[chromoblob]

When I tried to refute you, I remembered about basic concept of computing, the way the technological progress is generally made and technologies of security in general. These things are totally both essential and hardly rebuildable from scratch, and latter two may also need to be continuously developed. So there is a vital dependency on these.

But outside of security concerns, if you have developed in a culture that contains the concepts of abstraction, general encoding and a basic set of abstract thinking primitives, have enough of abstract thinking skill and an inclination to think autonomously, you can rebuild any concept that you should care about practically. I posit that only the more "basic", primitive ideas are vital for effective thinking. If you lack them, you are screwed, but if you just lack higher-level ones, you can work around that easily if you care. And I think that the abstract thinking skills needed to build ideas are in large part not acquired directly from culture; they consist of some elementary abstract thinking ideas together with higher-level methods and other private mental tools which are rarely shown to you and which you typically develop on your own.

I can see that one can be (un)privileged to develop in rich/poor enough culture. But one can audit their understanding of a culture - at least always in a most basic way, and again by a degree dependent on the amount of "hints" from cultural environment and personal capability.

"The idea of audit" consists of 3 concepts available virtually to all, so if it isn't available, which it almost always is, it can be rebuilt if you care enough.

Culture feeds you, but it can control you only by omission of essential general ideas of various levels. There aren't many of them, and they are self-evident, useful strictly for the user and can be used to rebuild any ideas missing from your environment that are needed to conduct a lot of stuff.

> Are you seeing how many ideas you are borrowing from society in a single sentence?

At least, when I borrow stuff, I analyse it, sometimes modify and then subscribe under the result. If I am sure that it is good for me, it can become mine.

I have emotionally audited all of my thoughts.

> Your "value-addition" is re-arrangement.

On which level, though? You probably know how big is the myriad of electronic circuits that can be made from simple elements such as wires, resistors, capacitors, inductors, transistors and diodes and seldom other. And more complex circuits are made from simpler ones with ease (I don't mean effort, I mean viability of a decent result) using composition and interfacing, given decent skill. About "rearrangement", same applies, skill here being abstract thinking - although thinking is far more complicated than circuit design, I believe thought is compositional. Of course, there is no way around the dictionary of basic primitives, but it is available almost everywhere where there is relevance.

Creation of data is "rearrangement" of a tiny set of digits.

> the way you've arranged the ideas is full of holes (and eventually not enough to 'pass the test of reality')

Either substantiate or don't write this. This is not helpful without an explanation.

I would be interested to hear you address my point about construction of ideas.

[atomicnature]

I apologize for not addressing your concerns point by point, but here are some general thoughts:

The kind of reasoning you are engaging in now was done by Descartes long ago, during Newton's time. It involves building up knowledge from the bottom up, starting with first principles. Descartes had some genuinely interesting ideas about how perfect concepts could be constructed. You can read his book on methods; they are remarkable, but they do not tell the whole story. Descartes himself made many scientific errors, despite his "perfect" and "rational" system for arriving at "true and sound conclusions." Popper's falsifiability is not the end-all-be-all of scientific thought either. Both Descartes and Popper do not represent the final word on what science is or should be.

Unlike Descartes, we observe real scientists supplementing rational ideas with empiricism—how actual people learn and think in their daily lives. How they go about life matters. Especially with Large Language Models, we see how essential a large knowledge corpus is for generating new variations. Marvin Minsky referred to it as "common sense," etc. It's important to remember that the concepts of "Expert systems" and "heuristics" did not work on their own back in the day (though they are not without utility in enhancing new methods).

Progress typically requires a societal-level effort in any field. It involves communication, challenges, numerous guesses, trial and error, and so forth. Therefore, the development of new ideas and the exploration of new frontiers are deeply interdependent at the civilization level.

In summary, I believe that "individualism" is incompatible with reality; the true nature of reality is "interdependence." Dependency is a fact of life. However, due to certain surface-level cultural ideas and the significance people attach to their self-importance, the unrealistic concept of "individualism" often prevails at the linguistic level over the more realistic idea of "interdependence."

[chromoblob]

> Especially with Large Language Models, we see how essential a large knowledge corpus is for generating new variations.

I don't see it, sufficiency doesn't entail necessity.

> It's important to remember that the concepts of "Expert systems" and "heuristics" did not work on their own back in the day

Expert systems are about automation of decision. I talk not about automation, but just a minimal, basic dependency on culture as opposed to complete dependency and no hope of novel thinking outside of it.

> Progress typically requires a societal-level effort in any field.

I want to know how this requirement would be quantified. Which society do you need for a given amount of progress?

> "individualism" is incompatible with reality

Why can't one, in principle, recreate some design on their own that they lack, of less complexity than rocket science or AGI?

[atomicnature]

> complete dependency and no hope of novel thinking outside of it.

Where have I said "there is no hope of novel thinking out of it"? (Re: Most thought is borrowed) I am simply saying not a single thought is entirely yours. There's always something external mixed in, stuff from society. Thought is always dependent. That means, you can be the co-author of an idea, but not the sole author. Having sole author is merely a simplification device, not a realistic description of the situation.

By the way, I still have not made the ultimate challenge here (since this is HN, filled with no-nonsense, individualistic hackers): what is referred to as "I", is also an idea delivered by society. Therefore, this whole conversation is thought talking to thought, and not chromoblob vs atomicnature.

[chromoblob]

Okay, since to develop the thinking skill, one needs to exercise a lot in a man-made environment, I agree that thinking is dependent on it and the basic vocabulary.

However, the dependency ends here. If you just want, you can analyze, deconstruct, modify or synthesize any memes at any level beyond the level of your primitives (given enough time).

About the definition of boundary of mind, I agree that it should be arbitrary and minds are compositional in space.

[atomicnature]

> However, the dependency ends here. If you just want, you can analyze, deconstruct, modify or synthesize any memes at any level beyond the level of your primitives (given enough time).

Thought Experiment: Say an isolated child was given the primitives of your choice, and nothing more. What's the likelihood that it'll invent calculus on its own during its lifetime? Or any other significant human discoveries/inventions. Will it figure out human flight on its own?

Leave that. Say there are no teachers/industry, except just all the textbooks. Still what is the likelihood of it teaching itself calculus or how to build a flying machine based on mere reading material?

[chromoblob]

> Thought Experiment: ...

Those may be too complex to invent from scratch in a few decades.

Long intellectual collaborations are a common good. You don't need to consider them estranged from their users, though. By virtue of emotional audit, knowledge I accept is assimilated by me, becomes mine. It was made by my allies, essentially by past instances of myself - nothing external here. (More like allies if it is precursor that I had to non-trivially modify for my needs, and more like self if it is a product that I accepted verbatim.) This situation doesn't contradict my sense of individualism. (In my view, personal identity is defined by preferences. So if we have same preferences, we are one. And it seems obvious that people with similar preferences will create functionally similar designs.)

So even if a child would in principle want calculus but wouldn't create it in a lifetime, they would take the steps they can in the direction that they're interested in. The distance would be dependent on capability, but more than "just a few ideas", as you say, wouldn't be improbable. Then the child may try and appoint those that the child seems worthy of receiving child's work, or child may publish it for everyone. That someone may deceive the child about self is an unsolvable flaw here. This may change in future when people solve old age mortality.

> Say there are no teachers/industry, except just all the textbooks.

To use books, one needs the ability to read. Without somebody to teach one to read, there is a small chance of success if a book that teaches written language and supposes no knowledge of written language (in usual meaning) is created. It would rely on a way to read the book and learn that would be figured out by the person, and this would work only if the person were very curious. Extent to which written language would be learned would depend on how well the interaction with the book works and how smart the person is; probability of the whole thing working seems very low, but depends on those too. Speechless video game tutorial theory would be mainly applicable here, only the medium here is also much more limited.

When you can read, I believe that text is sufficient to transfer knowledge. Quality subject books together with some books about effective learning may be sufficient, however, even if one finds a big library with all the knowledge early in life, they may simply not know what they want in terms of the index of the library, a guide book in front of everything may solve that. I don't know if a lifetime is enough to actually build a flying machine given only raw materials.