Missing the forest for the trees is a real thing, but a forest without trees is a castle in the air, if you don't mind mixed metaphors. — Srap Tasmaner

Trying to catch up on responding...

I like it, but here in Indiana we call forests without trees corn fields. :razz:

Here's a more controversial example because it speaks to methodology. Timothy Williamson tells a story about explaining the Gettier problem to an economist colleague, who was really puzzled by all the fuss: "So there's a counterexample, so what? Models always have counterexamples." — Srap Tasmaner

I'd be interested in reading more about this controversy. I have the same reaction as Williamson's colleague. It is a bit baffling to me that people could go through life and still be surprised(?) by Gettier problems.

When Capablanca played chess, someone said, it was like he was speaking his native language. — Srap Tasmaner

Sounds really interesting. I'd love to read the account a time travelling Oliver Sacks might give. Any reading recommendations?

Given that physics is the science of matter (hyle), then the question is, what is the science of form? (morphe) — Wayfarer

All sciences are sciences of both.

https://philosophyofbrains.com/2016/05/11/hylomorphism-and-emergence.aspx — Eugen

You listed this link twice.

All you say may be true, that you fully comprehend without having an easy way of showing that to others by reducing your thoughts to conveyable language, but would not that still make you a complicator under your use of the term? — Hanover

Oh absolutely. I can be an annoying as fuck complicator of things.

I'm not surprised, that my OP is easily misinterpreted. I wrote the OP wanting to see what would arise in people's thinking without painting too clear a picture. So I'm not too surprised that you were misinterpreting me, but still the following helps me recognize what I might clarify to convey the ideas I am interested in discussing.

I imagined a complicator or simplifier to be someone who offers information to others for clarification purposes, but if you're imagining those terms to describe a person in terms of what goes on internally for their self-clarification, then that would be a difference in how I considered the terms you presented. — Hanover

I think of simplisticator and complicator as different approaches to communicating ideas. Some people lean more towards one approach or the other. I see both simplisticators and complicators as seeking a result of increasing understanding of something in the other party to a communication, but using different strategies to reach that goal.

My (jaundiced) view of simplisticators is that they tend to present simplistic, but relatively easy to understand accounts of things that don't tend to challenge people's intuitions too much.

On the other hand my (clearly superior) complicator style is to present things to challenge people's intuitions, and get them thinking outside the box. For example, I might simply present some facts that I think someone else's simplistic view of things can't account for and leave it to the other person to develop a more complex understanding that can account for the fact. (I.e. I provide no story.)

I can understand why this sort of style might not seem too practical. It would be the wrong style to use in a courtroom. However, I find that in practice it does get results, in the right environment and given time. An aspect of how it works in practice on a forum like this, is that some people do pick up what I'm laying down relatively easily. (Srap and Janus are two examples.)

Furthermore, in my experience, people who get things I say, often expand on something I say in a word to the wise sort of way. An example of this is this post by Jabberwock in response to a one sentence post of mine:

And in that model nothing is synchronized enough to be called 'the present'. If you see a bird flying in the sky near the sun, the light that bounced off the bird hit it a fraction of a second ago, but the rays coming for the Sun left it eight minutes ago. That is, what you perceive as contemporary is not – the Sun might have suddenly ceased to exist four minutes ago, long before that bird even got near you. Your perception 'the bird flies when the sun shines' would be false in that case.

The same goes for all your senses, of course. If you step on something sharp, you feel it about 0.3 s after the fact. If you think that you have heard something at the exact same moment - you did not, as your auditory impulses are also delayed, but less than touch. And of course both stimuli occurred even earlier, before they were processed by your brain. What you perceive as 'the present' is a jumble of of various occurences that have already happened at different times. 'Reality itself' it is not. — Jabberwock

Jabberwock fleshed things out nicely. He has had some practice translating from wonderer to neurotypical. I get by with a little help from my friends. :smile:

I think everything you posted is right, and comports with what I understand of the two systems model; thus we can continue to use the word intuition just to mean something like very fast, largely unconscious, habitual thinking, problem solving, recognition, and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

I had a rough two system model in which I used "intuition" vs "logical/linguistic" instead of "fast thinking" vs "slow" thinking. So talking in terms of "intuition" comes a bit more naturally for me and I suspect might be more communicative to many than is "fast thinking". For example, here's something I wrote four years before TF&S was published.

Now my impression, as someone who's studied a bit about human mind/brain issues, is that it's highly reasonable to think that there are variations in brain organization that bias people towards one of these perspectives or the other. (Obviously there are social factors as well that play a huge role in which perspective one takes, and there are likely factors of brain organization that influence the degree to which a person adopts the view of those around them, or strikes out on their own in searching for the truth. It's all very complicated with regard to the nature/nurture question.)

Anyway, one way of looking at how people's minds work differently is, looking at whether they have a bias towards intuitive (pattern recognizing) cognitive processes, or logical thought. Now both aspects of human mental processing can be of great value, and both aspects can produce misleading results. And I'm inclined to think an ideal is to use both intuition and logic in a synergistic way, but anyway, that's somewhat tangential.

Sounds familiar I expect. I came at my view based on considering the properties of neural nets, and recognizing how suitable they were to doing the sort of information processing that we experience as intuition. As far as I know, Kahneman came to the view he presents in TF&S, on the basis of the sort of experimental results he lays out in the book. So finding Kahneman's view so consistent with mine was awesome.

Anyway, what I meant by looking deeper was looking into how what we experience as intuition can be understood as naturally arising from networks of neurons. I like to think other people can recognize the sort of things I've been recognizing for a long time, about the relevance of things at the level of neural nets where I see intentionality arising. Though I have to admit I do have a significant advantage due to my electrical engineering background and visuo-spatial abilities. There is an easy for you to say element to it. And part of me recognizes that few are going to have the kind of background knowledge and visuo-spatial aptitude to 'see' it as I do, and part of me doesn't want to admit that.

I'm sorry I haven't responded to more of your last two posts. You've said a lot that reinforces my view and warrants a response, but I need to call it a night. Once again thank you, and I hope to catch up in responding to you.

Back in the early days of AI, Herbert Simon did a lot of work on chess and concluded that intuition is in some sense a myth, that it is just experience, and chess masters have vastly more experience than amateurs, have a huge stock of positions and patterns committed to memory and can draw on those to evaluate positions, find variations and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

Thank you very much for taking the time.

I think the question to ask is, what is "just experience"?

This is the less early days of AI. Today we have ChatGPT, with information processing which in part is based on studying how neurons process information. ChatGPT was trained via an enormous amount of experience.

I'd agree with you somewhat about intuition being a myth, in that what some people conceive of as intuition isn't very realistic, but I think "intuition" is a quite useful word, to label something which is important to understand about human cognition, and which people (to vaying degrees) recognize as an aspect of how their mind works. I'd say intuition just is outputs resulting from deep learning in neural networks, which were trained to do the information processing that they do, with experience as input.

You mention "positions and patterns committed to memory". Pattern recognition is something neural networks can be trained to be extremely good at. So good that if you have driven a long commute over and over, you eventually develop the ability to drive the route on 'autopilot' with your conscious mind free to consider something completely unrelated to the experience of driving.

Do you think it might be worth looking deeper than "just experience"?

Exactly. Thank you for explaining.

May I use you, as a demonstration to other forum members, of something apropos to discussion going on in the "Simplisticators and Complicators" thread? :nerd:

So, I just got the word today, that I get to go from three month checkups after treatment for prostate cancer, to six month check ups. Is it kosher for me to bring up experience with hormone therapy in the Masculinity thread?

I can write paragraphs about this but I doubt anyone wants to read that. — Srap Tasmaner

I'd be very interested. Although I've never put much effort into becoming good at chess, and I'm not sure I would understand it very comprehensively.

I take as an indicator of comprehension, the ability to simplify and explain. — Hanover

Thanks for the substantive response.

I'm not surprised that you, as an attorney, see things that way. However an understanding of Broca's aphasia shows thing are not that simple. Another thing to consider is Srap's comment:

Chess provides a clear example, as usual: there's a saying among masters that the move you want to play is the right move, even if it seems impossible. This is intuition... — Srap Tasmaner

A chess master's intuition would seem by definition to be something that the CM can't put into words, and yet it is demonstrable that the CM's intuition must in some regard be comprehension, even if it not a comprehension that the CM can express linguistically.

In my case, I do much of my electronic design by mentally modelling designs in the form of 'pictures' in my head. It is often the case that I can see why designs will or won't work, but it would take a lot of effort to translate the dynamic model I am picturing in my mind into language. Ability to comprehend is separate issue from being able to express what is comprehended verbally. Fortunately electronic designs can be communicated in the form of schematic diagrams, that others with the right knowledge base can develop their own comprehension of.

To simplify, it must be a story because stories are what happens in real life. — Hanover

But that's simplistic. Vastly more happens in real life than has ever been put into a story. Can you really disagree?

The complicator keeps it abstract without the ability to fully explain it, either because he's just poor at anticipating what his audience doesn't understand, or more commonly, he doesn't fully understand what he's talking about

I think it is pretty natural for most people to interpret the thinking of others, in terms of the experience of thinking that they themselves have. However, most people don't have a very fine grained understanding of what their particular constellation of cognitive strengths and weaknesses are, and how that constellation of cognitive strengths and weaknesses shapes the way they go through life. So most people are inclined to jump to simplistic conclusions about the thinking of people whose constellation differs significantly from their own. It may be the case for you, that if you are unable to explain something you don't understand it. It might even be the case that such is true for most of the people you encounter, but it certainly isn't universally true.

Being autistic, it is definitely the case that I can be poor at anticipating what other people will and won't understand, at least until I've gotten to know the person somewhat.

I'd urge you to watch the movie Temple Grandin, as a means of developing a more informed perspective.

The hedgehog and the fox? — Srap Tasmaner

I've had the opportunity to look into it more and it seems very insightful, although I haven't read enough of by the Russian authors discussed, to have a very deep understanding. The notion of a fox who thinks he should be a hedgehog certainly resonates.

One of my favourites is Galapagos and the other is Cat's Cradle. — Vera Mont

Cat's Cradle is what my book group is planning to read prior to our museum trip. I've read it, but I think I was 14 or 15 at the time, so I expect to get a lot out of rereading it.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I just happened upon Brain size predicts learning abilities in bees.

Among other things. Why? — Vera Mont

I get the impression that you might appreciate Vonnegut's thinking.

Which might not have occurred to me, except someone in my science fiction book group recently suggested a group field trip to the Kurt Vonnegut museum. I haven't read anything by Vonnegut in a long time, other than the short story Harrison Bergeron which I reread occasionally.

'Where you live' is in your brain's model of reality, which is generated in part based on the light that hit your retina (on the order of 100 milliseconds) earlier.

do dolphins have laws? — Moliere

I don't know, but it seems orcas don't object to their kids being juvenile delinquents.

We were suddenly surprised by what felt like a bad wave from the side,” he said of the recent incident. “That happened twice, and the second time we realized that we had two orcas underneath the boat, biting the rudder off. They were two juveniles, and the adults were cruising around, and it seemed to me like they were monitoring that action.

Makes me mad as a hornet. — Hanover

He said waspishly.

:up:

Are you a Vonnegut fan?

:up:

One problem with this survey is that modern realism is itself an outgrowth of Kantian Transcendental Idealism. — Joshs

We all stand on the shoulders of giants. I'm not seeing how that's a problem.

Kantian Transcendental Idealism is an outgrowth of Christianity. Do you think that people shouldn't outgrow Christianity?

Philosophy isn't satisfied with this and seeks to find arguments to establish that realism is naïve and untenable. I don't have a philosophical view on this. — Tom Storm

This forum might give the impression that idealism is more popular among philosophers than it actually is. The Philpapers survey says:

External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
Accept or lean toward: non-skeptical realism 760 / 931 (81.6%)
Other 86 / 931 (9.2%)
Accept or lean toward: skepticism 45 / 931 (4.8%)
Accept or lean toward: idealism 40 / 931 (4.3%)

Why does the amount of neurons matter? If consciousness is an emergent property, shouldn't it emerge when there are a million neurons present? — RogueAI

Neuron count plays a role in determining how much information processing capability a brain has, although synapse count would likely be a better indicator. See here.

The differences are more superficial than the similarities. — Vera Mont

Honeybee brains have ~960,000 neurons.
Human brains have ~100,000,000,000 neurons.
That does not seem like a superficial difference to me.

When I was working as an engineer, I had this image that came to me when I was starting a new project. My head had a hole in the top with a funnel. I would pour all the information - text, figures, maps, tables - in at the top of my head. Then I would wait for a while and it would organize it in my head. — T Clark

:up:

Have you read Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit?

A relevant passage:

It is clear that what makes Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false. Rather, just as Black’s account suggests, the orator intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself. He is not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance of religion, who is sensitive to the greatness of our history, whose pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on.

[Emphasis added.]

Too much pseudo-intellectualism.

You haven't understood the topic.

Limited time, energy and patience. — Amity

Yep.

At work it's boneheaded. I save the stoneheaded mistakes for the forum.

Interesting. I have no technical expertise in any area, nor do I have much interest in math or science. Does this 'force' me into the simplisticator corner? How much of this is almost a necessary function of one's education, employment or even neurodiversity?

Is there a third option? — Tom Storm

I think taking the idea of sims and coms (thanks 0 thru 9) too seriously would be... ...wait for it... ...simplistic. I suspect it is a matter of all three.

I think all of us are both sims and coms, in ways that vary idiosyncratically. I don't think technical expertise specifically has much to do with it. I do think having real expertise in some way has something to do with it. Maybe having expertise, in dealing with some aspect of how things work in the world specifically, but for all I know, being expert at bonsai or dealing with human BS, is as effective as being an autistic electrical engineer.

I think having expertise can counteract the impact that the Dunning-Kruger effect has on us. Having a field of investigation where we know what we are talking about might make us more aware of when we don't know what we are talking about and at least a bit better at avoiding putting our foot in our mouths.

Perhaps of similar value, is having greater cognizance of when other people don't know what they are talking about. The knowledge of science aspect does play an important role in this case.

On complex matters, I often prefer a suspension of judgement. I'm pretty keen on the answer, 'I don't know' and would prefer it if more people pursued this and just got on with their lives. — Tom Storm

:up: :up: :up:

I don't know how many times I've explained to Christians that I'm perfectly fine with not knowing things, and admitting as much. I guess one thing about engineering for me, that has given me a real appreciation for people who can show me that I'm wrong, is design reviews. These days I go into design reviews hoping that the others on the review team will look super critically at a design I'm presenting, and spot any boneheaded mistakes I've made.*

When I was forum shopping recently I noted your shoshin as a very appealing aspect to this forum.

On matters like QM speculation, the nature of consciousness, etc, the notion of uncertainty is more significant to me (as a skeptic) than trying to force answers. Many of us hold highly complex explanations about matters we are not really qualified to understand. Perhaps this view is just a passive form of simplistication? — Tom Storm

I will leave those considerations of the koan to you. I don't know.

* There are limits. :rage: :wink:

And BTW, I'm a bit stoned, and suspect that was awfully disorganized and stream of consciousness, but I'm a bit stoned.

They are all individuals - except that one silly hemlock. — Vera Mont

:rofl: :up:

Another great Lem novel is Memoirs Found in a Bathtub. — Noble Dust

I love many of Lem's short stories. I think I enjoyed The Cyberiad the most, of what I've read.

First off, did you see my edit?

Secondly... Thank you for being so patient, with me trying to get away without laying my worldview out in much detail. (So to speak.)

I can see I would need to start a new thread to fill in the details, and while I might be up for that, it would be a sciency explanation of how I see humans as existing within a system, and most affectingly, within a system of their fellow humans and the universe at large.

It would help motivate me to take on such a project, if I had confidence it wasn't going to feel like a waste of my time. So how interested are you?

In case it makes a difference, this youtube video conveys some of my views and ethics. However, I recommend waiting until you've got ten minutes to relax and I recommend closing your eyes and letting your mind draw it's own picture while listening.

Awesome! Thank you!

I've only glanced at the wikipedia page, but that is something I definitely want to read.

:pray:

You think mutual and consensual love-making has such power?

How does anyone reinforce behaviour of a concept or thing?
Especially when it isn't one thing but a complexity of things. — Amity

Yes, sex is a powerful reward. Being deeply in love with the other is an awesome bonus on top, but not necessary to sex being rewarding for men. (And I've been so deeply in love that I couldn't imagine wanting to have sex with anyone else, but I had to get over it.)

I don't know what you mean by "behaviour of a concept or thing". Would a tendency for aggressive behavior be a thing?

Behavioral reinforcement.

Edit to add: ...and 'evolutionary success'.

If it coincided with doing whatever the fuck they wanted, they would be exceedingly happy, no? — Amity

Good point! :up:

Something, inspired by what you said, that I want to toss into the thread (and then run away)... :wink:

At least some women reward men for being aggressive with flirtation and/or sex. Should women therefore be considered responsible for 'the patriarchy'?

Funny... As an engineer I saw my primary job as taking the multiplicity of the universe and simplifying it so it could be used to make decisions. I might have hundreds of data points related to the presence, depth, and concentration of chemical contaminants in soil. I had to turn that data into a line on the drawings that showed where we had to excavate soil to remediate the site. — T Clark

:up:

Right. There are many different sorts of tasks involved in getting engineering projects done. I design high accuracy electronic measurement instrumentation. So I was only talking about what I do as an engineer. Not what engineers do in a general way.

So, at the last, 'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.' You can't get simpler than that. — mcdoodle

But you can point out that it is simplistic. :wink:

Interesting response! :up:

I haven't read through the Tractacus, but what you said reminded me of the Zen saying, "Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; After one gains insight through the teachings of a master, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; After enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters are waters."

Please explain how "even the slightest movement of the head or offset in distance between observers can cause the three-dimensional universes to have differing content." And how can this purported difference in content cause a difference in simultaneity of months?
— T Clark

I didn't claim the universe was three dimensional, nor did I claim multiple universes. Even the slightest angle results in an arbitrarily large separation at large distances since X sin(a) for a very small angle a can still be a large value if X is large enough. Likewise even a tiny change in reference frames results in a large (months) change in the 3D plane of simultaneity at a sufficiently large distances. — noAxioms

Things like slight angles of the head and difference in position aren't particularly relevant to the special relativity scenario under consideration. The key thing to consider is the difference in the velocity of the two 'observers', and particularly the component of velocity in the direction of Andromeda. (If the two observers were moving past each other in a direction perpendicular to the direction to Andromeda, they would be viewing the same point in Andromeda's history.)