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. — Isaac
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
I don't get it. — tim wood
To me it's simple. — tim wood
If that makes any sense at all? — Isaac
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). — Isaac
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
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
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
And then everything above is models of models? — Srap Tasmaner
Gosh, we're miles off topic. Sorry. — Isaac
I still have the case at hand in mind and will be coming back to it. — Srap Tasmaner
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" — Isaac
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
at least you can tell me if I'm in the neighborhood of your thinking. — Srap Tasmaner
Like having the magic spear with which the hero slays the dragon. — Isaac
Are you assuming we want the truth? There doesn't seem to be much need for it. Least surprise in the long run perhaps... — Isaac
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
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
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
we can make the attempt. — Srap Tasmaner
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
but Truth? — Isaac
over-determine — Isaac
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 — Isaac
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
"underdetermine" I believe you'll find. — Srap Tasmaner
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
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
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
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
It's not a way I'd have looked at things at all — Isaac
my story-telling ... we agreed to try and avoid that — Isaac
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
you don't get credit for having the right intentions but for acting with the right intentions. — Srap Tasmaner
I have Lakoff (who's a challenge for me, temperamentally) and Goffman in my to-read-soon-ish pile. — Srap Tasmaner
I'm slightly allergic to the word "narrative" but I'll get over it. — Srap Tasmaner
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
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