First, I’m not claiming any magical non-reducibility. I’m just claiming to be human. Humans usually aren’t transparently reducible. This is the whole idea behind not being able to reliably other-optimize. I’m generally grateful if people try to optimize me, but only if they give an explanation so that I can understand the context and relevance of their advice. It was Orthonormal that—I thought was—claiming an unlikely insider understanding without support, though I understand he meant well.
I also disagree with the implicit claim that I don’t have enough status to assert my own narrative. Perhaps this is the wrong reading, but this is an issue I’m unusually sensitive about. In my childhood, understanding that I wasn’t transparent, and that other people don’t get to define my reality for me, was my biggest rationality hurdle. I used to believe people of any authority when they told me something that contradicted my internal experience, and endlessly questioned my own perception. Now I just try to ask the commonsense question: whose reality should I choose—their’s or mine? (The projected or the experienced?)
Later edit: Now that this comment has been ‘out there’ for about 15 minutes, I feel like it is a bit shrill and over-reactive. Well… evidence for me that I have this particular ‘button’.
Your objection is reasonable. It is often considered impolite to analyze people based on their words, especially in public. It is often taken to be a slight on the recipient’s status, as you took it.
As an actual disagreement with Vladimir you are simply mistaken. In the raw literal sense humans are non-mysterious, reducible objects. More importantly, in the more practical sense that Vladimir makes the claim you are, as a human being, predictable in many ways. Your thinking can be predicted with some confidence to operate with known failure modes that are consistently found in repeated investigations of other humans. Self reports in particular are known to differ from reliable indicators of state if taken literally and their predictions of future state are even worse.
If you told me, for example, that you would finish a project two weeks before the due date I would not believe you. If you told me your confidence level in a particular prediction you have made on a topic in which you are an expert then I will not believe you. I would expect that you, like that majority of experts, were systematically overconfident in your predictions.
Orthonormal may be mistaken in his prediction about your nihilist tendencies but Vladimir is absolutely correct that you are a non-mysterious human being, with all that it entails.
I used to believe people of any authority when they told me something that contradicted my internal experience, and endlessly questioned my own perception.
It gives me a warm glow inside whenever I hear of someone breaking free from that trap.
I disagree with this comment.
First, I’m not claiming any magical non-reducibility. I’m just claiming to be human. Humans usually aren’t transparently reducible. This is the whole idea behind not being able to reliably other-optimize. I’m generally grateful if people try to optimize me, but only if they give an explanation so that I can understand the context and relevance of their advice. It was Orthonormal that—I thought was—claiming an unlikely insider understanding without support, though I understand he meant well.
I also disagree with the implicit claim that I don’t have enough status to assert my own narrative. Perhaps this is the wrong reading, but this is an issue I’m unusually sensitive about. In my childhood, understanding that I wasn’t transparent, and that other people don’t get to define my reality for me, was my biggest rationality hurdle. I used to believe people of any authority when they told me something that contradicted my internal experience, and endlessly questioned my own perception. Now I just try to ask the commonsense question: whose reality should I choose—their’s or mine? (The projected or the experienced?)
Later edit: Now that this comment has been ‘out there’ for about 15 minutes, I feel like it is a bit shrill and over-reactive. Well… evidence for me that I have this particular ‘button’.
Your objection is reasonable. It is often considered impolite to analyze people based on their words, especially in public. It is often taken to be a slight on the recipient’s status, as you took it.
As an actual disagreement with Vladimir you are simply mistaken. In the raw literal sense humans are non-mysterious, reducible objects. More importantly, in the more practical sense that Vladimir makes the claim you are, as a human being, predictable in many ways. Your thinking can be predicted with some confidence to operate with known failure modes that are consistently found in repeated investigations of other humans. Self reports in particular are known to differ from reliable indicators of state if taken literally and their predictions of future state are even worse.
If you told me, for example, that you would finish a project two weeks before the due date I would not believe you. If you told me your confidence level in a particular prediction you have made on a topic in which you are an expert then I will not believe you. I would expect that you, like that majority of experts, were systematically overconfident in your predictions.
Orthonormal may be mistaken in his prediction about your nihilist tendencies but Vladimir is absolutely correct that you are a non-mysterious human being, with all that it entails.
It gives me a warm glow inside whenever I hear of someone breaking free from that trap.