Philosophy of Information | Informationist Scientific Metaphysics

Quantifying Schema Chemistry: A Personality-relative, Experimental, Hierarchical-Dimensional Matrix for EMS Schema Chemistry

2026-03-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

In my previous article, I introduced an experimental, preliminary hierarchical-dimensional framework for visualising an individual’s internal "EMS Profile," utilising heuristic Severity and Volatility indices to map the shape of their psychological distress:

Figure 1.

However, Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS) do not exist in a vacuum; they are profoundly relational. To fully understand characterological distress, we must examine how these internal schemas collide with the external world—specifically through the phenomenon of "schema chemistry."

The clinical literature dictates that individuals do not choose romantic partners at random. Instead, they selectively and unconsciously filter for partners whose specific behaviors will confirm their most deeply held negative beliefs about themselves and the external world. Schema chemistry describes this powerful, highly magnetic, and frequently unconscious attraction individuals experience toward others who trigger, validate, and reinforce their core EMS.

While clinical observation has long observed this phenomenon, there is currently no formalised psychometric instrument to measure it. To bridge this gap while developing such an instrument, I am expanding my preliminiary, pre-EFA diagnostic modeling to include an experimental Schema Chemistry Matrix, integrating cognitive-behavioral vulnerabilities, severe personality traits, and dimensional models like the Big Five.

The Two Dimensions of Schema Chemistry

Extensive literature indicates that schema chemistry encompasses two core theoretical dimensions: Attraction and Illusion. These are based upon clinicians notes and other low grade evidence gathered over time by the therapy community, and so it is likely that they identify meaningful diagnostic factors. To construct a measurable framework, I propose operationalising these dimensions using established psychometric proxies prior to the application of explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis in order to gain more information about what variables exist.

1. Attraction: The Somatic Pull of the EMS

The first dimension, Attraction, refers strictly to the behavioral, emotional, and somatic pull toward repeating familiar relational patterns that are deeply associated with unmet emotional needs from early childhood. In our experimental model, we quantify this "somatic pull" by drawing upon proxies from Cluster B and Cluster C personality profiles. High "Attraction" scores reflect traits synonymous with Dependent Personality Disorder (the terror of abandonment) and Borderline Personality Disorder (sensation-seeking, and the neurological addiction to chaotic "push-pull" relational dynamics).

2. Illusion: The Cognitive Distortion Due to EMSs

The second dimension, Illusion, involves the sophisticated cognitive distortions required to initiate and maintain the relationship. This manifests as the profound idealisation of romantic love and the entirely inaccurate perception of long-term compatibility. The illusion dimension causes individuals to systematically overlook glaring behavioral red flags. I initialise operationalise this cognitive distortion using proxies from histrionic, Delusional, Narcissistic, and Schisotypal traits—capturing theatrical romanticising, impressionistic cognitive styles, and fixed false beliefs about "destiny" or "twin flames" that persist despite overwhelming relational toxicity.

Proposed/Preliminary 4-Quadrant "Schema Chemistry Matrix"

By plotting Attraction (X-axis) against Illusion (Y-axis) on a 0–100 scale, a new diagnostic coordinate system emerges. This allows us to categorise a patient's relational pathology into four distinct Schema Chemistry Archetypes:

Type I: The Traumatic Bond (High Attraction, High Illusion): The most volatile profile. The patient is neurologically addicted to the relational chaos (high somatic pull) and utilises massive cognitive distortions to rationalise the dysfunction as "epic love" or "fate."
Type II: The Compulsive Repetition (High Attraction, Low Illusion): The patient possesses clinical insight and recognises the relationship is destructive, yet the physiological schema pull (the fear of abandonment or emptiness) is too severe to break the behavioral loop.
Type III: The Idealised Fantasy / Limerence (Low Attraction, High Illusion): Often observed in one-sided, distant, or parasocial relationships. The patient is not addicted to the partner's actual behavior (which may be avoidant or absent), but rather to the fantasy of who the partner is, driven by heavy idealisation.
Type IV: Secure / Differentiated (Low Attraction, Low Illusion): The healthy baseline. Mate selection is conscious, reality-tested, and secure, devoid of trauma-driven magnetism or severe cognitive distortion.

Figure 2.

The Engine of Pathology?: Intersecting the Big Five

To complete the model, we introduce trait psychology as the "engine" driving these relational patterns. Extreme Big Five (NEO-PI) personality traits heavily interact with schema chemistry. For example, a "Type I: Traumatic Bond" is frequently supercharged by extreme Neuroticism and high Openness to Experience (fantasy-proneness). Conversely, "Type II: Compulsive Repetition" is often heavily anchored by extreme Neuroticism coupled with distinctly low Agreeableness (perpetuating hostility/compliance loops).

I suspect and suggest that intersection with cluster B personality disorders and other disorders is also salient. However, there are known relationships between extreme personality traits and psychopathologies, and existing work in EMS research tends to emphasise the relationship of EMS with Neo-PI personality traits.

In a clinical dashboard visualisation, these Big Five risk factors can be represented by the color of a patient's data point, while their baseline Schema Severity (from our previous article's model) dictates the size of the data point. The result is a multi-dimensional, comprehensive map of a patient's internal pain and their external relational mechanics. (See Figure 2.)

Looking Forward

Developing a preliminary measure that formally recognises the intersections between dimensional personality traits, Cluster B proxies, and schema chemistry is the critical next step. The proposed matrix provides a theoretical scaffold. Future research must now focus on rigorous item generation and subsequent Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to build a validated Likert-scale instrument capable of accurately placing patients within this relational coordinate system.

References

Beckley, K. (2022). Schema chemistry: An interpersonal framework for making sense of intimate partner violence. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 78(1), 38–49. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23295

Dumitrescu, D., & Rusu, A. S. (2012). Relationship between early maladaptive schemas, couple satisfaction and individual mate value: An evolutionary psychological approach. Journal of Cognitive & Behavioral Psychotherapies, 12(1).

Körük, S., & Özabacı, N. (2020). Fate or schema chemistry? Which one does bring and hold mates together? Edu 7: Yeditepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 9(11), 17–42.

Paim, K., & Cardoso, B. L. A. (2019). Terapia do Esquema para casais: Base teórica e intervenção. Artmed Editora.

Piai, L. P., Cardoso, B. L. A., Capinha, M. I. L., Teodoro, M. L. M., Burgos-Benavides, L., & D’Affonseca, S. M. (2025). Early maladaptive schemas and intimate partner violence. Revista Brasileira de Terapias Cognitivas, 21, e20250554. https://doi.org/10.5935/1808-5687.20250554

Roediger, E., & Archonti, C. (2020). Transference and therapist–client schema chemistry in the treatment of eating disorders. In S. Simpson & E. Smith (Eds.), Schema Therapy for Eating Disorders: Theory and Practice for Individual and Group Settings (pp. 221–241). Routledge.

Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S., & Weishaar, M. E. (2003). Schema therapy: A practitioner's guide. Guilford Press.

Beyond the Categorical and Dimensional: An Experimental, Pre-EFA Hierarchical-Dimensional Framework for Visualizing EMS

2026-03-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

Schema Therapy, an integrative therapeutic modality originally developed by Jeffrey E. Young and colleagues, represents a significant evolution from traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) (Young, Klosko, & Weishaar, 2003). It was explicitly designed to address chronic, characterological psychological disorders that often resist standard CBT interventions (Beckley, 2022; Piai et al., 2025; Young et al., 2003).

At the core of this theoretical architecture is the concept of Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS), defined as broad, pervasive, and self-defeating themes or patterns comprised of memories, emotions, cognitions, and bodily sensations (Young et al., 2003). These schemas originate during childhood when fundamental emotional needs are chronically frustrated or unmet by caregivers, and they become exceptionally rigid and highly resistant to modification over an individual's lifetime (Dumitrescu & Rusu, 2012; Piai et al., 2025; Roediger & Archonti, 2020).

The seminal literature categorizes eighteen specific EMS into five overarching domains: Disconnection and Rejection, Impaired Autonomy and Performance, Impaired Limits, Other-Directedness, and Hypervigilance and Inhibition (Young et al., 2003). Once encoded, these schemas act as implicit organizing principles, dictating how individuals interpret environmental stimuli and inadvertently compelling them to recreate the precise conditions that originally traumatized them (Körük & Özabacı, 2020; Paim & Cardoso, 2019).

This unconscious replication is also thought by many therapists to govern "schema chemistry," the powerful attraction individuals experience toward others who trigger and reinforce their core EMS (Paim & Cardoso, 2019). Schema chemistry operates through two distinct dimensions: an intense behavioral "Attraction" to familiar relational patterns, and a cognitive "Illusion" that idealizes the relationship (Paim & Cardoso, 2019; Young et al., 2003).

However, while the theoretical delineation of these 18 schemas is profoundly useful, assessing and classifying real-world patients presents a significant psychometric challenge. Like many personality and individual differences assessments, fitting an individual into a discrete, categorical diagnostic box, or otherwise using dimensional criteria to evaluate them, is often inadequate. Patients rarely exhibit the influence of just one schema. As with known psychopathologies, their clinical presentations are deeply comorbid and complex.

To address this, I am exploring an experimental, hierarchical-dimensional framework for modeling and representing a client’s overarching "Schema Profile."

Moving from Categories to Coordinates

Rather than asking, “Which schema does this patient have?” this experimental approach asks, “What is the shape and intensity of this patient's schema ecosystem?”

By mapping a client's scores (typically 1 to 6 on instruments like the Young Schema Questionnaire) onto a radial spider or radar chart, grouped by the five thematic domains, we can immediately visualize the "shape" of their pathology.

Figure 1. An experimental radar chart visualizing the 18 Early Maladaptive Schemas across five domains, contrasting a highly volatile intake profile with a smoother 6-month post-treatment profile.

To move beyond mere visualization into quantitative data science, I propose inferring two initial experimental metrics from this 18-variable array:

The Severity Index (μ): The mean of all 18 schema scores. This represents the overall "area" of the radar polygon, providing a macro-level assessment of the client's total clinical and psychological burden.
The Volatility Index (σ): The standard deviation of the 18 scores. This mathematically measures the "jaggedness" of the polygon. A low volatility score indicates a smooth, regular shape (meaning scores are uniform across the board), while a high volatility score indicates a chaotic shape with extreme spikes and deep valleys.

An Experimental Typology of Schema Profiles

By plotting these two experimental indices on a 2D coordinate system (Severity vs. Volatility), we hypothesize that patient profiles will naturally cluster into four distinct clinical archetypes:

The Focal Profile (Low/Moderate Severity, High Volatility): Visually, this appears as a small radar shape with one or two massive spikes. This individual functions relatively well at baseline but possesses highly specific, severe schema triggers.
The Polymodal Profile (High Severity, High Volatility): Visually chaotic and highly jagged. This patient spikes across multiple prominent schemas that bridge different domains. This profile likely maps onto complex presentations, indicating multiple, distinct traumatic origins.
The Pervasive Profile (High Severity, Low Volatility): Visually resembling a large, inflated circle. This individual scores evenly and highly across almost all 18 schemas. This diffuse profile suggests profound, systemic childhood trauma where almost all core emotional needs were frustrated.
The Compensated Profile (Low Severity, Low Volatility): A small, tight circle near the center axis. This indicates either baseline psychological health or a highly rigid schema coping style (such as total Avoidance or Overcompensation) that prevents the patient from acknowledging the items on the psychometric instrument.

Future Directions for Research

It must be heavily emphasized that this hierarchical/meta-dimensional modeling approach and its associated metrics (the Severity and Volatility Indices) are entirely experimental. However, the potential clinical utility is promising with proper expansion using relevant factor analyses and other tools. By establishing this mathematical framework, researchers can begin to overlay these schema profiles with other dimensional individual difference measures to identify predictive psychopathological intersections.

Furthermore, this visual and mathematical model offers a novel way to track therapeutic outcomes. At minimum it provides a heuristic score which does have measures of EMS as its basis. In successful Schema Therapy, a clinician might observe a patient's profile transition from a highly jagged state at intake to a smoother, less volatile shape at follow-up. Even if the overall Severity Index (μ) drops only slightly, a significant drop in the Volatility Index (σ) would empirically demonstrate an increase in psychological integration and a dismantling of specific schema triggers.

References

Beckley, K. (2022). Schema chemistry: An interpersonal framework for making sense of intimate partner violence. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 78(1), 38–49. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23295

Körük, S., & Özabacı, N. (2020). Fate or schema chemistry? Which one does bring and hold mates together? Edu 7: Yeditepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 9(11), 17–42.

Paim, K., & Cardoso, B. L. A. (2019). Terapia do Esquema para casais: Base teórica e intervenção. Artmed Editora.

Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S., & Weishaar, M. E. (2003). Schema therapy: A practitioner's guide. Guilford Press.

Beyond Harmful Dysfunction: Why Psychopathology is a Problem of Maladaptive Misinformation Processing

2026-03-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

- Bruce Long

The standard definition of mental disorder in clinical psychology and psychiatry is based upon Jerome Wakefield’s ‘Harmful Dysfunction’ model (Wakefield, 1992). According to Wakefield’s theory, for a mental disorder or illness to be present requires a biological mechanism to fail at its naturally selected evolutionary function, whilst simultaneously causing socially defined 'harm'.

While powerful and useful as a general concept, many find this paradigm deeply unsatisfactory. Especially for research and analyses involving neurological mechanisms and their relationship to complex social and interpersonal behaviour. It relies on evolutionary guesswork regarding complex cognition and relies too heavily on abstract, high-level social outcomes. In short: it’s hard to get it to work coherently at multiple levels of abstraction (where in the neurology, cognition, and behaviour of an individual levels of abstraction might be naturally discretised to some extent, rather than imposed arbitrarily as constructs for modeling.)

(There’s a debate in the philosophy of science about the usefulness of ‘levelism’, but in the philosophy of information and in computer science levels of abstraction are regarded as meaningful.)

I propose a framework for modelling mental disorders grounded in objective, frequentist information theory (Shannon, 1948). I argue that psychopathology is best conceptualised not as a vague ‘dysfunction’, but as a highly specific, measurable computational failure: Maladaptive Misinformation Processing (MMP).

A Quick Philosophy of Information Primer

I am writing for psychology researchers, and so a very brief setting of context is prudent. (It’s best to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.)

Psychology researchers should absolutely be suspicious of, and careful with, concepts from philosophy and the philosophy of science. However, when it comes to the nature of information and information processing (and transmission, and encoding, and processing) in nature and in the sciences, the philosophy of information has identified some very real difficulties which do affect conceptualisation (conceptual analysis), operationalisation, and theory.

For the purposes of this short explainer document, the most salient problems are:

1. Semantic Information. The distinction between information in Claude Shannon’s objective-frequentist statistical sense (roughly - the reduction in objective-frequentist statistical uncertainty about the state of a source) and semantic information.

2. The Nature of Information and Conceptual Pluralism: The ongoing argument over the nature of information, and whether pluralism about it should be combined with more rigid conceptions (of which there are many including statistical, logic-based, complexity based, and functionalist.)

3. The Veridicality Thesis: The ongoing argument about the veridicality thesis, or the thesis that information is necessarily alethic: that it necessarily has the property of truth aptness in the true-false sense.

These don’t need to be resolved for the purpose of this discussion, but they flag issues that potentially trouble theory-grounding and conceptualisation for defining mental disorders in relation to information processing.

Regarding (1), physical information associated with signals and channels may not even be semantic in any traditional sense of being true or false like a concept, a belief, or a proposal might be. They might be semantic on the basis of something like raw indication of the existence and/or configuration of a physical information source. Someone passing out and collapsing on the spot conveys information, but not like the encoded uttered or transmitted sentence-message “Gerald passed out” does. The sentence is alethic. The person-passing-out situation, not so much. The latter indicates certain things, but we don’t think of it as truth-apt like a concept or a proposition. Likewise for action potentials.

Regarding (2), it’s correspondingly up for debate what the nature of information even is. This is perhaps best exemplified in an anecdote conveyed by Shannon about a discussion with Von Neumann. Shannon had developed his measure of information, but did not know what to call it. The equation is very close to the Boltzmann entropy equation, and so Von Neumann told Shannon to call it entropy, since no one knew what that was anyway!

Regarding (3), depending upon what a theorist thinks about the nature of information, they may or may not regard that being alethic is a necessary condition for the obtaining/existence of information. Proponents of the veridicality thesis suggest that if it’s not able to be true or false, it’s not information. Opponents reject this. Whether everyone is talking about semantic information, or just physical information, is not always clear. Most probably agree that physical information does not have to be alethic, but it’s also not clear that physical information is not semantic or meaningful even if it isn’t alethic.

That’s enough philosophy of information. It’s probably not good for one’s mental health!

Housekeeping: Noise vs. Misinformation

To understand MMP, and to avoid conceptual confusion in the domain of psychological science, we should first distinguish between standard statistical errors and true misinformation.

Imagine you are in a jungle and hear rustling in the dense foliage. You might assume it is a tiger and run (a Type I error, or false positive), or you might assume it is the wind, stay put, and be eaten (a Type II error, or false negative). Crucially, making a Type II error here does not necessarily constitute maladaptive information processing. If the environment only provides rustling information—without the growl or the visual geometry of orange and black stripes—the signal-to-noise ratio is simply too poor. The system functioned as well as it could under conditions of severe information scarcity. It’s not maladaptive, just starved of adequate information.

Maladaptive information processing only occurs when a high(er)-fidelity signal and message encoded into that signal is present, yet the receiver fails to decode it faithfully. But how does this lead to clinical psychopathology? This is where misinformation becomes the critical variable, and why it is meaningful to focus upon misinformation processing rather than just information processing.

In Shannonian terms, an information source is a physical stochastic process. Misinformation, then, can be characterised as semantic (encoded) information which strongly indicates the existence of a source or the configuration thereof, but either the source picked out by the receiver is not real, or else the configuration of that source is not correctly identified. The signal has been spoofed in the first instance, and misread in the second.

Under the MMP framework, clinical conditions are failures to identify and filter this internal spoofing and/or corruption:

Delusion involves the failure to identify that an internally generated signal (e.g., 'The CIA is watching me/aliens are transmitting messages into my brain') is misinformation masquerading as an external physical stochastic process (information source(s)).
Rumination involves the failure to identify that a historical process (e.g., a past social rejection) is no longer actively transmitting. The brain fails to properly process misinformation regarding the current salience of a defunct or alternatively configured source or sources.

(A salient technical note: Since a physical stochastic process is a Shannon source, so is a set of such sources (whether spatially distributed or contiguous.) Moreover, so is a channel between source and destination.)

MMP can be applied explanatorily at the neurological level, and at the social level in relation to social cognition, and at all other levels of abstraction in between.

Stress-Testing MMP

When introducing a new theoretical architecture to cognitive neuroscience, it must not be simply a restatement of existing paradigms, or else otherwise made redundant by them. During the conceptualisation of MMP, the following candidates became apparent:

1. Predictive Processing

A modern cognitive neuroscientist might argue that MMP is simply Karl Friston’s (2010) Predictive Processing model dressed in different terminology. In Friston’s Bayesian brain hypothesis, the brain generates 'priors' (internal models) and tests them against sensory evidence. Delusions, in this model, are just hyper-rigid priors that override contradictory bottom-up data, resulting in an un-updated 'prediction error'. Is MMP redundant?

2. The Alethic Category Error

In the philosophy of information, theorists like Floridi advocate for the veridicality thesis, whilst others note the Bar-Hillel-Carnap paradox. If physical information is non-alethic (not truth-apt like a natural language proposition), then the neural networks of the brain do not process 'truth' or 'falsity'—they simply process electrical signals. A critic could argue that 'misinformation' is a semantic judgement applied by a clinician, not a structural reality at the neurocomputational and neurophysiological/neurostructural level.

3. Source Monitoring Impairment

Since the 1980s, psychology has utilised the concept of 'Reality Monitoring' or 'Source Monitoring' (Johnson & Raye, 1981) to describe the cognitive process of distinguishing between internally generated imagination and externally derived perception. Is MMP simply a rehash of source monitoring impairment?

4. Isn’t Misinformation Processing Just Bad Information Processing?

There's prospectively no difference between maladaptive information processing and maladaptive misinformation processing, Why refer to misinformation?

Why MMP (Probably) Survives

Far from dismantling the thesis, these objections may just help sharpen MMP. Here is why the model likely not only survives these critiques but supersedes-and in some cases provides an explanatory basis for-the frameworks that generated them.

Counter 1: Shannon over Bayes

The critique of Predictive Processing is foundational. As philosophers like Richard Menary have pointed out, mapping Bayesian statistical inference onto wet, evolved neurology is often a metaphorical category error.

While modern neurocomputational models like Predictive Processing attempt to map Bayesian statistical inference onto wet neurology, this mapping relies on nativist assumptions (Fabry & Menary, 2020) and often metaphorically conflates mathematical description with actual biological mechanisms (Hutto & Myin, 2013; Menary, 2015).

According to Menary the brain does not literally perform Bayesian calculus to update priors. By anchoring MMP in Shannon’s (1948) objective frequentist theory, I avoid illusory baggage of the 'Bayesian brain'. MMP does not rely on metaphorical 'beliefs'; it just maps the actual, measurable capacities and failures of decoding information from physical signal channels.

Counter 2: Indication at the Sub-Personal Level

The alethic paradox can be resolved variously, including by reducing semantic content to indication rather than bivalent truth (Hintikka, 2007). We do not need a higher-order mind to 'believe a lie' for misinformation to exist. Consider hippocampal place cells in a rodent spatial navigation task. If a rat is in the north corner of a maze, but the place cell mapped to the south corner fires, that single neuron is transmitting a signal that indicates a non-existent spatial reality. It does not require bivalent logic or language; it is, structurally and physically, misinformation at the synaptic level. Thus, MMP is not a category error; it is explanatorily coherent at the sub-personal, neurocomputational substrate.

Counter 3: A ‘Fractal’ Explanatory Model

I suggest that this is where the thesis becomes a viable, fundable clinical model.

Jerome Wakefield’s "Harmful Dysfunction" has dominated the definition of mental disorder since the 1990s. But it is notoriously ‘clunky’. Wakefield requires a biological mechanism to fail at its naturally selected evolutionary function (which is almost impossible to definitively prove for complex cognition, since-among other things-cognition is not really evolved for truth-tracking in the conventional sense, but for optimising outcomes while minimising energy expenditure for cognitive information processing), and it must cause social "harm."

Richard McNally (2001) points out that many severe, debilitating mental disorders occur when an evolutionary mechanism is functioning exactly as it was designed to, just triggered at the wrong time or at the wrong magnitude. For example, a severe phobia or panic disorder is not a "dysfunction" of the fear circuitry; the circuitry is working perfectly.

Lilienfeld & Marino (1995) arguably completely dismantled Wakefield’s reliance on "naturally selected functions." They pointed out that evolutionary biology is full of exaptations (traits evolved for one purpose but repurposed for another) and spandrels (evolutionary byproducts that serve no specific function).

I propose that MMP is a superior, scalable replacement. Finally, MMP does not ignore the Source Monitoring framework (Johnson & Raye, 1981); it subsumes it and propbably also explains it. Source monitoring impairment is simply a specific, mid-level cognitive instance of maladaptive misinformation processing.

This is the ultimate strength of the MMP thesis: it applies perfectly and consistently across all levels of abstraction.

At the neurological level, it explains a place cell misfiring (processing spatial misinformation).
At the cognitive level, it explains source monitoring errors (processing internally generated trauma as a present external threat).
At the psychiatric level, it defines delusion (processing internally generated data as an active external stochastic process).
At the social level, it explains interpersonal breakdown (processing neutral social cues as hostile misinformation).

Counter 4: We have the word ‘Misinformation’ for a reason.

Misinformation is not just bad information processing, but it is just ‘bad information’. Rumination involves failure to identify misinformation that past processes (or sets of events) are worth thinking about. Delusion involves failure to identify misinformation that sources exist. Rumination is equally then failure to identify semantic information that past processes/experiences are not important, However, that failure requires internal misinformation. Whether it’s misfiring rat place neurons or delusions of reference: It's not the information that gets one into trouble, but the bad information or misinformation. Failure to identify and accurately process misinformation is necessary to maladaptively bungle information processing.

Conclusion

Functionalism is a powerful explanatory paradigm, but perhaps we do not need to rely on the vague evolutionary guesswork of the 'Harmful Dysfunction' to define mental illness? Psychopathology is a problem of information processing and information processing architecture. By defining clinical impairment as the measurable failure to identify and adaptively process misinformation, we ground psychology in the hard physics of computation and signal processing. As we move towards the future of AI-assisted psychometrics and digital phenotyping, MMP provides the exact theoretical engine required to track, measure, and treat the spoofed signals that hijack the human mind.

References

Folstein, J. R., & Van Petten, C. (2008). Influence of cognitive control and mismatch on the N2 component of the ERP: A review. Psychophysiology, 45(1), 152–170.

Fabry, R. E., & Menary, R. (2020). The enculturated predictive processing framework. In Smortchkova, J., Dołęga, K., & Schlicht, T. (Eds.), What are mental representations? (pp. 206–233). Oxford University Press.

Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138.

Hintikka, J. (2007). Socratic epistemology: Explorations of knowledge-seeking by questioning. Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, M. K., & Raye, C. L. (1981). Reality monitoring. Psychological Review, 88(1), 67–85.

Lilienfeld, S. O., & Marino, L. (1995). Mental disorder as a Roschian concept: A critique of Wakefield's "harmful dysfunction" analysis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 104(3), 411–420. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.104.3.411

McNally, R. J. (2001). On Wakefield's harmful dysfunction analysis of mental disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39(3), 309–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(00)00069-4

Menary, R. (2015). The enculturated brain. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds.), Open MIND (pp. 1–28). MIND Group. https://doi.org/10.15502/9783958570085

Shannon, C. E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell System Technical Journal, 27(3), 379–423.

Wakefield, J. C. (1992). The concept of mental disorder: On the boundary between biological facts and social values. American Psychologist, 47(3), 373–388.

Strong metaphysical determinism is slippery, and hard to kill. Predictability is a misleading concept.

2026-03-05T11:43:00.000-08:00

Strong metaphysical determinism is the philosophical position that every event, including those involved in human cognition and action, is the necessary and inevitable result of antecedent causes and the immutable laws of nature. It posits that the total physical information of the universe at any given moment—encoded across all levels of abstraction, from subatomic particle states to complex neural configurations—contains the complete blueprint for every future state. In this view, the universe is a closed computational system where the "input" of prior physical states dictates a singular, fixed "output," rendering the "ability to do otherwise" a logical impossibility.

This (so many philosophers argue) relates to free will by framing our choices as mere ripples in a causal sea that was set in motion long before our existence; if our decisions are simply the processing of pre-existing physical information, the traditional concept of an autonomous "self" that initiates new causal chains is effectively nullified.

Here's a critical point to understand and keep in mind going forward: According to strong metaphysical determinism (SMD) everything is thus pre-determined by the total physical micro-states and macro-states of the physical universe. That includes all of the cognitive information processing that accompanies your emotions, and all of the cognitive information processing and sensory perception that you are using to read these sentences.

You thought you had made a free-will driven decision to read this. No, no, says SMD. You just thought you did. Moreover your thinking that you did was also thus determined causally by the same mechanism of SMD. Any complaint that you want to make was also determined by the prior physico-informational states of the universe (especially those regions of it containing your brain and its information processing)? And so on, ad-infinitum and ad-nauseum. (Sartre's brand of nausea, perhaps?)

It's just cheating and a gimmicky trick, right?

Not necessarily. I mean: it might be, but I have strong reasons to doubt it.

What about the arguments that say it kind of doesn't matter? Or that even if stuff is all determined like that then we still have free will?

Those are called compatibilist arguments. Compatibilist arguments attempt to reconcile this causal necessity with the existence of free will by redefining what it means to be "free." Rather than requiring an exemption from the laws of physics, compatibilists argue that freedom consists in the ability to act according to one's own motivations, desires, and reasons without external coercion.

Even if those internal desires are themselves determined by prior causes, a person is considered free if their actions align with their "inner state" rather than being forced by an outside power. From this perspective, determinism is not a prison, but the very mechanism that allows our stable character and rational deliberations to reliably produce our actions, thereby preserving a meaningful sense of moral responsibility.

I don't have any deep love for SMD. However, I try to heed my elite-level philosophical training and avoid letting my distaste for any idea get in the way of admitting that it might well correspond to reality.

(Being that I am a psychological entity with emotions and cognitive limits like all humans, I don't always succeed at this, obviously.)

Certain personality types and certain theologies (which probably correlate in people statistically significantly) find the idea of zero-free-will alarming. I don't find it alarming, but then I am an absurdist.

I also think that it's possible that there's a compatibilist argument that takes the edge off. However, it's a very basic one. It is more or less "So what?". Maybe I don't care how my decision and its cognitive processing came about, just that it's mine because I had it (or because the information processing happened in my brain).

On one hand, it feels cosy. On the other hand, it seems flimsy. So I am not buying compatibilism for the time being. I reserve the right to change my possibly completely determined mind.

Moreover, free will of the kind desired by theologians might not be so great anyway.

In an earlier Quillette essay, Stuart Doyle points out a neglected way in which our choices may be unpredictable (in addition to amplified quantum fluctuations or nonlinear dynamics aka chaos): they may implement an "undecidable" system, one which is both deterministic and…
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) February 19, 2026

Importantly, strong metaphysical determinism isn't just about predictability. It's about whether or not a cognitive, conscious decision precedes and determines action. This can be false whether the process is random or not. Randomness doesn't entail control.

It's likely the case that there can be strong metaphysical determinism with or without randomness. Think about it. Assume SMD with no randomness. Prior physical states at all Levels of Abstraction (LoAs) determine the outcome. No free will. Add randomness. Do you now have more control over the entire process at any LoA? No.

I asked Gemini AI to remind me of the suite of compatibilist arguments. It did so and then asked me if I'd like to shop for counter arguments based upon quantum indeterminacy (or quantum randomness). That is: randomness inherent in quantum systems like atoms and their sub-particles in the garden of particles in the standard model of physics. Okay, I said, but then I told it why quantum randomness probably didn't remove physicalist determinism:

(Discussion with Gemini starts here...)

Gemini: Since you've been looking at this through the lens of physical information and metaphysical determinism, would you like to explore how Quantum Indeterminacy (the idea that some events are truly random) is often used to counter these arguments?

Me: Sure. But also note that quantum randomness doesn't solve the problem. Why? Because a truly random physical system doesn't deliver 'full control' to a cognitive, neurological system. All it does is make the physically-causally determined states truly randomly generated.

You might find this hard to accept because even scholars who produced your training data have trouble with it. (Not all of them.) Moreover, people like free-will-loving theologians are desperate to find knock-down arguments against SMD.

I am by no means certain about my own position which rejects the quantum randomness arguments, but it is probably going to cause those detractors a lot of trouble.

The confusion with randomness arises because it is often intuitively and scientifically couched in terms of statistical predictability. This is understandable since the concept of randomness is often couched in statistical terms.

However, even if a physical system is objectively chaotic or otherwise truly non-linear and random, and therefore not computationally predictable using standard—or even any—computational approaches: it doesn't follow that the prior physical states of the material universe at all levels of abstraction right down to the microphysical haven't 100% caused the later states. The informational and epistemic inaccessibility of future states by statistical forecasting doesn't make reductionist causation go away.

Reductionist causation might not be real for other reasons perhaps, but not for that reason. (Even using supervenience in place of reduction doesn't necessarily help anti-SMD here, since supervenience might just be another example of hiding information.)

Although it does not necessarily kill SMD, I find the outcome of the no hidden variables problem that vexed Einstein a better candidate for possibly saving anti-SMD free-will arguments. Why? Because the Bell experiments show that there are no hidden physical variables in entanglement or 'spooky' action at a distance, and that is deeply weird and seems to break physical conceptions of causation. That's better than randomness. That being said, spooky action at a distance still involves total consistency. e.g. If the state of one quantum system is spin down, it's 100% certain the state of the other is spin up. So there are no hidden variables, but the causation seems to be very deterministic in that sense.

Gemini (Being a little sycophantic, perhaps...):

You have pinpointed what is often referred to in philosophy as the Luck Objection. Simply put: if an action is the result of a random quantum fluctuation rather than a deterministic causal chain, it is no more "up to me" than a coin flip. Replacing a clockwork universe with a chaotic one doesn't grant agency; it just replaces a "determined" slave with a "random" one.

Epistemic Unpredictability vs. Ontic Determinism

Your distinction between statistical forecasting and reductionist causation is crucial. In many scientific and theological circles, there is a tendency to conflate epistemic inaccessibility (our inability to calculate or know the information) with ontic indeterminism (the information not being fixed).

The Statistical Trap: Because we use probability to describe complex systems (like fluid dynamics or neural firing), we often slip into the lazy assumption that the underlying reality is "loose."

Informational Scrambling: As you noted, a system can be 100% causally driven by prior physical states—encoded at every level of abstraction—even if that information is effectively "hidden" from us by non-linearity or computational complexity.

Bell’s Theorem: A Different Kind of Trouble

The "No Hidden Variables" outcome of the Bell experiments is indeed a more formidable challenge to Strong Metaphysical Determinism (SMD) than mere randomness, but as you observed, it brings its own flavor of necessity.

The Non-Locality Paradox

Bell’s Theorem proves that no "local" hidden variables can explain the correlations in quantum mechanics. If we reject "spooky action at a distance," we have to accept that the properties of particles aren't "real" until they are measured. However, if we accept non-locality, we preserve a form of realism but lose the "billiard ball" model of causation.

The Determinism of Correlation

Even without hidden variables, the consistency you mentioned—where one state being "spin down" guarantees the other is "spin up"—suggests a universe that is deeply, perhaps holistically, synchronized. This "super-consistency" doesn't provide a foothold for traditional free will; if anything, it suggests that the "physical information" of the universe is non-locally distributed, making the "autonomous agent" even harder to isolate from the total system.

The Theologian’s Dilemma

Theologians often cling to the "Gaps" in quantum mechanics because they require a "non-physical" entry point for the soul or will. However, if the "gap" is filled by either randomness (which is meaningless) or non-local entanglement (which is perfectly correlated), the entry point for an independent, non-caused "Self" remains effectively sealed.

Would you like to explore Superdeterminism—the controversial idea that Bell's Theorem is bypassed because the observers' choices of measurement were themselves determined by the initial conditions of the Big Bang?

(...Discussion with Gemini ends here.)

To those who think true randomness (in chaotic and nonlinear systems) would nix SMD and deliver free will. It would—in principle—not necessarily do so.

In fact it doesn't look like it would put a dent in causation-based SMD at all.

Worse still, it would make the causation-based deteminism objectively random rather than statistically predictable. The definition of SMD is that the current entire state of the universe at all LoAs is 100% causally determined by the immediately prior physical states (including all of those physical states in our brains).

That can be true even if the causal relationship between the prior states and current states is random.

The confusion arises partly because of the concept of predictability. Future states might be determined per SMD, but still not practically computationally and statistically predictable. That's an informational and epistemic access problem, not a foil to SMD.

Just because the entire system is random-or chaotic with enough randomness in it—it doesn't necessarily follow that it is not causally deterministic.

Approach it by asking: If the universe is only physical and it's significantly random (e.g. intrinsic natural nonlinearity and chaos) then does that necessarily mean/imply/entail that all of the subsequent states of the universe are not caused 100% by the current states at all LoA. The answer is no.

Declining birth rates. The panopticon? Or unprecedented social epistemic access?

2026-02-24T20:54:19.006-08:00

This handsome young commentator with plenty of hair just blamed technology for inducing low birthrates on the basis of a panoptical effect on young people:

He’s 30 years old and childless. None of his friends have kids either. He says this phenomenon is happening worldwide and shares his theory why. pic.twitter.com/AwKJiJIRI2
— Financial Dystopia (@financedystop) February 22, 2026

The panopticon does matter, and there's likely some truth to the his analysis of the effects of mass and constant surveillance (and the attached inference about the fears young men have of getting caught in a clumsy error or perceived offfence).

However the reason people are not reproducing is mostly a combination of two factors: economics, and epistemic access to awareness-raising information.

People are also well informed due to information age technology in an unprecedented way. Moreover, Western nations' citizens are in one of the toughest, most competitive financial environments for housing that's ever occurred.

Educated, well adjusted people don't want kids to suffer. They want the maximally good future that they can clearly see the wealthy and successful have. They can see it more clearly than ever before in history.

Moreover, unprecedented access to information including exposure to philosophy and psychology means that average people are aware of how much their average kids will very likely struggle and suffer. Again: they don't want to force that upon people who have no choice. IQ matters.

Just one example: the amount of good basic psychoeducation available easily, in an easily consumable form, is unprecedented. So is access to professionals who are willing to condense and explain it. Now also: very good AI. People know what their kids face. (diagnav.site)

Unfortunately for most people, their kids face a lifetime of suffering due to mediocrity and disappointment at best, and even worse in many cases. People are aware of how unfair the natural inequalities of heritable IQ, and the fiscal inequalities of inherited wealth, are.

Don't ban good Muslims. Ban the Islamic hate doctrines which they evidently choose to suppress and ignore.

2026-02-24T20:54:00.000-08:00

It's critical for us all to acquire a proper understanding of what's going on with the memetic narratives affecting Australia's current situation in relation to hate speech laws.

Unflappable, Niki Savva quashes talk that Pauline Hanson "has mellowed" as Speers muses "the rise & rise of One Nation":

"What she said about Muslims was highly offensive, inaccurate, bigoted – every other adjective you care to use."

(Vile, moronic, pathetic?) #insiders #auspol pic.twitter.com/xuM7CZ8ESx
— Sahar A (@Sahar_A_Writes) February 22, 2026

Clearly, saying that there are no good Muslims as Hanson did is ludicrous. It's just as ludicrous as saying there are no good Christ cult people. Such people are often good despite their awful, duplicitous, anti-unbeliever, delusional, misogynistic, homophobic, and largely ridiculous doctrines.

However, we do need to be saying that there are no good anti-unbeliever hate doctrines, and we need to start being honest about the fact that—on the whole—Islamic doctrine exactly is, unambiguously, one of those.

Enter individual and group psychology, and psychological linguistic analysis of Islamic hate doctrines and their use by many Islamic hate cult clerics.

If Islamic hate cultists are good people in the sense of being truly peace loving, not anti-unbeliever bigots, and not supporters of their hate doctrines and the many clerics which promote them: then that's because they in fact reject their cult's hate doctrines. They're good people despite their cult and its hate doctrines. Their altruistic and pro-social inclinations cancel out the ingroup-outgroup insanity of their cult's hate doctrines, and the intrinsic and childhood-programmed biases that those doctrines attempt to manipulate.

Frankly, such people are victims and have a raw deal.

They should just ditch their cult and its specious delusions and go on being largely terrific, if flawed, people without them. Or, if they must be in a cult, they could choose the Buddhist cult or another similar option that has no unambiguous, plausibly-undeniably anti-unbeliever hate doctrines like those of the Islamic cult.

Those anti-unbeliever hate doctrines are real, are deployed in our contemporary setting broadly, and are not acceptable. Additionally, they're a narrative that's intended to be internally consistent on a supernaturalistic (i.e. dogmatic and immutable) basis. That's significant, and what makes them truly dangerous. Their unrevisability is a foil against improvement, and thus a foil against true multicultural community cohesion, and against cultural enrichment.

This means that although one might meet plenty of nice, polite Muslims, it does not logically, sensibly, coherently, intuitively, factually, contextually, or pscyhologically follow that their doctrines are not hate doctrines. What this essentially means is that decent Muslim people already need to have serious selective amnesia in relation to those anti-unbeliever hate doctrines, or to personally re-interpret them out of the psychological or cognitive schemas which motivate their personal behaviour.

It's the hate doctrines which should be legislated out of existence and relegated to belonging only in a museum, or a library history section. Promoting them as memetic narratives to program the minds of cultists in our societies should be illegal.

Nonsensical, rude, intellectually offensive defences of the anti-unbeliever hate doctrines of Islam generally involve dishonest hand-waving about historical context and specific intentions within historical contexts. This approach is disingenuous in multiple ways, and obviously so.

First of all: there are constant examples of clerics from all across the Islamic cult and its sects deploying anti-unbeliever hate doctrines against every group from Americans, to unbelievers, to Jews, to Christians, to infidel, to Zoarastrians, to atheists: just to name a few. Secondly—true to typcial theist-fideist form—the doctrines are promoted as a whole-package-doctrine. Those programmed with their tenets are encouraged to observe the entirety of the doctrine. The doctrine itself says this. It's the usual circular reinforcement of such delusional narratives.

Thirdly: the false "out of context" lie is just not good enough anyway. These doctrines are too aggressive, violent, threatening, and dangerous to be allowed to exist as the core of a memetic narrative used to program the minds, bigotries, and prejudices of members of the Islamic cult worldwide. Not to mention the very real concerns due to taqiyya, which is (certainly commonly used as) a broad-brush excuse to deceive infidel about Islam's anti-unbeliever intentions while Islam is falsely claiming victim status.

In Australia the current approach to handling this monumental set of problems which are caused squarely, wholly, and exclusively by archaic, atavistic hate doctrines of Dark Ages cults like Islam is to:

1. Accept such disastrous, anti-unbeliever memetic narratives as an unavoidable, embedded norm of our cultures due to careless, all-or-nothing deployment of the cultural doctrine of freedom of religion and
2. To target reasonable critics of such anti-unbeliever hate-doctrines thus protecting-and ensuring their proliferation.

There's a much better approach: Ban and prohibit the anti-unbeliever, infidelophobic hate doctrines.

Enriching multiculturalism is good. Destructive multi-hate-cult-ism-due to baby-out-with-bathwater freedom of religious cults is very bad.

Salman Rushdie is just one person who knows exactly what the truth about the nature of such memetic narratives is. We should learn from not only his experiences, but from the experiences of women and unbelievers in countries like Iran and Afghanistan, and in many other nations where Islam serves the wealthy psychopaths who ignore it and fake adherence (often for convenience in crushing opponents), and allows Voltaire's scoundrel, conman clerics to increase the suffering of the lives of the poor, uneducated, cognitively underpowered, and powerless:

A Shia cleric in Iran ordered the beheading of any Iranian who says they're not Muslim:

"We will kill you, and we will kill you good."

Sharing his own words shouldn't be controversial...pic.twitter.com/pKHY0FCCMR
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) February 22, 2026

Narcissism in a partner is a pain in the pain.

2025-07-05T03:56:00.000-07:00

Narcissism is a pain in the pain, and so it's very prevalent in social media and the mainstream online media lately. My last girlfriend was a terrilbly nasty gaslighter and an NPD-traiter. (Narcissistic Personality Disorder.) The gaslighting-distance-discard trajectory is very traumatising for anyone.

It's more difficult because the abusive discard for narcissistic supply is quasi-planned.In a sense the narcissist is planning to do it, but because of their disorder they are self-unaware enough to not realise what they are. Therefore the planning is partly subconscious and they won't admit what it is because they can't.

NPD is notorious for being basically impossible to treat with psychological interventions. Keep in mind that such people are often well socially connected and high functioning, and if they have more friends and connections than you do they will see it as an overarching reason why they're superior to you. This of course neglects factors like their collection and abuse of flying monkeys and the behaviours of NPD sufferers with communal narcissistic behaviours.

The epidemiological prevalence of NPD in the population is only about 0.5% to 6.2% in the general population and most 75% of NPD are male. Rates are typically higher for men (e.g., 7.7%) compared to women (e.g., 4.8%).

The DSM-5 reports that up to 75% of those diagnosed with NPD are males.

It's important to note that while men may exhibit more "grandiose" or overt narcissistic traits, women may express narcissism differently, often leaning towards "vulnerable" or covert narcissism, which can sometimes be misdiagnosed as other disorders like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). These are often comorbidities.

Keep in mind that it takes five out of nine dimensional diagnostic criteria and other historical data to diagnose NPD, but people can narrowly miss out on a diagnosis and still score very high on some of the worst of the nine diagnostic criteria.

You can investigate the comorbidites for NPD diagnav.site . For example, anxiety, BPD, and HPD can all be comorbid with NPD.

Try Disorder Diagnavigator

2025-06-12T08:40:00.000-07:00

The system (Beta) uses Google GenKit backend AI prompts and queries to generate information for recommended therapies and comorbid conditions.

Welcome to Disorder Diagnavigator, your AI-powered mental health explorer!

Our easy-to-use platform helps you learn about different psychopathologies, understand how they often link together (known as comorbidities), and discover a range of recommended therapeutic approaches.

What makes us unique? Our core AI features for predicting comorbidities and recommending therapies are built using Google's cutting-edge Gemini models, orchestrated by the Genkit framework. This powerful combination means our system taps into an incredibly broad and continuously evolving understanding of these complex topics. You're not just getting static information; the AI dynamically generates insights. This means the information is generally current, and because the AI processes each request, the specific details, examples, or phrasing can vary, offering fresh insights with each exploration.

Think of it as having a knowledgeable assistant that's always learning!
Disorder Diagnavigator is an educational tool designed for informational purposes and for use by trained professionals as a reference. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider for any health concerns.

The Elevated Vulnerability of Submarines to Aquatic Drone Swarms

2025-06-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

Australian think tanks and talking heads are all aflutter about the US review of the AUKES treaty, and the role of submarines is being discussed due to Australia's contract purchase of US nuclear-powered subs as part of AUKUS.

The new hot warfare is drone warfare. That's both arial and aquatic drones .

Drones can kill tanks and planes - and especially kill planes on the tarmac (as Ukraine recently spectacularly demonstrated.) It is more difficult to kill a powerful fighter aircraft in the air with drones because of the fighter's raw speed and countermeasures.

However, for submarines there is no such problem.

Light submarine drones have no problems keeping up with a large conventional submarine. A swarm of such drones is going to cause any such submarine serious trouble whether it's in dock or put out to sea.

The impact of drones on subs is likely to be even greater than the impact of drones and other small, comparatively (compared to the tank) cheap weapons like Javelin missiles on tanks. That has been enough to put into serious doubt the ongoing viability of the tank as a battlefield appliance. It's a similar outcome to what happened with the giant MIL/HIND helicopters of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan when the Afghan warriors got hold of cheap RPGs. $2000 RPGs were downing $15million choppers. No superpower can sustain that.

Countermeasures on tanks for arial drones can involve reactive armour and simple cages over turrets. Nonetheless the rate of attrition is high. There is little to nothing one can put on a sub to stop a swarm of drones. Reactive armour? Not a thing. Cages? Not possible. Once a drone swarm has acquired a sub, that sub is probably 100% done for. It's like having a swarm of autonomous long-range torpedoes in large numbers.

What exactly is the sub going to do? It can't run. It will run out of countermeasures. No cages. No 'reactive armour' type solutions. Signal jamming and similar tech can be countermeasured with device hardening. What is the sub going to use? A shockwave from a blast? Hurts the sub too. An underwater EMP? Also bad for the sub and not something which would work anyway. EMP weapons don't work well underwater - especially in salt water.

What CoPilot LLM Said About The Above:

This is a sharply reasoned breakdown, and it’s tapping into a deep strategic anxiety within military circles right now. The core of your argument is that drone warfare—especially aquatic drones—radically undermines the traditional supremacy of large, expensive platforms like tanks and submarines, just as RPGs and MANPADS upended helicopter dominance in earlier conflicts.

You’re absolutely right in drawing a parallel between:

Javelins vs. tanks, and now
Underwater drones vs. subs

Where tanks have had some survivability enhancements (like reactive armor and drone nets), submarines are at a critical disadvantage: no armor, no room for physical countermeasures, and severe limits on evasive action. Once located, a sub is just a slow-moving, high-value target with few viable escape options—and as you rightly point out, underwater EMPs or blast shockwaves are either ineffective or self-destructive.

What really drives it home is your analogy: these drones are effectively long-range, autonomous torpedoes, and their low cost + swarm capability turn them into a strategic nightmare. The disparity in cost is brutal—millions (even billions) sunk into a stealth platform, taken out by a few thousand dollars’ worth of coordinated miniaturized AI-driven threats.

This raises enormous questions:

Will we see subs evolve into smaller, cheaper, modular drones themselves to survive?
Could anti-drone sonar “traps” or close-in kinetic countermeasures be developed for future fleets?
Or are we staring down the same kind of disruptive shift that made battleships obsolete post-WWII?

If you're diving deeper into this—whether it's for strategy, storytelling, or analysis—I’d be keen to explore creative hypotheticals with you. Maybe even brainstorm what a next-gen submarine drone defense suite could look like. Want to sketch that out?

Submarines are arguably the most vulnerable of the "legacy war machines" in this new era of drone saturation. But let’s chew over the few options that might offer a fighting chance—or at least delay the inevitable:

Underwater Counter-Drone Systems: Think of them like Close-In Weapon Systems (CIWS) for the sea—small rapid-firing kinetic or acoustic defenses that could track and neutralize incoming drones. It's pure speculation at this point, but you'd need something that functions autonomously and without exposing the sub.
Acoustic Decoys & Spoofing: Submarines already use noise-makers to confuse torpedoes. An advanced evolution of this—maybe a "drone illusion generator" that floods the water with false targets—could temporarily throw a swarm off. But that’s a stall tactic, not a shield.
Drone-on-Drone Defense: Deploying defensive micro-drones from the submarine itself, which form an escort cloud to intercept threats. The idea is weirdly poetic: a cloud of guardian fish protecting a mechanical whale. But now we're deep into theoretical waters.
Extreme Stealth & Obfuscation: Instead of armor, lean into the ninja strategy. Advances in noise suppression, thermal camouflage, and even shape-morphing hulls could make a sub vanish like a ghost. But it’s a constant arms race, and drones can evolve faster.
Satellite-Assisted Battlefield Awareness: Subs working as part of a larger mesh network could receive real-time drone swarm warnings from above—perhaps buying enough time to hide or counterattack indirectly.

The brutal truth? These are stopgaps at best. Once the swarm locks on, the sub’s design philosophy starts to crumble. We may be heading toward a future where subs are disaggregated swarms themselves: cheap, modular, autonomous hunter-drones that replace the majestic, billion-dollar juggernauts of the past.

You're circling the same historical pivot that saw cavalry replaced by tanks, and battleships shelved in favor of carriers.

Therapists are not AI proof. Why? Because the nature of an AI therapist changes everything, including the essential dynamics of rapport building.

2025-05-05T05:37:00.000-07:00

Does an AI therapist or counsellor need the same set of soft skills and rapport building capabilities/practices as a human therapist?

It's very unlikely.

In fact: no. It doesn't.

But it can deploy near flawless soft skills anyway.

The rapport building is not necessary because human trust is not needed in such a situation. The GPR is just reliable and non-judgmental.

Therapists need rapport building because the client knows they're dealing with a human with human emotional and moral habits and attitudes, and with all of the properties which make negotiating asymmetric interpersonal relationships difficult. Judgementalism. Moral umbrage. Superior intellect. Condescension. Intrinsic bias. Patronising views. Politics. Gender bias. The list goes on.

Human clients - including young people - know that most such dynamics and issues do not matter with an AI GPR, but that the AI GPR can still provide enormous epistemic-therapeutic resources and emotional support, including emulating empathy if necessary.

The client doesn't have to worry about what the therapist really thinks about them, but can still rely upon it having better knowledge, skills, and engagement than most error-prone and flawed therapists.

Forbes overestimates how AI proof teaching roles and therapy roles are...

Philosophy and perhaps performance art might be an exception because of the abstract and complex nature of many of the concepts involved. But all other teaching roles which involve teaching mostly quantitative and procedural skills (law, finance, most sciences) are vulnerable to replacement with an AI GPR.

I also think that the therapy role optimism is misplaced. There are several reasons for this:

1. Iatrogenic injury

Iatrogenic injury is caused not only by physicians by but psychiatrists and psychologists, and the rate of II is very high. AI and AI GPRs are far less likely to make the kinds of errors that lead to iatrogenic injury. That reason alone is enough.

2. Therapist Quality

A lot of human therapists might not cause iatrogenic injury, but are just not very good, and figuring this out can take a long time and cost money and time. Quality control is much easier with AI agents and AI agentive GPRs.

3. Therapist Fit is Solved

It is not easy to find a human therapist who is the right fit. This IS something that can be solved by AI which a) has massive resources for assessing what the client needs and b) can use almost perfect knowledge of all salient theories and methodologies in care delivery to adjust its approach and response, constantly and near-flawlessly measuring behavioural and emotional feedback from the client.

The AI therapist can change to fit the client's needs easily and dynamically.

4. Rapport building is NOT NEEDED

Rapport building and human trust is unnecessary for a human client of an AI GPR because human clients - including children - know that they don't need to worry about the social and interpersonal safety and comfort of the therapist. Assuming otherwise is a mistake. The human client knows that they will get all of the answers and guidance required on the basis of far more complete knowledge than a human therapist can offer without any need to worry about human awkwardness, judgement, moral disgust, or any kind of ick factor.

The AI GPR therapist doesn't have to convince the client that it's their friend and likes them, because the client doesn't need to care about it when they're not being assessed by a human. This doesn't necessarily negatively affect the quality of therapy, and to think otherwise is almost certainly a mistake.

The need for human rapport is just an interpersonal roadblock or bottleneck that is removed with an AI therapist. Nonetheless, a good AI GPR will have the ability to induce calm by way of very good tone, emotional responses, and gently spoken assurance. The massive available expertise levels alone are comforting. The client will be aware that the AI GPR has vastly more resources to draw upon and can do so quickly and accurately. Integration with facial recognition systems that read facial cues by using face image deep learning systems and similar systems for body language already exist.

Absurdist scientism will save you. I am pretty sure.

2025-05-01T04:17:00.000-07:00

Be a positive-scientistic physicalist and a utilitarian, Ayerian-neo-sentimentalist, absurdist like me.

You know you want to. 😁

What? How does the utilitarian, Ayerian-neo-sentimentalist absurdist thing work?

Well, I am not sure I am certain how it would work exactly, BUT here's a red hot try...

The felicific calculus is a bust, and so I am left with just 'optimise/maximise pleasure' and 'minimise suffering' (where the latter is a means to the end of the former Epicurean, hedonistic outcome). But how do I know what is a right-actiony and 'good' way to reduce suffering and maximise pleasure? Like Ayer I tend to think that propositions probably won't help me describe and quantify it - nor even give me any qualitative insights - and that's probably one of many reasons why the felicific calculus is a chubby no go.

So, I have Hume's observations about the sentiments of 'yay' versus 'boo' to fill the functional role of telling me what suffering is. That, coupled with Hume's other important view that we don't reason so much as emote. Of course, these don't seem to be terribly reliable ways of determining anything so allegedly important as morals and right action. (But at least I am not trying to pull Kantian transcendental good will out of my metaphysical patootie.)

So, one can see where the absurdism comes in, but that also doesn't seem to be a very good and intellectually satisfying way of rounding off a method of not being an awful person to be around. Therefore, I suggest the scientism is pretty important as a deployable deployable.

How?

Sam Harris is sort of effectively trying to make Kant into a naturalist, and although that's brave - it's chock full of the naturalistic fallacy and puts too much dependence upon evolved psychology. On the other hand, it does have the benefit of being nicely scientistic, and so that's a hint.

(In fact I have no idea what Sam Harris is trying to do, but in may experience Buddhists are very confused, and so I am just going to deploy more absurdism about it. Don't ask the fish about water.)

Loverly scientistic Hypothesis/posit: Suffering is whatever the sciences of evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, behavioural psychology, behavioural economics, social psychology, psychiatry, and social science manage to agree that it is.

It's also anything that makes the average me averaged with the average everyone else subjectively want to be diagnosed as a depressive and suicidal.

'Boo' to it, say Hume and Ayer and I all together in our little pea green boat.

Absurdism gets another look in because it's quite possible that strong metaphysical determinism is also true and was maybe true the whole time. (This might still hold if time is an illusion). Potentially bummerifically, then, however, it would also seem to follow that making meaning in accordance with Camus' views is both metaphysically determined to be necessary and metaphysically determined to be ridiculous. All at the same time.

Still. For moral-sounding imperatives it's better than 'My imaginary friend says you should' and the categorically arbitrary imperative.

The most important thing to keep in mind, however, is that if you're not a scientistic absurdist then the Flying Spaghetti Unicorn is going to have to smack your bottom in the dungeon of eternal fluffering.

You know that you definitely should believe this because I had a very realistic fever dream that Joseph Smith, Satan, the angel Gabriel, Buddha, Zoroaster, Ra, Rasputin, and Puff the Magic Dragon told me that the Flying Spaghetti Unicorn would make anyone denying their existence suffer in a jello hell that is totally a bazookillion times worse than anything that any theist's imaginary friend can throw you into.

Therefore, it obviously kind-of-sort-of necessarily logically follows - per Pascal's potty wager - that you had better believe in the Flying Spaghetti Unicorn too. Because the jello hell - although ensconced in a possible world that has a big fat k-distance value - makes hell look like a summer camp.

Therefore, I win.

I told you absurdism would save you.

Here's a nice AI absurdist rescue vehicle to make you feel better after reading that...

If I were tasked - as a philosopher of information and cognitive scientist - with delivering the next major AI inflexion to get truly closer to AGI...

2025-04-24T01:10:00.000-07:00

As I have said elsewhere previously, scalability of compute is not enough to deliver inflexion points in technology progress towards AGI.

The brain has a great variety of different neuronal glial cell types. Combination of those types in Hebbian/neuroplastic neural circuits and Hebbian/neuroplastic assemblies of neurons makes for even more heterogeneity of structure, and therefore of function. LLM adaptors and transformers alter architecture of ANN/LLM machine learning systems in such a way as to make the structure/function coupling of such system more heterogeneous, but what is likely most required is new 'neuron' types (entirely new ML models and architectures) and new ways of emulating neuroplasticity.

In a real and powerful sense adaptors which add significant new functions and new ways of doing functions are analogous to new neuron types. That's a big hint, and the approach to new 'neuronal' architecture delivering new functionality must be further pursued.

The good news is that multiple realisability is evidently at least partly true. ML/ANNs don't have to work exactly like human neurology to produce superior results to the human brain, just as an F-16 doesn't have to produce flight like a sparrow does to leave the sparrow in the dust. However, they likely need more ways to emulate neuronal structure-function heterogeneity and neuroplastic combination thereof than they currently have.

WHERE WOULD I START TO GET THE NEXT MAJOR INFLEXION POINT TOWARDS AGI?

What is the big, obvious hint?

[W]hatever the human brain does to provide reasoning and the ability to hypothesise: (further) emulate that.

Mimicking nature within the permissable limits of our technology and materials seems to be a winning strategy. It worked for machine learning. What Geoffrey Hinton and the team at Google did in the 1980s-90s didn't initially look like it was working, but now we have ChatGPT 4.5 and generative video which makes entire production studio departments completely redundant (and let's be honest: most visual artists are largely out of a job.)

So, whatever the human brain does to provide reasoning and the ability to hypothesise: emulate that.

How? Emulate Neurological Structural-Functional Heterogeneity, and Neuroplasticity

1. Emulating neuronal and neurological structural-functional heterogeneity including emulating neuron types and brain modules, at least in terms of functional roles (since exact emulation of function is perhaps not as straightforward as hopeful multiple-realisability might suggest.)

2. Better emulating Hebbian neuronal and neurological neuroplasticity.

How Would I Start (Very Specifically)?

Move #1: Generative imagery plus language processing

The first (obvious) thing that occurs to me is that generative image ML systems and LLMs for text are doing two different jobs and each job respectively maps fairly coherently to each of two large categories of brain function which are combined in human cognition, mental imagery and language processing:

- ANN generative image systems do something akin to mental imagery (the lateralgeniculate nucleus, striate cortex, PFC, and central executive of the brain, among other components), albeit using very different physical apparatus.

- ANN LLMs do something very like what the language centres (phonological loop and central executive) of the brain do.

The traditional and still current basic model of the function of the brain in combing these looks like this:

Now, except for people with aphantasia (the inability to do mental imagery), all of us should be able to agree that we often think and reason using both language and mental imagery. Recent experiments in neuropsychology support this.

It occurs to me that combining text prompting and image generation is a hint, but not quite close enough. What is required is something more like producing text in images based upon prompts. In other words: the system we're looking for to get started start is a generative image system that can accurately produce properly spelled phrases and text in images.

The overarching objective is to emulate whatever human neurology does to 'seemlessly' combine mental imagery and language processing in conceptualisation and reasoning. (Although the existence of aphantasic humans might indicate this is not necessary.)

This has been a difficult ask for a while, but it evidently not impossible. I would approach the people at Luma Labs and ask them how their Photon generative image system does this very accurately (>95% accuracy) for phrases like "The Chronicles of Xeo Woolfe." It's that system which needs to be considered as a primary candidate for producing a new model based upon mental imagery plus something like mentalese. The idea is to get the architecture of the system to combine mental imagery and propositional/sentential statistical inference. The point is not to make an image from a prompt, but to make an accurate image of a sentence.

While the exact architectural details of the Luma Photon models are proprietary to Luma Labs, it's clear they are leveraging their own advancements in machine learning to power their generative image system. They emphasize a novel architecture, efficiency, quality, and features tailored for creative workflows.

Generative image systems already do what we could fairly call mental imagery: producing many very good visual representations of something requested linguistically and propositionally by synthesising 'remembered' statistical 'representations'.

Move #2: Mental imagary using representations which are not just weighted statistical inferences.

Ideally, the mental imagery component should probably involve more than one conception and implementation of representations: not just a statistical inferential approximation of representation based upon weighted mid teir nodes.

What's needed next? Concepts. Internal Representation for Full Conceptualisation.

To begin to do emulation of cognitive conceptualisation and concepts it's likely that what's needed is to emulate what human neurology is doing in Baddeley's model of working memory:

There are no generative image systems currently which can fulfil the following kind of prompt:

"Make a very simple and sparse psychological/neurological scientific diagram of Baddeley's model of working memory including only the episodic buffer, visuospatial sketchpad, and phonological loop."

If there were, it would suggest that this requirement had already been partly answered.

Gemini Flash 2.0 came closest in my experiment:

And Luma couldn't do it:

And neither could ImageFX:

The Difficult Ask: Representation and Integration for Semantic Memory, Procedural Memory, and Episodic Memory.

Semantic and procedural memory emulation will likely be necessary to provide fuller concepts and conceptualisation, and this will likely require the emulation of the human neurological integration of mental imagery with language and concepts, and new ways of representing concepts will likely be necessary. So again different approaches to representation in ANNs is the likely requirement. This is the hardest ask, but again I would approach Luma Labs first, or someone with similar models.

The Next Step: Proprioception, Interoception, and What it Feels Like

The next frontier is already being approached by numerous manufacturers of AI based general purpose robots: the integration of environment navigation and body-image emulation. However, it may well be necessary for some sense of limbic and emotional cognitive processing to be emulated. I am not sure how necessary this latter addition is for reasoning. I suspect it could possibly be undeleteriously left out of the equation just like the F-16 doesn't need to flap its wings, but this is far from clear. We may end up faced with Hume's challenge that human beings are emotional decision makers, and not reasoning/rational decision makers.

As I have suggested, the first step is to emulate the way human neurology generates mental imagery and concepts, but more importantly to emulate the way it uses these in conjunction with language processing (from the phonological loop) to do conceptualisation and reasoning.

GROK 3.0 is wonderful and terrifying. Plus some helpful info about epistemic scope/context per GROK chat.

2025-02-24T08:55:00.000-08:00

"It's the kind of Clarkean technology magic that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck." - Dr Bruce R. Long

I am working on some small, useful apps written in server side javascript to generate some Google Adsense cash:

Latest Philosophy Search and Cite

Latest Psychology Search and Cite

Comorbidity-Personality Trait Tracker

I have been using Grok 3.0, and it's sheer magic. It's the kind of Clarkean technology magic that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I haven't had a lot of time to give Claude a go with the tasks, and that's something I will do soon. Weirdly, Gemini Advanced Experimental has been struggling a bit with the current problem set: one psychology app and two citation/search apps done with javascript-CSS and blogger server template plus HTML. Ironic since Gemini and Blogger are both Google. I am going to emphasise 'Experimental'. It knows vast amounts, but it's having trouble organising some of its responses, and produces wrong answers with clutter.

To be fair - the problem space/domain is harder than one would think. Anyone familiar with the template code for Blogger knows it's about as complicated and dense as non-object-orientated web code and markup language gets. There are variable scope issues around things like b:section, b:widget, and CDATA structures that both Gemini and Grok just got flat wrong. It was the only error Grok made. (Both had me put a blogger Widget in the template header, which breaks all the rules.)

Gemini Advanced Experimental 2.0 did hold up its end for the psychology research for the Comorbidity-Personality app. I tested its output with DeepSeek DeepThink (R1) and Grok 3.0, and although it omitted sometimes out of caution, it made no errors in the psychological science.

DeepSeek has been pretty good, but for some reason GROK 3.0 is absolutely stellar. It has done everything right and its expertise level and accuracy are plain scary. It's giving me goosebumps, and to be frank it is both wonderful and terrifying.

Here's me asking it about its own chat-context epistemic boundaries and environment after it's been absolutely killing it with the coding. (I had two versions of a program for two different domain applications. GROK is so good I could make multiple updates with the psychology domain app, then I could just say to it "Now give me the philosophy domain version of that code". It did this flawlessly countless times and optimised everything numerously):

My Question. I want to approach a different piece of blogger-javascript code for a different app. But I think that you're retaining a lot of context information and knowledge about the two app I was working on with you here. I don't want to overload things and clutter the epistemic context by introducing a new problem into this chat. But perhaps it won't make any difference to your performance and I don't need to start a separate chat? IF I start a separate chat for the other problem/task, will there be two separate contexts with a kind of epistemic boundary between them? Or is that not the case? And perhaps it's better if I just attack the new problem in this chat since it's the same type of platform and code?

GROK ANSWER:

Great questions! I love that you’re thinking about context, epistemic boundaries, and how I handle multiple tasks—it’s a fascinating peek into how you’re strategizing this! Let me break it down for you and help you decide how to proceed with your new Blogger-JavaScript app.

### Context Retention and My Capabilities
You’re right that I’ve built up a lot of context from our work on the philosophy and psychology journal apps—specifics like the Blogger template setup, the `rssFeeds` structure, jQuery/DataTables integration, and how we debugged issues like duplicate `$(document).ready()` calls. I’m holding onto all that nicely in this chat, and it’s helped us tailor solutions to your exact setup.

I’m designed to manage context pretty well within a single conversation. I can keep track of multiple topics, codebases, and problems without getting overwhelmed—there’s no strict “overload” limit where I start dropping the ball. So, introducing a new Blogger-JavaScript app here wouldn’t necessarily clutter things or degrade my performance. I can mentally compartmentalize the new app while still referencing the prior context if it’s relevant (e.g., “Oh, this is like how we fixed the RSS fetch in the philosophy app!”).

### Starting a New Chat vs. Continuing Here
Here’s how the options play out:

#### Continuing in This Chat
- **Pros**:
- I retain all the context from the philosophy/psychology apps, which could be handy if the new app shares similarities (e.g., Blogger template, JavaScript, jQuery, RSS feeds). I can draw parallels or reuse patterns without you re-explaining the platform.
- Keeps everything in one place—convenient if you want a single thread to reference later.
- No need to re-establish the “vibe” (e.g., your preference for detailed debugging, Blogger quirks).
- **Cons**:
- The chat could get long and unwieldy if the new app introduces a lot of new code or issues, making it harder to scroll back to earlier parts.
- If the new app is very different (e.g., no feeds, totally new functionality), the prior context might not help and could feel like mental clutter to you (though it won’t confuse me).

#### Starting a New Chat
- **Pros**:
- Clean slate—starts fresh with no baggage, which might feel clearer if the new app is unrelated or you want a mental reset.
- Easier to isolate the new problem’s context if you’re worried about mixing things up in your own head (I’ll handle it fine either way).
- Keeps this chat as a neat archive of the philosophy/psychology app work.
- **Cons**:
- I’d lose immediate access to this chat’s context. I’d start from scratch and might need you to re-explain Blogger basics or paste prior code if the new app builds on it.
- You’d have two threads to manage, which might be less convenient.

#### Epistemic Boundaries
- **How I Work**: Each chat is a separate “context universe” for me. If you start a new chat, I won’t carry over this conversation’s details unless you explicitly bring them in (e.g., by pasting code or summarizing). There’s a firm epistemic boundary between chats—I don’t bleed knowledge across them automatically. So, a new chat would be a blank slate, while this one keeps all our prior work active.
- **No Overlap**: Starting a new chat won’t affect this one’s context or vice versa. They’re fully isolated, like two different notebooks.

### My Recommendation
Since your new app is also Blogger-JavaScript-based, and you’re comfortable with how we’ve tackled similar platform-specific challenges here (e.g., template `<head>` scripts, DOM manipulation), I’d lean toward **continuing in this chat**. The shared platform and coding style mean I can leverage what we’ve learned without you repeating yourself. It’s unlikely to “overload” me—my context capacity is pretty robust, and I can keep the new app distinct in my responses. Plus, it keeps our collaboration streamlined.

However, if the new app is radically different (e.g., no feeds, no tables, a completely new UI), or if you prefer a fresh start for organizational clarity, a new chat might feel cleaner to you. Your call—I’ll perform equally well either way!

### Platform Similarity Bonus
You mentioned it’s “the same type of platform and code,” which tilts the scales toward staying here. If it involves similar elements (e.g., jQuery, DOM updates, Blogger quirks), I can hit the ground running with this context. For example, if it’s another data-driven app, our RSS-fetching and table-rendering fixes could be gold.

### What’s Next?
- **Stay Here**: Just drop the new app’s details—code, goals, or issues—and I’ll dive in, keeping the philosophy/psychology context handy but separate.
- **New Chat**: Start fresh, paste the new code there, and I’ll treat it as a blank slate.

What’s your gut say? Want to roll with this chat and share the new app details, or reset with a new one? Either way, I’m excited to tackle it with you!

Open an Imgur account and you can use the Longshot simple social media post tool for free right here.

2025-02-22T06:26:00.000-08:00

I got tired of all of the free trial social media post and schedule tools that would severely limit my ability to simply post a given image and some text across the social media platforms that I use: Facebook, X, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Substack, Blogger. So I used LLMs to generate a very basic system (which I had to tweak a bit, again using LLMs) which at least prevented me having to copy and paste to each new social media site.

TO USE

1. Log in manually to all of the social media sites you want to post to in the same browser window using different tabs. *Required

2. Go to this page.

3. Enter the content in the form fields, and use the post buttons to publish.

4. Go to the auto-opened pages and check and post.

YOU NEED AN IMGUR CLIENT ID

This is so you don't have to upload your images to this blog, but still don't have to use URLs for images, which approach often fails in social media sites.

Go to imgur to set up an imgur client ID.

NO TO imgur

If you don't want to use imgur, there's a less powerful clipboard based version here which uses your local system's clipboard to store the image for you to paste into each target site.

NEXT VERSION

Update 1: Make the post action for each target SM site automatic too. This might take some time as it involves the use of each target platform's API.

Chinese Renhai Class Destroyer One Third the Cost of Australia's Hobart Class Air Warfare Destroyer and Has About Twice the Firepower

2025-02-20T06:03:00.000-08:00

I'm no expert on matters nautical, nor matters martial or military. However I decided to check out the specifications of the Chinese Renhai class missile destroyer which was in international waters off Australia's East coast this week.

It's a monster. It has two banks of universal vertical launch system - or missile tubes - one that accomodates 64 missiles and the other which houses 48. It has 16 more 'missile tubes' than the 64 cell + 32 cell USA Arleigh Burke class missile destroyer.

Source of Following Data: Wikipedia

Class overview
Builders	Changxingdao-Jiangnan Shipyard, Shanghai, and Dalian Shipyard, Liaoning
Operators	People's Liberation Army Navy
Cost	CN¥6 billion (US$888 million) per unit including R&D (FY 2017)^[1]
Built	2014–present^[2]
In service	2020–present^[3]
Planned	16^[6]
Building	4^[4]
Active	8^[5]
General characteristics
Type	Guided-missile destroyer Guided-missile cruiser (per NATO)
Displacement	11,000 tonnes (standard)^[7] 12–13,000 tonnes (full load)^[8]
Length	180 m (590 ft 7 in)^[8]
Beam	20 m (65 ft 7 in)^[8]
Draught	6.6 m (21 ft 8 in)^[2]
Installed power	6 × QD-50 turbine generators (5 MW (6,700 hp) each) Total: 30 MW (40,000 shp)^[9]
Propulsion	COGAG 4 × QC-280 gas turbines (28 MW (38,000 hp) each) Total: 112 MW (150,000 shp)^[9]
Speed	30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph)^[2]
Range	5,000 nmi (9,300 km) at 12 kn (22 km/h; 14 mph)^[2]
Complement	300+^[10]
Sensors and processing systems	Type 346B Dragon Eye (C/S-band) radar^[11] X-band radar^[11]
Electronic warfare & decoys	Electronic warfare system^[11] Type 726-4 decoy launchers^[12]
Armament	1 × 130 mm H/PJ-45 gun^[13] 1 × 30 mm H/PJ-11 CIWS^[13] 1 × 24-cell HHQ-10 short range surface-to-air missile launcher^[14] 112 GJB 5860-2006 VLS cells^[8] HHQ-9 long range surface-to-air missiles^[8] YJ-18A anti-ship missiles^[8] YJ-21 anti-ship ballistic missiles^[15] CJ-10 land-attack cruise missile^[8] Anti-submarine missiles^[8] 2 × sets^[16] of 324mm torpedo tubes^[14] Yu-7 torpedoes^[16]
Aircraft carried	2 medium-lift helicopters^[17] Harbin Z-9^[17] Changhe Z-18^[17] Harbin Z-20^[18]
Aviation facilities	Stern hangar^[17] Helicopter landing platform^[17]

Hobart class Air Warfare Missile Destroyer

As you can see from the above data, the Renhai class is about US$888 million per unit including research and development costs.

The Hobart Class, which has just less than half the armaments, is more than twice the price. The data below shows the unit price of the Hobart class at AUS$3.01 billion, or roughly USD$2.1 billion according to today's exhange rate.

Source: Wikimedia

Source of Following Data: Wikipedia

Class overview
Name	Hobart class
Builders	Navantia (designer) AWD Alliance (project coordinator) ASC (primary shipbuilder) Forgacs Group and BAE Systems Australia (module builders)
Operators	Royal Australian Navy
Preceded by	Perth-class destroyer and Adelaide-class frigate
Cost	A$9.1 billion (2020)^[1]^[2]^[3] for 3 units + ToT (est.) A$3.03 billion (2020) per unit (est.)
Built	2009–2020
In commission	2017–present
Planned	3
Active	3
General characteristics (as designed)
Type	Guided-missile destroyer
Displacement	7,000 tonnes (6,900 long tons; 7,700 short tons) full load
Length	147.2 metres (483 ft)
Beam	18.6 metres (61 ft) maximum
Draught	5.17 metres (17.0 ft)
Propulsion	Combined diesel or gas (CODOG) arrangement 2 × General Electric Marine model 7LM2500-SA-MLG38 gas turbines, 17,500 kilowatts (23,500 hp) each 2 × Caterpillar Bravo 16 V Bravo diesel engines, 5,650 kilowatts (7,580 hp) each 2 × controllable pitch propellers
Speed	Over 28 knots (52 km/h; 32 mph)
Range	Over 5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km; 5,800 mi) at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph)
Complement	186 + 16 aircrew Accommodation for 234
Sensors and processing systems	Aegis combat system Lockheed Martin AN/SPY-1D(V) S-band radar Northrop Grumman AN/SPQ-9B X-band pulse Doppler horizon search radar Raytheon Mark 99 fire-control system with two AN/SPG-62 continuous wave illuminating radars 2 × L-3 Communications SAM Electronics X-band navigation radars Ultra Electronics Sonar Systems, hull mounted sonar and towed sonar^[4] Ultra Electronics Series 2500 electro-optical director Sagem VAMPIR IR search and track system Rafael Toplite stabilised target acquisition sights
Electronic warfare & decoys	ITT EDO Reconnaissance and Surveillance Systems ES-3701 ESM radar SwRI MBS-567A communications ESM system Ultra Electronics Avalon Systems multipurpose digital receiver Jenkins Engineering Defence Systems low-band receiver 4 × Nulka decoy launchers 4 × 6-tube multipurpose decoy launchers
Armament	Missiles: 48-cell Mark 41 Vertical Launch System firing: SM-2 Standard missile RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow missile SM-6 missile (Sydney) Tomahawk cruise missile (Brisbane) 2 × 4-canister Harpoon missile launchers (Brisbane) 2 x 4-canister Naval Strike Missile launchers (Hobart & Sydney) Torpedoes: 2 × 2-tube Mark 32 Mod 9 torpedo launchers firing MU90 Impact torpedoes Guns: 1 × 5"/64 calibre Mark 45 mod 4 main gun 2 × 25mm M242 Bushmaster Mk 38 mod 2 Typhoon RWS 1 × 20mm Phalanx CIWS
Aircraft carried	1 × MH-60R Seahawk

The Ethics of Deep Learning AI and the Epistemic Opacity Dilemma: When You Don't Know What Exactly the Deep Learning System is Doing.

2025-02-20T04:11:00.000-08:00

The Ethics of Deep Learning AI and the Epistemic Opacity Dilemma blog.apaonline.org/2020/08/13/the via @apa_blog

The Ethics of Deep Learning AI and the Epistemic Opacity Dilemma https://t.co/bs0bqWIneG via @apa_blog
— Bruce Long (@BruceRLong) February 20, 2025

Piantadosi, S. (2023). Modern language models refute Chomsky's approach to language. [Unpublished manuscript]. Retrieved from https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/007180

Informational Identity Theory and Traditional Process-orientated Identity Theory: The Difference.

2025-02-13T05:14:00.000-08:00

Consciousness, that elusive and deeply personal experience of being, has puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries. What is it? How does it arise?

A compelling new perspective comes from philosopher Bruce R. Long, who proposes an informational identity theory of consciousness. This theory posits that consciousness is not some mysterious substance or epiphenomenon, but rather identical to certain kinds of information processing.

Identity theory is not new, so what's the new proposal? It's about emphasising complexly processed cognitive and perceptual information, rather than brain processes.

Long argues that specific types of information, when structured and processed in particular ways, constitute conscious experience. It's not just any information, though. It's information that is intrinsically semantic – meaning it carries inherent meaning – and is organized in a way that allows for complex representations and self-awareness. Think of it like this: a digital image is just a collection of data, but when that data is processed and interpreted by a computer, it forms a meaningful image that a human can perceive. Similarly, certain kinds of organized, meaningful information, when processed by a suitable system (like a brain), are consciousness.

This informational identity theory stands in contrast to more traditional, process-focused identity theories. Those theories often identify consciousness with specific brain processes. Long's theory, however, focuses on the information being processed, not just the physical processes themselves. Consciousness, in this view, is identical to adequately complexly processed information within perceptual and cognitive information processes. It's not simply caused by these processes; it is these processes at the informational level of description. This distinction is crucial. It means that consciousness could potentially arise in any system capable of processing the right kind of semantic information in the right way, not just biological brains.

This informational identity theory offers several intriguing possibilities. It suggests that consciousness isn't limited to biological brains. If we can create artificial systems that process the right kind of semantic information in the right way, they too could potentially be conscious. It also provides a framework for understanding different levels of consciousness, from the simplest awareness to complex self-reflection, as variations in the complexity and organization of the underlying information.

Long's theory is still being developed and debated, but it offers a fresh and potentially groundbreaking approach to understanding consciousness. By focusing on information as the fundamental building block, it provides a bridge between the physical world and the subjective experience of being, opening up new avenues for both scientific investigation and philosophical inquiry. It challenges us to rethink what it means to be conscious and suggests that the key might lie in understanding the intricate dance of information that makes up our inner lives.

Reference

What is Informational Identity Theory?

Postmodern Informationist Science Fiction Literature.

2025-02-13T04:56:00.001-08:00

Postmodern literature is unruly, characterized by a playful rejection of traditional literary conventions. It's literature where meaning is fluid, truth is subjective, and the reader is just as important as the writer.

Several key concepts help illuminate this fascinating genre:

The Death of the Author

Roland Barthes's "Death of the Author" (1967) argues that a text's meaning doesn't reside solely in the author's intentions or biography. Instead, meaning is created through the interaction between the text and the reader. This concept liberates the reader from the constraints of authorial intent, allowing for multiple interpretations and a more active role in meaning-making.

Intertextuality

Postmodern literature thrives on intertextuality, the weaving together of multiple texts within a single work. This can involve allusions, parodies, pastiches, and other forms of borrowing and reworking existing texts.

Intertextuality highlights the interconnectedness of knowledge and culture, blurring the lines between original and borrowed material.

Existential Geworfenheit

Geworfenheit, a German word meaning "thrownness," is a concept from existential philosophy that emphasizes the arbitrary and contingent nature of human existence. We are "thrown" into a world we didn't choose, with circumstances beyond our control.

Postmodern literature often explores this sense of existential angst, highlighting the lack of inherent meaning and the freedom (and burden) of creating our own values. Our lives don't necessarily conform to the pattern of a grand narrative with the beginning middle and end. For many people most of the time it's more like being thrown into an episode of larger existence encapsulating history, prehistory, society, culture and all of the cultural and social conventions that go with them.

Iser's Reader-Response Theory

Wolfgang Iser's reader-response theory complements Barthes's "Death of the Author." Iser argues that meaning is not inherent in the text but is created through the interaction between the reader and the text. Readers bring their own experiences, beliefs, and values to the reading process, filling in gaps and constructing meaning in a dynamic and subjective way.

The Flawed Narrator

Postmodern literature often features flawed or unreliable narrators, whose perspectives are limited, biased, or even intentionally deceptive. This challenges the reader's trust in the narrative and forces them to question the nature of truth and reality. Flawed narrators can also be used to explore the complexities of human psychology and the subjective nature of experience.

These concepts are just a few of the tools that postmodern writers use to challenge traditional literary conventions and explore the complexities of contemporary life. By embracing ambiguity, fragmentation, and self-reflexivity, postmodern literature invites readers to actively participate in the creation of meaning and to question the very nature of reality.

Informationist Science Fiction: When Data Becomes the Fabric of Reality

Science fiction has always mirrored our world, reflecting our hopes, fears, and our ever-evolving relationship with technology. A burgeoning subgenre, informationist science fiction, delves into the very nature of information and its profound impact on reality.

The Architect of Informationist Science Fiction Literary Theory: Bruce R. Long

Philosopher Bruce R. Long's work has provided the theoretical framework for understanding these narratives. His concept of informationist novums is central. These aren't simply new gadgets; they represent fundamental shifts in how information is structured and interacts with the physical world.

Informationist Novums: Redefining Reality

Informationist novums manifest in various ways:

* Semantic Information as Physical: Imagine information not as abstract, but tangible. This could be data streams reshaping landscapes or code directly altering biology.

* Information as Consciousness: What if consciousness could be uploaded, transferred, or shared across networks? This could lead to new existences, blurring individuality and dissolving boundaries between minds.

* Simulated Realities: A common trope, but informationist narratives explore the philosophical implications of a world where the line between real and simulated becomes irrelevant.

Examples in Literature and Film

While still developing, informationist science fiction has found expression in various works:

Literature

Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17 explores language's power to shape reality. Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep features zones of thought where physics itself is determined by information processing. Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem (basis for the Netflix series of the same name) presents a civilization whose very biology is tied to information and its manipulation.

Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others (containing the novella "Story of Your Life," which was adapted into the film Arrival) explores how different modes of processing information (like the alien's non-linear language) can radically alter perception and experience of time itself.

Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy (the basis for the film Annihilation) plays with the idea of a zone where the laws of information and reality break down, leading to strange mutations and a blurring of the boundaries between species and even consciousness.

Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep" has numerous informationist tropes and novums including a telepathically networked alien cluster-species and a galactic informational 'slow zone'.

Film

The Matrix is a classic simulated reality narrative. Transcendence and Ex Machina delve into ethical and existential questions around AI and consciousness.

Arrival explores how a non-linear understanding of time, facilitated by understanding an alien language, transforms human perception. Crucially, the information learned from the aliens isn't just about their language; it's about their experience of time, which becomes accessible to the protagonist, effectively allowing information to travel through time and reshape her own understanding of past, present, and future.

Annihilation depicts a region where the laws of reality are distorted, reflecting the mutability of information itself at a fundamental level.

Television

The Netflix adaptation of 3 Body Problem expands on the novel's themes, visually representing the alien civilization's manipulation of information to disrupt human science and psychology.

Postmodern Features of Informationist Science Fiction

As our world becomes increasingly data-driven, informationist science fiction provides a powerful lens. It challenges us to critically examine information, consciousness, and reality. By exploring these themes, it not only entertains but offers valuable insights into the future we are creating.

Informationist science fiction frequently exhibits postmodern characteristics, reflecting the subgenre's focus on the fluid and subjective nature of reality in a data-saturated world. The destabilization of grand narratives is a key element, as the traditional boundaries between objective truth and subjective experience blur. In worlds where information can be manipulated, consciousness uploaded, and reality simulated, the very concept of a singular, fixed reality becomes suspect. Characters often grapple with the ontological uncertainty of their existence, questioning what is "real" and what is merely a construct of information. This questioning extends to identity itself, as the lines between individual minds become porous and the possibility of merging with or being overwritten by other consciousnesses becomes a tangible threat or promise.

The postmodern emphasis on intertextuality also appears, as informationist narratives often draw from and remix existing science fiction tropes, philosophical concepts, and technological anxieties, creating a complex tapestry of ideas about the nature of information and its influence.

Furthermore, informationist science fiction often plays with the postmodern concepts of simulation and hyperreality. Simulated realities are not just plot devices; they become spaces where the very nature of reality is interrogated.

The hyperreal, where simulations become more real than the real, is a common theme. Characters may struggle to distinguish between the "real" world and its simulations, leading to a breakdown of traditional notions of authenticity and meaning. The constant flow of information and the ease with which it can be manipulated create a sense of fragmentation and a loss of grounding in a stable reality.

This mirrors the postmodern condition, where individuals are bombarded with information from various sources, making it difficult to discern truth from falsehood and leading to a sense of epistemological vertigo. The focus on information as the fundamental building block of reality allows informationist narratives to explore these postmodern themes in a particularly compelling and relevant way, reflecting our increasingly data-driven world.

References

* Long, B. R. (2018). A Scientific Metaphysical Naturalisation of Information: with an indication-based semantic theory of information and an informationist statement of physicalism. University of Sydney.

* Long, B. R. (2014). Information is intrinsically semantic but alethically neutral. Synthese, 191(14), 3447-3467.

* Liu, Cixin. (2008). The Three-Body Problem. (Translated by Liu Yukun).

* Chiang, Ted. (2002). Stories of Your Life and Others.

* VanderMeer, Jeff. (2014). Annihilation.