Will have to get to the rest later. I still really want to see what will drive us to form abstractions like "intention" that we'll use in more sophisticated analysis. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I'd missed your last post (wrote half of my response earlier). Heading out now, will have a look in the morning.

Why do you think I am opposed to agreements? — Tzeentch

Because an agreement is what we currently have. The result of our agreement, about who owns what, (for which we used the democratic system) is that the government owns 20% of the pay you take home. You seem to think that, rather than by agreement, you get to decide whatever you think is your property.

If there is no law against circumventing the system the government puts in place, you do not think people would try their best at doing just that? — Tzeentch

I'm sure they would, and if the government discover them doing so they could take whatever they think they're owed for such transgressions.

Rhetoric and influential celebrities dishing out poor/irresponsible/unqualified (pseudo)advice doesn't help. Inciting fear/panic doesn't help.
...
Vaccinations (and commonsensical precautions) do. — jorndoe

Absolutely.

So in your hypothetical it is not just harder not to comply, but it is made impossible, essentially. — Tzeentch

Yes, that's right.

A situation in which states have absolute supervision and control of their citizens' wealth reeks of totalitarianism — Tzeentch

Yes, I'd prefer there was some agreement over who owned what, but you seem vehemently opposed to the idea of us coming to such an agreement, so I was proposing a non-violent alternative. We all just take what we think is ours. There'll be an awful lot of back-and-forth, but there needn't be any violence.

even in such a state there need to be laws against avoiding taxation through things like undeclared work and citizens bartering among themselves. — Tzeentch

No, not really, the government could simply spy on people, and if it thinks they've not declared work or income in kind, it just takes what it thinks it's owed.

the most bone-headed way I could imagine, and it struck me that the absolute simplest way to judge someone else is by whether they do the same thing I do. (It's not impossible that has actually happened in this thread.) — Srap Tasmaner

More than once I think.

you don't get credit for having the right intentions but for acting with the right intentions. — Srap Tasmaner

True. My 'Three Point Plan' is no improvement because it only contains intentions, and actions are the best proof we have of intentions. But this is why I provided some tentative means of judging intent, albeit roughly.

I have Lakoff (who's a challenge for me, temperamentally) and Goffman in my to-read-soon-ish pile. — Srap Tasmaner

Excellent. Goffman on Frame Analysis and Lakoff on metaphor, I hope. Their best contributions.

I'm slightly allergic to the word "narrative" but I'll get over it. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, it's got a slightly 'social science' taint to it now...sorry. I have to still use it though, I'm supposed to be a professional, I can't go around saying 'story', I sound like a five year old.

possibly there's a weird double-judgment under that: why don't you want to be as much like me as you can be? What about me do you disapprove of?) — Srap Tasmaner

Yes! This gets very much to the heart of what these judgements are doing. But it's selective - back to stories again (see how I avoided 'narrative'). It's those who ought to be playing the same part as us but who appear to be ad-libbing their lines, or reading from a different script. It's nit that we actually want everyone to be like us (would you?!), but we want the way we play out our roles to be predictable and secure, we don't want similar roles played too differently. Your sitcom example wouldnot have worked if she was an escort.

Does the individual still face reprisal when the government decides the individual has taken more than they should have? — Tzeentch

No, no need. The government can just take it back.

You have an opinion about what belongs to who and use it to justify taxation. Taxation relies on threats of violence. — Tzeentch

So you're not opposed to taxation by PAYE-type systems, only invoiced ones? The solution seems simple, have the government take the tax portion of the wage packet before it's given to you.

Alternatively, they could just take it directly from your bank account, or break into your house when you're out and take cash.

No threat of violence is necessary.

First things first...

I was only talking about efficiency there. (I was deliberately passing over the other stuff you talk about there, the asymptote of truth and all that.) — Srap Tasmaner

Understood.

"underdetermine" I believe you'll find. — Srap Tasmaner

Ah, yes. Facts underdetermine, theories are overdedetermined. I'm wondering now how many times I've written them the wrong way round before!

There are natural virtues to look for though: robustness, generality, extensibility, "explanatory power" etc. And that's before we consider the consonance of this theory with other theories competing in their domains, the construction of theoretical frameworks, of research programs, and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

The problem (as I see it) with all of those is this; that 'theory A is robust' is itself a theory. It'd have facts (the various properties of theory A) and those facts would be mustered in various ways to support the theory that 'theory A is robust'. So why wouldn't those facts also under determine the theory?

Same can be done with coherence, generality, extensibility, "explanatory power" etc. They are all theories about theories and so subject to the same problems.

so long as we are still in the process of figuring things out and there's still new data coming in, there are more things of interest than adequacy to the currently known facts. — Srap Tasmaner

'Of interest', however, I can definitely get behind.

So...

Where we stand: we have forced the complete version of just-like-me, with all 3 rules, to fail. I have to approve of Isaac's decision because of rules 2 and 3 -- he did the same thing I did; but I have to disapprove of Isaac's decision because of rule 1 -- he didn't do the same thing I did. — Srap Tasmaner

I like the way you've laid it out. It's not a way I'd have looked at things at all, which itself is interesting. For me, (1) doesn't even figure, I assume there are generals, soldiers, nurses, and engineers in any army and so the idea that someone's role could be judged by how similar to mine it is doesn't seem viable off the bat. But then that's my story-telling taking over (it takes an ensemble cast to fill out a proper play) and we agreed to try and avoid that, so I'll frame it another way...

What if we use Wittgenstein's "stand roughly here"? What does it mean to have made 'the same' decision as me? Surely not to have had the same nurse inject the same vaccine in the same hospital? We have to set some 'rough' boundaries around what constitutes 'the same', yes? I think here is were I find it difficult to escape the psychologising - the choice of easy to identify badges for what constitutes 'the same' is a group dynamic based choice. They're easier to use to identify in group and out group. We could have chosen something vague (but more useful) like 'health robustness' as what constitutes 'the same' - "Did Isaac's decision making result in 'the same' level of general health robustness'.

I think the problem is that you're missing a (0.5) which is the jointly held objective. It should go

0.5 - Approve of having the same objective I do, disapprove otherwise
1. Approve of making the same decision I did; disapprove otherwise.
2. Approve of following the same process I did; disapprove otherwise.
3. Approve of using the same inputs I did; disapprove otherwise.

But then we can lose (1) altogether

0.5 - Approve of having the same objective I do, disapprove otherwise
2. Approve of following the same process I did; disapprove otherwise.
3. Approve of using the same inputs I did; disapprove otherwise.

Which works, I think, except it suffers exactly the same problem in abandoning (1) in your original scheme...

give up rule 1 but keep 2 and 3 -- appealing because I still count as ethical, but a little weird that my actual decision drops out -- wasn't the whole point to judge the decision itself, mine and Isaac's? — Srap Tasmaner

This, really is our conundrum. Intent matters in ethics. But we can't judge intent, we can't see it, so we have to use a proxy. Virtues are usually a good proxy, but they're the result of long tradition (a long tradition of story-telling - sorry, couldn't resist). We don't have such a long history here. That's why, way back, I brought up the Wakefield/MMR scandal, I think it's our nearest story on which to judge intent (by the proxy of actions) - the sensible, community-minded took the MMR (good), those more interested in appearing 'niche' didn't (bad). I know I keep circling back to stories and I promised I wouldn't. Let me try harder...

To judge intent is essential in an ethical judgement because the actual decision might be very circumstantially specific, but we can't see intent. We have two options;

1. Judge good intent by other means - trust, general character, other decisions...(très system 1)
2. Analyse the circumstances carefully - we do the work to judge intent by getting into those specific circumstances and seeing if they do or don't lead to the outcome - if there's no way we can get the moral outcome from the circumstances, then the decision cannot have been made with good intent...(très system 2)
3. Judge good intent by interrogation - is there a plausible, rational argument that can be presented linking the specific circumstances (your 2 and 3) to the moral objective. If there is (and we're charitable) there's no reason to doubt good intent.

in Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the weapon with which Prince Phillip slays Maleficent (in dragon form) is the Sword of -- wait for iiiiit -- Truth. — Srap Tasmaner

Ha! Indeed. Laying on the clichés quite thick in that one.

Actually, yes, that was what I was thinking. Quite short-term gains in efficiency, or gains within a department, could be overall inefficient, or in the long-term inefficient. It's a danger hierarchies are prone to by nature. Examples from the business world are endless. — Srap Tasmaner

Are they though? I don't mean the short-termism in general (that's lamentably common!), but Truth? Did that notion help them in the long-term? Or was it just a more efficient model? If a model produced better long-term gains but was no more 'true' (or even perhaps less true) would we have any reason left to prefer truth? Aesthetics, perhaps? Or do you think, perhaps, it's impossible for a model to produce good long-term gains without being closer to the truth?

evolution selects for an organism to have certain capacities that meet a need, but that doesn't mean those capacities are limited to meeting that need. We didn't evolve to be able to play baseball, but we do. I even have a pet theory that language is an accident, that we got an upgrade on our signaling ability that is far greater than any species could ever need. — Srap Tasmaner

Definitely with you so far.

we can make the attempt. — Srap Tasmaner

You hinted at the problem, and we've talked about it before, I think, but the facts we have simply over-determine most theories that intelligent people can come up with. The best we can hope for is to rule out the loonies. Something like this coronavirus situation, despite the way my numerous detractors paint it, there's just no way of pinning down any truth of the matter. Most (sensible) theories can be supported by the range of facts available, so all discussion can show us (if we assume it's anything more than storytelling - of which I've yet to be fully convinced) is the manner in which people muster their particular facts to support their particular theory...unless I'm one of the loonies that need ruling out...!??

Shall we talk about pandemic ethics, now? I believe I understand your overall approach quite a bit better than I did a few days ago, so I'm curious to see if I can actually apply any of this to the questions at hand. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, let's go for it.

I don't disagree that a system of free healthcare to all, regardless of the extent to which preventative measures have been adopted, is unsustainable. I disagree with the ideologically motivated selection of just one such measure (vaccination) and one point of intervention (triage).

If preventative measures are needed to sustain an effective healthcare system, then such measures should be based on normal principles of autonomy, fairness, justice, normaleficence, and fidelity.

Prophylactic medicine is way down the list in meeting all those criteria. It's an external biological alteration, so compromises bodily autonomy right off the bat. It's produced by private corporations, so neither fairness (in terms of access), nor fidelity can be guaranteed, nor are even very likely given their track record. It's a constantly changing intervention (in terms of both composition and batch production of the same formula) so cannot guarantee normaleficence. It's necessity is not a given (one might have not needed it), so the consequences of not taking it are not necessarily just (they do not derive from the action). Also, it's incredibly inefficient as it's a cost in itself, compared to other interventions (such as banning smoking) which are free.

In all, whilst I think vaccination has a few merits as a choice of preventative measure to bolster a flagging health system, it's knocked out of the water by a half dozen other far more suitable candidates, all of which are being ignored solely for ideological reasons - they represent aspects of a lifestyle we've come to be used to, and, of course, one of the most profitable and influencial industries the world has ever seen makes it's entire living out of people getting sick. The last thing it wants are solutions which prevent that.

If I can take your lead in declaring things to 'obvious', it seems 'obvious' to me that failing to even meet a baseline of normal bodily health and safety is causally prior to failing to take preventative action such choices might make necessary.

if something in front of me looks like a table, feels like a table, and can be used like a table, then it is true that there is a table. You can argue that it's an illusion but you would have the burden of proof. — Olivier5

For proof see...well almost every paper on the neuroscience of perception since the late nineties.

the table is 100% phenomenal for me, as everything else. I don't see that as a problem, more as a law of perception. — Olivier5

The table is joint social object. You seeing the 'reality' of it as entirely and correctly whatever it appears to you to be is very much a problem, probably one of the most significant problems in the world today when extended to more complex concepts that 'table'. That things are just exactly how they seem to you has probably caused more wars than any other misconception.

Of course the table is composed of smaller elements. How could it NOT be? But there is absolutely no reason to see the elements as more "real" than the whole. Truth is not small. Reality is not hiding in atoms. — Olivier5

The elements of which it's composed are not at issue, those being yet more models. It's about the functional relationship in the network. Some data originates from outside your network of causal nodes, which means, by definition, you can only infer it's origin once you are past one layer of nodes inside that network. Elements don't matter, the state outside of that network could me made of massive distinct composites, it wouldn't have any effect on the fact that your second layer of nodes can only infer their properties from your first layer because the signal from them originates outside of the Markov Blanket.

It sounds like filtering is not something done by a subsystem that has that purpose, some bit of business we could properly call a "filter"; rather it's a way of describing how a model at one level constrains the models below it. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's right

It's a wonder that we can communicate at all because a system like this is designed not to acknowledge novelty unless it absolutely has to, despite the obvious facts that everyone we speak with is unique and nearly every sentence we hear has never been spoken before. — Srap Tasmaner

Even further off-topic, but there's a whole slew of theories around language which tie in to this, all to do with the idea that we don't speak for communication at all (I'm exaggerating for rhetorical effect, of course - undermined by these parentheses telling you that, nevermind). The idea is that we communicate in whole sentences, the meanings of which are very broad and not very diverse (lots of sentences mean the same thing), but the detail of which is more like a form of art, personalisation to help with individual identity, group membership tokens etc. So it may not be quite so surprising afterall. We don't really have that much to say to each other in terms of meaning, but we do have a lot of feather-preening to do.

Pigeonholing is common, and it's just surprise containment. You attribute to another a view you are already familiar with instead of grappling with novelty. — Srap Tasmaner

True, but with the caveat that we're doing it to ourselves too. It's not that we're all unique snowflakes really and outsiders keep putting us in boxes. We put ourselves in boxes too, we interpret things other people say as if they were caricatures, but we also take what they say into our belief systems as if we were caricatures too. When the villain speaks it's not only that everyone interprets what he says as though he were the villain, it's that they interpret everything he says as though they were the hero/plucky sidekick/victim...

when we speak candidly, we speak assuming that we will be understood, so to remain in a position of continuing to believe we are not understood is odd. — Srap Tasmaner

See the paragraph above. It may not be that odd at all...in some interpretations of communication acts.

there have to be some operational shortcuts to safeguard efficiency: a single model running too long before reporting back a result has to count as a failure; if you run multiple models at once, the first one back with a result probably wins. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. One surprising outcome of neuroscience getting involved in all this was the odd effect simple proximity (in terms of location in the brain) had on which models got their messages accepted most often. Like you say, the ones which got there first.

Satisficing is by definition good enough, and by design cheaper than holding out for an optimal result, but it's still a shortcut. — Srap Tasmaner

Well, to an extent, yes, but a shortcut to what? Are you assuming we want the truth? There doesn't seem to be much need for it. Least surprise in the long run perhaps... All told, our main aim seem to be much more short-term - personal identity, immediate threats, group dynamics... all well above learning the truth about the world as goals. Even for scientists themselves, truth is merely instrumental, having it can be used to further those goals within the narrative they're playing out. Like having the magic spear with which the hero slays the dragon.

Satisficing has obvious negative consequences in discussions such as ours: people make the first criticism that comes to mind, without reflecting that a problem that obvious would likely have been noticed by the speaker as well (see Nagase's exasperated dispelling of the myth that Logical Positivism was founded upon an obvious logical mistake) — Srap Tasmaner

So true. I read @Nagase's piece and enjoyed it, though the responses show already the erosion of such stellar arguments in the acid of a social narrative in which 'everybody knows' the logical positivists undermined their own project - they're famous for it. We just get too disoriented when they're removed from the story like that. You can't just kill off the main character in act 3. Because the accusation in the first place was never a reasoned assessment of the facts, it was the casting of a role in a play. As Mark Twain (?) said you can't use reason to disabuse someone of a position that wasn't derived using reason in the first place - or something like that.

at least you can tell me if I'm in the neighborhood of your thinking. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, on the whole, very much so. I think the only difference perhaps is that I don't see discussions like this (the coronavirus one, not ours now) as a means to convince people of, nor collaboratively derive any kind of position, so what you might see as flaws, I see as features.

What is to count as a simple depends on the activity in which one is engaged; tables and atoms are equally valid starting points, with the choice dependent on avoiding misunderstandings in a particular case. — Banno

Yes, I think that's what I was saying (at least that was the intention). Physics has nothing to say about 'tables', the boundary between an atom of 'table' and the atom of air next to it is no more relevant than the boundary between an atom of 'table' and the next atom of 'table'. To the waitress, however, that boundary is all important.

But you're right to say that there's no primacy in any of this.

What is real, what exists, is what serves to allay misunderstanding. Tables when you are having coffee, wood when you are doing carpentry, atoms when you are doing chemistry. What has primacy is dependent on what one is doing. — Banno

I think sometimes there's some confusion between certainty and realness (a confusion I'm definitely guilty of myself). a lack of certainty is not the same as a lack of realness. The table is real, despite uncertainty about it's properties, because the table (as a consequence of hidden states) is part of our socially constructed world, so yes table/atoms/quantum foam..."Does it matter which we say, so long as we avoid misunderstandings in any particular case?"

The issue, for me, still arises from the alternate primacy. The table is real as opposed to... denying the simples of edge, shadow, light, that I might want to talk about in the context of cognitive science. The table is real as a social construct is quite a different proposition form the table is real immutably and in perpetuity. Maybe I'm jumping at shadows, my hackles are up every time I log on at the moment.

Does that mean you're for it? By for it, I mean making the taking of it mandatory for many/most people? — tim wood

So still thinking in Disney terms then? Either Thor's magic hammer or the poisoned apple?

That's the prevailing idea and it's wrong. — Benkei

I think you've misunderstood how discussion works. Either the matter of it's wrongness can be established (or at least furthered) dialectically, in which case you need to answer the points I've raised, or it can't, in which case this is little more than an opinion poll and you've already had your go.

it wasn't a response to the inquiry posed. (n) — jorndoe

are deniers, contrarians, distrust-spreaders, dissidents, conspiracy theorists, etc, guilty in some sense? — jorndoe

...was the question asked. So...

The 'deniers' are not a homogeneous legion so are not either guilty or not as one entity. — Isaac

Is exactly an answer to it.

I thought the issue was your being against vaccination. I guess I misunderstood. — tim wood

Hard to misunderstand

The Covid vaccination programme is unquestionably an excellent public health initiative, as most vaccination programmes are — Isaac

Which bit of that confuses you?

I still have the case at hand in mind and will be coming back to it. — Srap Tasmaner

Good. I'm happy talking about psychology in general though (too happy perhaps). Off to the pub now though, so it'll be tomorrow.

You have to analyze it by demographic. Look specifically at a young woman's risks either way. — frank

Yes. With such a hugely divergent risk profile in this disease, any avoidance of specific cohort studies is negligent.

which you failed to respond to for some reason. — jorndoe

That was my response. The 'deniers' are not a homogeneous legion so are not either guilty or not as one entity.

Talking of questions unanswered...

Shall we make the serious climate scientists look like fools by associating them with a few tree-hugging children of Gaia?

Is this the direction you really want public debate to head? — Isaac

Oh, and just in case I'm included in those 'others' who apparently refuse to answer your simple question, the answer is whomever arrived first. Any other choice would put some factor above saving lives as a priority. You try your best to save the life in the situation presented to you, if the first situation means there's no more vents, then those are the new circumstances in which your efforts must be assessed.

Nope, those percentages are much lower than 90% — Benkei

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2765184?guestAccessKey=906e474e-0b94-4e0e-8eaa-606ddf0224f5&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=042220

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/928531

Your sources?

these are lifestyle choices that predate Covid, meaning they weren't culpable choices to begin with. — Benkei

Of course they were. Covid's relationship to obesity is not a surprise. We knew obesity presented an increased risk of hospitalisation in general. What's more, an additional 3% of the American population became obese during the crisis.

Being fat isn't a conditio sine que non for requiring an IC bed after a COVID infection — Benkei

Neither is being unvaccinated.

But for those people that if they were infected by COVID that then would require an IC bed not getting a vaccination is a conditio sine que non, because they would've avoided the IC bed in 99% of cases. — Benkei

Now you're changing the question.

With obesity it was - of the set {all fat people} do a high enough proportion require a hospital bed upon infection with covid to make being a member of the set a conditio sine que non?

A like question with vaccination should be - of the set {all unvaccinated people} do a high enough proportion require a hospital bed upon infection with covid to make being a member of the set a conditio sine que non?

The answer is clearly no.

You changed it to - of the set {all hospitalised unvaccinated} would their hospitalisation have been avoided had they vaccinated?

The like comparison with obesity would be - of the set {all hospitalised obese} would their hospitalisation have been avoided had they reduced their bmi?

In all likelihood, yes. 90% of hospitalisations are associated with comorbidities, so if this particular patient's comorbidity is obesity there's a very strong chance their hospitalisation would have been avoid without it.

I think he just wants to punish people for being unvaccinated. — frank

Yes, it seems odd. There was a question a few years back (decades possibly?) about doing a similar thing with smokers and lung cancer - I don't know if you recall, there was a lot of chatter in the medical ethics journals? The call then was to free up resources by refusing to treat smokers who hadn't stopped smoking in spite of doctor's warning them too. It fell by the wayside for much the same reasons - is a fit, recently quit, 20-a-day guy more or less responsible for their condition than an unfit, overweight, 40-a-day guy who gave up ten years ago? The judgements required were just too complicated and prone to abuse.

Gosh, we're miles off topic. Sorry.

I have lots of thoughts which I am, through sheer force of will and adroit use of the "select all" and "delete" commands, not just vomiting all over your screen. — Srap Tasmaner

Ha! I appreciate the editing, I have to do the same sometimes.

Is this to say that as you move up a level in the hierarchy, you have a model that generates predictions about what models directly below it will be successful? — Srap Tasmaner

More about what data they'll forward. The aim is always to save energy, and surprise takes energy, analysis takes energy, filtering out noise takes energy, so there's an incentive to pre-filter the noisy, potentially surprising data from models lower down (this is actually observable in neural activity, we're definitely stepping on the threshold of science proper here, even if we're not quite going in!). So the higher models are sending back a message like "I'm expecting a table, don't bother sending me any data that doesn't conform to the idea of a table".

Or, much more controversially, "I'm expecting this person I'm talking to to say things like my model of a hero/villain (delete as appropriate), don't bother sending me any interpretations of sentences that don't conform to that idea"

s there a rock-bottom where the models generate predictions about experience? (Trying to capture with "experience" just that we're talking about data that is not composed of models succeeding or failing, whatever it is composed of.) — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, (if i understand you correctly), sensation and interoception. The edge of our Markov Blanket. but we couldn't really call them experiences, it's more like 'edge', 'light', 'pressure', 'heart rate'... dozens of hierarchical levels later...'table', 'cup'....'my desk', working', 'the philosophy forum'... etc. But it's important to remember that this is an interactive process. at each stage there's a reaching out into the environment, we actively try to make it conform to our models of it too (again, it's just less energy that way). we're like terrible scientists, p-hacking our experiments all the time and concluding "oh yes, the data proves my model".

All of this regarding perception is fairly well established, the leading model at the moment. My work is (was) much more speculative relating it to much higher hierarchical levels of social narratives and how they filter and suppress signals from core beliefs, language interpretation, ethical judgement etc.

And then everything above is models of models? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's right. An issue which usually stops people in their tracks, as if there was some sort of hideous circularity in that, but yes - models of models of models...

Say, are deniers, contrarians, distrust-spreaders, dissidents, conspiracy theorists, etc, guilty in some sense? Failure to learn from history? — jorndoe

Despite your cherry-picked press clippings, the group you describe are not one homogeneous legion. Attempts to lump everyone who disagrees with the party line in with the tinfoil hat brigade are just political. There's a convenient bunch of loonies who can be called on to besmirch any view you don't like by association. Should we do the same with climate change? Environmental issues? I could definitely rustle up some seriously dodgy hippies who are all in for those sorts of causes. Shall we make the serious climate scientists look like fools by associating them with a few tree-hugging children of Gaia?

Is this the direction you really want public debate to head?

But gained my respect :sparkle: — ArguingWAristotleTiff

That's very kind of you to say.

thinking that phenomenology is physics. — Banno

But saying the opposite "there is a table" is what's mistaking phenomenology for physics, surely? Physics doesn't have anything answering to 'table' in it's models. A 'table' is human construct, a label we put on some particular collection of atoms (which itself is just model borrowed from physics). We phenomenologically experience a 'table', but the physics (or in my case the neuroscience) doesn't support the idea that therefore there is such a thing, external to our mental models.

There's something. That seems like a very reasonable assumption, consistent with the science on the matter. But it's simply not true to say that there is a table because you see a table. I'd go as far as to say that we flat out know that to be false. Your world (that of tables, cups etc) is 90% made up, at any given time, entirely phenomena, no substance.

Of course you can, at any time, corroborate your perception. You can touch the edge, watch what happens when you put a cup on it, see what happens when a friend puts a cup on it...build up your evidence. But...

a) most of the time you simply don't bother, which leaves, unrefuted, the notion that most of your world is phenomena, most of the time.

and

b) your checking is biased. You check with the assumption that it is a table, you're looking to confirm your prior, not update it. That's simply the least energy expended (which is what this system is all about)

Obviously though, since declaring something 'real' and 'exists' are themselves human social endeavours, I think there's perfectly good uses of both terms which refer to that other joint social endeavour - categorising stuff. I don't object, therefore, to the use of direct realism, only to its reach. Cognitive science is also a human social endeavour.

people on the other side of the argument seem to refuse to want to answer — Benkei

You're not really in an ideal position to be complaining about the 'other side' not answering critiques.

You are 'refusing to answer' the fairly simple question about what makes vaccination, as method of avoiding hospitalisation, one worthy of use in triage judgements but not any other method, such as general health, safety precautions, and non-pharmaceutical interventions.

It's not more proximate, nor more closely correlated, nor more prevalent as a cause...so why have you singled it out as the sole arbiter of someone's degree of responsibility taken?

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/587458

these are its real colours, not the colours it might have under funny lights. That's it's real edge, not the edge of the glass tabletop. That's it's real structure; it looks like wood but it is plastic. — Banno

The point is that these are all assumptions we make, we don't (usually) actually check them out. Our models (in this case the visual cortex) will give us these data points not as a result of incoming sensations, but as a result of assumptions about what they're likely to be. They're guesses, acts of imagination, just like your unicorn. The only difference is they're good guesses, based on prior experience.

much of you perception of the table is a fiction, you made it up, — Isaac

I don't quite agree with this inference - that because it is madeup it is not real... That's a real unicorn; it doesn't have wings! — Banno

But this is just the word 'real' doing what all words do, changing it's meaning in context. We might ask "are unicorns real?", if someone said "no, they're made up" we wouldn't have the least trouble understanding them, would we? Surely we oughtn't get ourselves tied up in what words 'really' mean.

The important thing about what we discover is it's implications for our thinking. The discovery that much of our perception is actually 'made up' (as opposed to being directly caused by sensation, in real-time) gives a new insight into what other factors (other than sensations in real-time) might be influencing those guesses. A framework of naive direct realism does not allow for such investigation, so seems somewhat impoverished.

I don't get it. — tim wood

Yet somehow do get it sufficiently to warrant an insult.

To me it's simple. — tim wood

Well then we can resolve our issue right away. We're facing a new form of virus which we're frantically working out the effects of in terms of both short and long-term immunology and physiological impact, it's affecting some of the most advanced and complex socio-economic units the world has ever seen at an unprecedented level of global interconnectedness. The medication is of a never before used technology, created by an integrated network of funding, private investment and government incentive. We don't know where this thing came from, it's mutating faster then we can update our medicines for it and in unpredictable directions. The models used to work out the effects of various strategies had to be run across several universities becasue no one university had sufficient computing power to include all the variables...

...and you think it's simple.


The world is not a Disney film, it's not divided in heroes and villains (conveniently colour-coded) there's no magic weapon to kill the evil dragon and people rarely live happily ever after. Come back to me when you've come to terms with that and we can have a grown-up conversation about some of the complexities.

Yes, I have a lot of respect for Kahneman's work, but it's not always easy to translate my own models through his. I think in terms of predictive models, of increasingly higher orders of generality which then feed back to models of lower order of generality, so for me there's two hierarchy's going on - the prior/update (assume your priors until they are overwhelmed by evidence the contrary, then update them) but also the general/specific relationship (create or update priors based on which would best support the priors of the model they form one of the data points for).

So with your car driving example, there'd be assumptions (priors) about where you should put your feet or hands next which you wouldn't question unless you were getting some really weird feedback (sort of like system 1 taking over), but your priors about where to put your hands and feet are not just modulated by previous system 2 work at the same level (learning to drive), they're modulated by higher order models - what sort of thing a car is, what it's purpose is etc. and the priors for those are modulated by even higher order models - what sort of thing is a car likely to be given what sort of thing the world is?

I've skipped a lot of steps in between for brevity, but you get the picture (hopefully). So social narratives form these higher order models which means that although they themselves cannot simply be swapped out (the have the prior vs update bias), if they are swapped out, they do put a backwards acting pressure on the priors for lower order models.

If that makes any sense at all?

This is just a big mess for philosophy in general: on the one hand we want to talk as if everyone is in System 2 mode, but we're regularly dependent on data from people's System-1-driven behavior. (What philosophers are accustomed to call our "intuitions" -- without those there's no Gettier problem, not much to talk about in ethics, linguistic evidence is worthless, etc.) That's fine-ish, but it makes collecting the System 1 data awfully confusing, or, rather, it makes it hard for the one providing the data to know if you want the gut reaction or the rationalization, and obviously most people prefer to present their rationalizations to the world. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's exactly it. And the intricacies that go along with it.

Not all gut instincts can be said out loud, some social situations demand only the rationalisations, in others rationalisation sounds cold and overly pedantic. Philosophy is, afterall, a social activity. It has it's rules too. Like how a system 1 quip can trump a system 2 castle-in-the-air (see "trees don't really exist" - "well, duh, there's one outside my window"), but played wrong the same move comes off sounding naïve and unsubtle. I get it when reading some of the more complicated philosophy, part of me's carefully putting piece to piece constructing the jigsaw until, occasionally, system 1 says "but this is all bullshit, isn't it?"

Here I think it's very much about the social narratives though. I'm guessing, but my gut instinct is that people don't have much of a gut instinct about vaccines as individuals, rather there are a number of social narratives available; the diligent follower of Science™, the see-through-it-all conspiracist, the 'ass-kicking' honor-and-duty soldier, the 'actually-I-think-you'll-find' academic...

Despite titling them facetiously, I'm not suggesting any are somehow insincere (I'm one of them), it's what we do, we use narratives to make sense of the otherwise borderline chaos and just haven't the bandwidth to be constructing individually tailored versions, so we pick them off the shelf, tweak them a bit maybe and then elbow everything into one. I like to see how other people do it, but unless people are confronted with a conflicting narrative they don't do the work, so all you get is the unadulterated story, the off-the-shelf version. Not so interesting.

Ha!

our system is and was set up to deal with ALL those other proximate causes, with X number of beds, resources, protocols, and whatnot. — James Riley

No it isn't and wasn't.

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

there is a simple and free way to stay out of the hospital and avoid stressing those resources that were not designed for this pandemic. — James Riley

Yes there is. I've already done it. Remain at a healthy bmi, eat well, exercise regularly, avoid crowded places during pandemics, wear a mask, wash hands regularly... Are you going to ask all the inpatients about those actions too?

So no, no one has yet answered...

Why vaccination — James Riley

...because no one has given anything which distinguishes vaccination from other courses of action one could take to avoid needing a hospital bed in a time of crisis.

The one vaccinated gets the one bed left, in priority over the other who deliberately chose not to be vaccinated — jorndoe

I'll ask you the same question I put to Benkei then. Why vaccination? It's not even that high on the list of choices which proximally increase your risk of needing a hospital bed.

Most decisions most other people make are a matter of indifference to us. — Srap Tasmaner

Normally, yes. One's method of reducing the burden on one's healthcare services seems a matter for public admonition though.

I haven't been anywhere near describing behavior in the aggregate, just talking about individuals as individuals. The partitioning of options is purely a description of how an individual might view a field of alternatives — Srap Tasmaner

Ah, I misunderstood, sorry.

when you have reason to think you've made a mistake, you just bump the question up to System 2. To put it in the common lingo, such partitioning schemes clearly fall under the heading of "biases and heuristics". — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. That makes sense. I suppose, in that language, I'm trying to get the decision to avoid the vaccine bumped up to people's system 2 to see what kind of justification they come up with. If it's all system 1 responses I'm not going to get anything interesting. I already know what the system 1 responses will be.

I'm not sure people always can articulate the reasons for their decisions. — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe true. I might well be wasting my time.

the friendly neuroscientists down the hall will remind us that whatever they say is an after-the-fact story their brain made up when pressed, a rationalization. — Srap Tasmaner

Now, who would go around saying a thing like that, eh...?

You're right of course, but it's those stories I'm after. They've been my bread and butter for many years. They're not random, it's the exogenous factors which select for them that interest me.

not a proximate cause of an accident — Benkei

Neither is avoiding vaccination. Not having a vaccine is not the cause of covid. It's caused by contact with the SARS-cov-2 virus at sufficient load to overwhelm the immune system in a body with any one of a number of vulnerabilities. Getting vaccinated is just one of the ways a person can reduce the risk of that happening. You've not explained why you prioritize one particular method of reducing one particular risk.

still considered generally safe, — Benkei

Being a young, relatively healthy person, unvaccinated is considered relatively safe. Your chances of needing hospital treatment are well below one in two or three thousand.

do see good reason to prioritise help if someone culpably has put himself in a particularly dangerous situation. — Benkei

Right, but eating bacon every day for breakfast demonstrably does exactly that. As does riding a motorcycle.

Also, this is actually not true. People from lower socio-economic backgrounds are disproportionally sanctioned for breaking laws with less leniency applied. — Benkei

Someone's mental health, socio-economic or cultural background can be cited in a plea for leniency. I've provided assessments for exactly such purposes. I really hope I wasn't wasting my time.

Most laws that are passed disproportionally benefit rich people. — Benkei

Yes, but that's not a good thing is it? You're proposing one more.

If you willfully make decisions that contribute to you requiring care and those decisions are proximate causes to you requiring care, then all other things being equal, you are not the priority patient. — Benkei

Yes, but you've then got to decide extents. You've just assumed not getting vaccinated is top of the list of such decisions. It's not even close to top. Being obese is probably top, a sedentary lifestyle second, poor diet third. Beyond that there's dangerous activities such as sports. Failure to take prophylactic medicine wouldn't even be in the top ten. All are just as proximate, all just as demonstrably linked.

The difference is when you have a victim of the person exceeding the speed limit and the person who exceeded the speed limit. If that information would be available at the moment if having to decide who to operate first, the moral decision is clear. It's about conscious choices and whether that choice is a proximate cause or not. — Benkei

Riding a motorcycle is a conscious choice. So are all the other factors I mentioned. And their link to increased risk is no less demonstrable. To be clear, not getting vaccinated does not cause covid, it increases the risk. We're entirely talking about actions which foreseeably increase risk. Choosing to ride a motorcycle instead of a car is such an action.

A learning disability is no excuse for paying taxes late, parking in the wrong zone or not knowing how to lodge a complaint against a government institution. — Benkei

These are all mitigated by circumstance. Punishment will almost always be less severe in such cases.

The objection is simple;

Triage is based on the principle of maximising human life. Scarce resources are put to that end in the order in which they will most effectively achieve that goal entirely because it is a goal we find to be higher than any other outcome triage processes might yield.

You're suggesting that above the value of human life, we should hold the value of 'teaching them that actions have consequences', or the value of creating a more 'deserving' society by weeding out those less worthy of its benefits.

If people wilfully refuse preventive treatment and then get the illness they could've prevented then obviously they ought to move down the line of priorities when doctors have to make decisions about where to commit resources. — Benkei

You know just adding the word 'obviously' to a proposition doesn't act as a substitute for a justification, obviously.

Should doctors treat car passengers above motorcycle riders in a RTA? Cars are a demonstrably safer means of travel and such information is publicly available, so if someone willfully avoids a practice which reduces their risk of hospitalisation, they should feel the consequences, right?

What about diet, exercise, health and safety recommendations, alcohol consumption, sporting activities...? Are we going to use those criteria in triage too?

Then we'll have to factor in access to information, of course. Those with learning difficulties will need to be identified (we can't hold them to the same standard of willful disregard), those with English as a second language, recent immigrants, the minorities in culturally oppressive groups like women and older children... All shunted to the back of the queue for refusing advice they barely understood or had little control over?

Some real classic psychological tricks on that one. If a behavioural psychologist wasn't involved in writing that I'll eat my hat.