Conversation

‘“Hardness” is defined as the capacity of a system to make something very likely to be true in the future. Hardness is most useful where it is customizable or programmable - where humans can choose something specific we want to be true in the future.’
1
6
‘One way to measure the hardness of a cast is to estimate probabilities...Another way to measure hardness is to estimate how much it would cost to create a world where the cast turns out to be false.’
1
3
^^ that’s the really interesting bit. Wonder if there’s a way to formalize this intuition using a kind of quantified modal logic. In what percent of all known-unknown worlds is a cast unbroken?
1
2
‘…The cast is the “thing that is hard”, and it always takes the form of a statement or claim about the future. …I use the word “cast” for its dual connotations in English of a thing we throw ahead of us and a thing which hardens to protect or shape.’
1
1
The discussion of this that just wrapped was divided between people who thought there was a there there in terms of a real intuition being pursued, vs. just confused thinking about institutions. I was on the “there’s a there there” side of the debate.
2
I think an improved version of this would clean up some of the sloppier historical arguments, and work with a more rigorous definition of institutions. Like say Douglas North’s definition…
1
1
“Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights).”
1
2
I think “cost to make the future untrue” is the right definition. Raw probability will be ill-posed in an open futures canvas. Stuff like between X and Y kilograms of gold will enter the market each year for the next 20 years”is fine for investment but useless against black swans
Replying to
Other interesting phenomenology that came up and could potentially be accommodated in the cost-to-make-false definition include bugs, dissent, alt interpretations of a hard thing, smooth vs striated uses of hard things.
1
1
A general weak point is that the cast/contents distinction is probably theoretically fragile. Medium/message coupling effects, form/content logic bombs like godel sentences… but you could probably get a folk notion of hardness to a usable state, like Taleb’s antifragility
1
1