your skin. But that wasn't enough of course. There is also Soliva sessilis, an invasive weed introduced from South America. It likes to grow in lawns where it is likely to be overlooked because of its small size and entirely green colouration - until you step on it with your bare feet. In the picture above a fruit is sticking in my fingertip.

Lawrence Krauss' A Universe from Nothing

To satisfy my curiosity about astrophysics, I have recently bought and have now finished reading A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing, by physicist Lawrence Krauss. The book appears to have two aims: To give a summary of the current understanding of how the universe came to be, how it evolved into what it is now, and how it will end, and to refute the argument that some external (divine) intervention is necessary to get something from nothing.