I’m definitely talking about the concept of purpose here, not the word.
I think bryjnar is saying there may be two different concepts of purpose, which share the same word, with the grammatically 3-nary “purpose” often referring to one concept and the grammatically 2-nary “purpose” often referring to the other. This seems plausible to me, because if the 2-nary “purpose” is just intended to be a projection of the 3-nary “purpose”, why would people fail to do this correctly?
Maybe 2-naryish thinking about intentions in general is somehow useful. Maybe this has something to do with how we come up with new uses for things and spot other optimizer-thingies before they kill us. Maybe the brain makes new discoveries by confusing language with new meanings from time to time but unfortunately this can be a failure mode too.
Maybe it really is just a simple logical fallacy. The brain came up with the 2-nary grammatical shortcut, and didn’t properly keep it separate from the original 3-nary concept.
Maybe the brain is confusing the linguistic shorthand for a conceptual one. An agent is usually assumed even if the expression is grammatically 2-nary.
I think bryjnar is saying there may be two different concepts of purpose, which share the same word, with the grammatically 3-nary “purpose” often referring to one concept and the grammatically 2-nary “purpose” often referring to the other. This seems plausible to me, because if the 2-nary “purpose” is just intended to be a projection of the 3-nary “purpose”, why would people fail to do this correctly?
Why have brilliant people failed at these before?
Maybe 2-naryish thinking about intentions in general is somehow useful. Maybe this has something to do with how we come up with new uses for things and spot other optimizer-thingies before they kill us. Maybe the brain makes new discoveries by confusing language with new meanings from time to time but unfortunately this can be a failure mode too.
Maybe it really is just a simple logical fallacy. The brain came up with the 2-nary grammatical shortcut, and didn’t properly keep it separate from the original 3-nary concept.
Maybe the brain is confusing the linguistic shorthand for a conceptual one. An agent is usually assumed even if the expression is grammatically 2-nary.