However, “winning” is in the map not the territory.
Nah. Winning isn’t determined by the map, it’s like a highlighted endpoint (like drawing on a map with a marker). You win when you get there. Note that a little red x or circle on a map isn’t really part of the map. There is nothing there that we expect to correspond to the territory (imagine arriving at your destination and everything turns the color of the marker you used!).
The theistic move is like not finding any destination on the map that you’re happy with so so you draw in a really cool mountain and make it your endpoint.
Winning isn’t in the map because winning conditions are defined by desires, not beliefs.
I’m not sure about the other stuff, but you have to agree that winning is in the map. You can define your win as an objective fact about reality (winning = getting to the mountain) but deciding that any objective fact is a win is subjective.
The theistic move is like not finding any destination on the map that you’re happy with so so you draw in a really cool mountain and make it your endpoint.
My problem is that I’m trying to identify any lasting, real difference between deciding that a feature of the territory indicated on your map is ‘pretty cool’ and deciding that aspects of your map are pretty cool in of themselves, even if they don’t map to real features in the terrain.
Winning isn’t in the map because winning conditions are defined by desires, not beliefs.
OK. But just to check: are you pretty sure this is a real distinction?
I’m not sure about the other stuff, but you have to agree that winning is in the map. You can define your win as an objective fact about reality (winning = getting to the mountain) but deciding that any objective fact is a win is subjective.
It is subjective and it isn’t in the territory… but that isn’t the extent of our ontology. The map corresponds to your beliefs, the territory to external reality. Your desires are something else.
My problem is that I’m trying to identify any lasting, real difference between deciding that a feature of the territory indicated on your map is ‘pretty cool’ and deciding that aspects of your map are pretty cool in of themselves, even if they don’t map to real features in the terrain.
Right. I don’t think I have a new way of answering this question. :-). “Pretty cool” is at most an intersubjectively determined adjective. To say something is pretty cool in and of itself is a category error. Put it this way: what would it possibly mean for something to be pretty cool in a universe without anyone to find it cool? (Same goes for finding things moral, just so we’re on the same page).
OK. But just to check: are you pretty sure this is a real distinction?
As certain as I get about anything. Beliefs are accountable to reality, if reality changes beliefs change. From the less wrong wiki on the map and territory:
Since our predictions don’t always come true, we need different words to describe the thingy that generates our predictions and the thingy that generates our experimental results. The first thingy is called “belief”, the second thingy “reality”.
Desires don’t generate predictions. In fact, they have exactly the opposite orientation of beliefs. If reality doesn’t match our beliefs our beliefs are wrong and we have to change them. If reality doesn’t match our desires reality is wrong and we have to change it.
I think there are maps associated with rewards. The reason you want a reward is that you’re expecting something good, whether it’s a sensation or a chance at further rewards, to be associated with it.
If this has been a difficult question, it suggests that you didn’t have your mind (or perhaps your map of your mind) as part of the territory.
I can try, but I’m not sure exactly what’s unclear to you, so this is an estimate of what’s needed.
It looks to me as though the metaphor is a human looking at a road map, and what’s being discussed is whether the human’s destination is part of the landscape represented on the map. If you frame it that way, I’d say the answer is no.
However, the map in hand isn’t the only representation the human has of the world. The human has a destination, and ideas about what will be accomplished by getting to the destination. I’m saying that the ideas about the goal are a map of how the world works.
From the root of this thread:
It seems that here at Less Wrong, we discourage map/territory discrepancies and mind projection fallacies, etc.
This is a means, not an end. The purpose of Less Wrong is to live as well as possible—we can’t live without maps because the world is very much larger than our minds, and very much larger than any possible AI.
The “extreme aesthetic” of eliminating as much representation as possible doesn’t strike me as what we’re aiming at, but I’m interested in other opinions on that.
If I understand The Principles of Effortless Power correctly, it’s about eliminating (conscious?) representation in martial arts fighting, and thereby becoming very good at it. However, the author puts a lot of effort into representing the process.
I can try, but I’m not sure exactly what’s unclear to you, so this is an estimate of what’s needed.
Pretty much all of it, but that might just be me. It is a little clearer now. Was there something in my comment in particular you were responding to? My puny human brain might just be straining at the limitations of metaphorical reasoning.
However, the map in hand isn’t the only representation the human has of the world. The human has a destination, and ideas about what will be accomplished by getting to the destination. I’m saying that the ideas about the goal are a map of how the world works.
I think we have maps for how to reach our goal but the fact that you have picked goal x instead of any other goal doesn’t appear to me to be the product of any belief.
Your last three paragraphs still confuse me. In particular, while they all sound like cool insights I’m not entirely sure what they mean exactly and I don’t understand how they relate to each other or anything else.
What caught me was your idea that goals are completely unexaminable. Ultimate goals migtht be, but most of the goals we live with are subordinate to larger goals.
I was trying to answer the root post in this thread, and looking at the question of whether we’re trying to eliminate maps. I don’t think we are.
The last paragraph was the best example I could find of a human being using maps as little as possible.
What caught me was your idea that goals are completely unexaminable. Ultimate goals migtht be, but most of the goals we live with are subordinate to larger goals.
Got it. And you’re right that my claim should be qualified in this way.
I was trying to answer the root post in this thread, and looking at the question of whether we’re trying to eliminate maps. I don’t think we are.
I see (I think). I guess my position that is that a free-floating belief that is, one that doesn’t constrain anticipated experience, or a desire is like a map-inscription which doesn’t correspond to anything on the territory. And there is a sense in which such things aren’t really part of the map. They’re more like an overlay, than the map itself. You can take the compass rose off a map, it might make the map harder to use or less cool to stare at but it doesn’t make the map wrong. And not recognizing that this is the case is a serious error! There is no crazy four pointed island in the middle of the South Pacific. Desires and free-floating beliefs are like this. I don’t really want them gone I just want people to realize that they aren’t actually in the territory and so in some sense aren’t really part of the ideal map (even if you keep them there because it is convenient).
This is as much a response to Morendil as a response to you and Nancy.
While it is certainly true that many or most of our desires “come with” the territory, these desires are ‘base’ or ‘instinctual’ goals that at times we would like to over-ride. The desire to be free of pain, for example. So-called “ultimate goals” can be more cerebral (and perhaps more fictional) and depend much more on beliefs. For example, the desire to help humanity, avoid existential risks, populate the universe, are all desires based more upon beliefs than the territory.
So if we take the view from nowhere: there are brains with which do this thing called being a mind. The minds have things called beliefs and things called desires but all of this is just neuron activity. These minds have a metaphor for relating their neuronal activities called beliefs with the universe that that observe: the map-territory metaphor.
The map-territory distinction is only understandable from the subjective perspective. There is something “outside me” which generates sensory experiences. This is the territory. The is something that is somehow a part of me or at least more proximate to me. These are my expectations about future sensory experiences, my beliefs. This is the map. Desire is a third thing (which of course is in the same universe as everything else, apropos the view from nowhere) it neither generates sensory experiences nor constrains our expectations about future sensory experiences. It isn″t in the territory, or in the map. From the subjective perspective desires are simply given. Now of course there are actually complex causal histories for these things, but from the subjective perspective a desire just arises.
Now through reasoning with our map what are initially terminal desires throw off sub-desires (Like if I desire food I will also desire getting a job to pay for food.) Perhaps we can also have second order desires: desires about our desires. Of course like beliefs desires exist in the territory as aspects of our brain activity. But in the perspective in which the map-territory metaphor is operative desires are sui generis.
(Status: so what happened at this point is that gave up. You think that desires are a 3rd thing, which I understand, but I think desires (and beliefs) are something you choose and that you modify in order to be more rational. I didn’t realize I gave up until I realized I had stopped thinking about this.)
Same answer, new formulation.
Nah. Winning isn’t determined by the map, it’s like a highlighted endpoint (like drawing on a map with a marker). You win when you get there. Note that a little red x or circle on a map isn’t really part of the map. There is nothing there that we expect to correspond to the territory (imagine arriving at your destination and everything turns the color of the marker you used!).
The theistic move is like not finding any destination on the map that you’re happy with so so you draw in a really cool mountain and make it your endpoint.
Winning isn’t in the map because winning conditions are defined by desires, not beliefs.
Thanks for responding.
I’m not sure about the other stuff, but you have to agree that winning is in the map. You can define your win as an objective fact about reality (winning = getting to the mountain) but deciding that any objective fact is a win is subjective.
My problem is that I’m trying to identify any lasting, real difference between deciding that a feature of the territory indicated on your map is ‘pretty cool’ and deciding that aspects of your map are pretty cool in of themselves, even if they don’t map to real features in the terrain.
OK. But just to check: are you pretty sure this is a real distinction?
It is subjective and it isn’t in the territory… but that isn’t the extent of our ontology. The map corresponds to your beliefs, the territory to external reality. Your desires are something else.
Right. I don’t think I have a new way of answering this question. :-). “Pretty cool” is at most an intersubjectively determined adjective. To say something is pretty cool in and of itself is a category error. Put it this way: what would it possibly mean for something to be pretty cool in a universe without anyone to find it cool? (Same goes for finding things moral, just so we’re on the same page).
As certain as I get about anything. Beliefs are accountable to reality, if reality changes beliefs change. From the less wrong wiki on the map and territory:
Desires don’t generate predictions. In fact, they have exactly the opposite orientation of beliefs. If reality doesn’t match our beliefs our beliefs are wrong and we have to change them. If reality doesn’t match our desires reality is wrong and we have to change it.
I think there are maps associated with rewards. The reason you want a reward is that you’re expecting something good, whether it’s a sensation or a chance at further rewards, to be associated with it.
If this has been a difficult question, it suggests that you didn’t have your mind (or perhaps your map of your mind) as part of the territory.
Do you mind clarifying this?
I can try, but I’m not sure exactly what’s unclear to you, so this is an estimate of what’s needed.
It looks to me as though the metaphor is a human looking at a road map, and what’s being discussed is whether the human’s destination is part of the landscape represented on the map. If you frame it that way, I’d say the answer is no.
However, the map in hand isn’t the only representation the human has of the world. The human has a destination, and ideas about what will be accomplished by getting to the destination. I’m saying that the ideas about the goal are a map of how the world works.
From the root of this thread:
This is a means, not an end. The purpose of Less Wrong is to live as well as possible—we can’t live without maps because the world is very much larger than our minds, and very much larger than any possible AI.
The “extreme aesthetic” of eliminating as much representation as possible doesn’t strike me as what we’re aiming at, but I’m interested in other opinions on that.
If I understand The Principles of Effortless Power correctly, it’s about eliminating (conscious?) representation in martial arts fighting, and thereby becoming very good at it. However, the author puts a lot of effort into representing the process.
Pretty much all of it, but that might just be me. It is a little clearer now. Was there something in my comment in particular you were responding to? My puny human brain might just be straining at the limitations of metaphorical reasoning.
I think we have maps for how to reach our goal but the fact that you have picked goal x instead of any other goal doesn’t appear to me to be the product of any belief.
Your last three paragraphs still confuse me. In particular, while they all sound like cool insights I’m not entirely sure what they mean exactly and I don’t understand how they relate to each other or anything else.
What caught me was your idea that goals are completely unexaminable. Ultimate goals migtht be, but most of the goals we live with are subordinate to larger goals.
I was trying to answer the root post in this thread, and looking at the question of whether we’re trying to eliminate maps. I don’t think we are.
The last paragraph was the best example I could find of a human being using maps as little as possible.
Got it. And you’re right that my claim should be qualified in this way.
I see (I think). I guess my position that is that a free-floating belief that is, one that doesn’t constrain anticipated experience, or a desire is like a map-inscription which doesn’t correspond to anything on the territory. And there is a sense in which such things aren’t really part of the map. They’re more like an overlay, than the map itself. You can take the compass rose off a map, it might make the map harder to use or less cool to stare at but it doesn’t make the map wrong. And not recognizing that this is the case is a serious error! There is no crazy four pointed island in the middle of the South Pacific. Desires and free-floating beliefs are like this. I don’t really want them gone I just want people to realize that they aren’t actually in the territory and so in some sense aren’t really part of the ideal map (even if you keep them there because it is convenient).
This is as much a response to Morendil as a response to you and Nancy.
While it is certainly true that many or most of our desires “come with” the territory, these desires are ‘base’ or ‘instinctual’ goals that at times we would like to over-ride. The desire to be free of pain, for example. So-called “ultimate goals” can be more cerebral (and perhaps more fictional) and depend much more on beliefs. For example, the desire to help humanity, avoid existential risks, populate the universe, are all desires based more upon beliefs than the territory.
So if we take the view from nowhere: there are brains with which do this thing called being a mind. The minds have things called beliefs and things called desires but all of this is just neuron activity. These minds have a metaphor for relating their neuronal activities called beliefs with the universe that that observe: the map-territory metaphor.
The map-territory distinction is only understandable from the subjective perspective. There is something “outside me” which generates sensory experiences. This is the territory. The is something that is somehow a part of me or at least more proximate to me. These are my expectations about future sensory experiences, my beliefs. This is the map. Desire is a third thing (which of course is in the same universe as everything else, apropos the view from nowhere) it neither generates sensory experiences nor constrains our expectations about future sensory experiences. It isn″t in the territory, or in the map. From the subjective perspective desires are simply given. Now of course there are actually complex causal histories for these things, but from the subjective perspective a desire just arises.
Now through reasoning with our map what are initially terminal desires throw off sub-desires (Like if I desire food I will also desire getting a job to pay for food.) Perhaps we can also have second order desires: desires about our desires. Of course like beliefs desires exist in the territory as aspects of our brain activity. But in the perspective in which the map-territory metaphor is operative desires are sui generis.
(Status: so what happened at this point is that gave up. You think that desires are a 3rd thing, which I understand, but I think desires (and beliefs) are something you choose and that you modify in order to be more rational. I didn’t realize I gave up until I realized I had stopped thinking about this.)