You have conceded it is special with regard to its place in the conceptual hierarchy and its communicabulity, for all that you are holding out that a metaphysical explanation isn’t required.
I’ve conceded that they’re as special as birds that don’t fly. That is, that they’re things which don’t require any special explanation. One of the things you learn from computer programming is that recursion has to bottom out somewhere. To me, the idea that there are experiential primitives is no more surprising than the fact that computer languages have primitive operations: that’s what you make the non-primitives out of. No more surprising than the idea that at some point, we’ll stop discovering new levels of fundamental particles.
Among programmers, it can be a fun pastime to see just how few primitives you can have in a language, but evolution doesn’t have a brain that enjoys such games. So it’s unsurprising that evolution would work almost exclusively in the form of primitives—in other words, a very wide-bottomed pyramid.
Humans are the special ones—the only species that unquestionably uses recursive symbolic communication, and is therefore the only species that makes conceptual pyramids at all.
So, from my point of view, anything that’s not a primitive neural event is the thing that needs a special explanation!
[mathematicians, male gynecologists, etc.]
You appear to be distorting my argument, by conflating experiential primitives and experiential grounding. Humans can communicate metaphorically, analogously, and in various other ways… but all of that communication takes place either in symbols (grounded in some prior experience), or through the direct analog means available to us (tone of voice, movement, drawing, facial expressions) to ground a communication in some actual, present-moment experience.
But, I expect you already knew that, which makes me think you’re simply trolling.
Why are you here, exactly?
Clearly, you’re not a Bayesian reductionist, nor do you appear to show any interest whatsoever in becoming one. In not one comment have I ever seen you learn something from your participation, nor do I see anything that suggests you have any interest in learning anything, or really doing anything else but generating a feeling of superiority through your ability to remain unconvinced of anything while putting on a show of your education.
Your language about arguments and concessions strongly suggest that you think this is a debating society, or that arguments are soldiers to be sent forth in support of a bottom line...
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you ask a single question that wasn’t of the rhetorical, trying-to-score-points-off-your-opponent variety, which suggests you have very little interest in becoming… well, any less wrong than you currently are.
I’ve conceded that [qualia] are as special as birds that don’t fly.
That’s vaguely phrased. What does “special” mean? Is my guess about metaphysical explanation correct.?
That is, that they’re things which don’t require any special explanation. One of the things you learn from computer programming is that recursion has to bottom out somewhere.
I know. I’m a programmer.
[mathematicians, male gynecologists, etc.]
You appear to be distorting my argument, by conflating experiential primitives and experiential grounding. Humans can communicate metaphorically, analogously, and in various other ways… but all of that communication takes place either in symbols (grounded in some prior experience), or through the direct analog means available to us (tone of voice, movement, drawing, facial expressions) to ground a communication in some actual, present-moment experience.
You appear to be not even responding to my arguments.
Why are you here, exactly?
I am here to evaluate ideas and argumnents.
Clearly, you’re not a Bayesian reductionist,
I have studied Bayesian reductionism and I find it flawed. I can explain why. Are you saying I
should not be examining it critically, or that I should accept it in spite of its flaws?
nor do you appear to show any interest whatsoever in becoming one.
What sort of effort would that involve? Do you realise how religious your language sounds—“you need
to try harder to believe”?
In not one comment have I ever seen you learn something from your participation,
Well, Sir, I haven’t seen you learn anything from me.
nor do I see anything that suggests you have any interest in learning anything, or really doing anything else but generating a feeling of superiority through your ability to remain unconvinced of anything while putting on a show of your education.
Most ideas are wrong, so I remain unconvinced by most of them.
Your language about arguments and concessions strongly suggest that you think this is a debating society, or that arguments are soldiers to be sent forth in support of a bottom line...
What are these forums for if not for debate? Are participants supposed to accept things uncritically? That’s not
rationallity where I come from.
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you ask a single question that wasn’t of the rhetorical, trying-to-score-points-off-your-opponent variety, which suggests you have very little interest in becoming… well, any less wrong than you currently are.
Try considering the hypothesis that all that is true, and is explained by my already knowing how to be rational.
I mean, do you think LW has cornered some market in rationality? Do you think everyone who visits these
boards can be assumed to be naively empty-headed? Do you think it might be a step forward to base
your ad hominems on actual characteristics rather than assumed ones?
What are these forums for if not for debate? Are participants supposed to accept things uncritically? That’s not rationallity where I come from.
Way to conflate three entirely different things to suggest various deniable conclusions. A terrific example of the sort of “Dark Arts” debating tactics we are not interested in having on LessWrong.
I think perhaps you’re looking for the Argument Clinic, instead.
I’m the irritant that produces the pearl.
In other words, you admit to being a troll. Thanks for clarifying that.
Congratulations on at least not being an immediately obvious one; I originally mistook you for an educable single-topic visitor from another site (rather than a determined troll), who might actually be educable. So, I’ll stop replying entirely now.
This and your recent other discussions about qualia and zombies are a great example of getting useful explanations thanks to trolls. It finally clicked for me that an algorithmic explanation doesn’t actually “leave anything out” and that reductionism doesn’t fail. I kept reading “Mind Projection Fallacy”, but couldn’t see how I was committing it. Thanks for your efforts, PJ!
I kept reading “Mind Projection Fallacy”, but couldn’t see how I was committing it. Thanks for your efforts, PJ!
I’m glad someone got some use out of it.
a great example of getting useful explanations thanks to trolls
You (or someone else) could have gotten just as good of an explanation out of me by saying, “I don’t understand how that’s committing the MPF”, so that’s not really evidence in favor of trolls being valuable.
What’s valuable is persistence, in that if you ask the question only once and stop saying, “yeah, but what I don’t get about that is...”, ” wouldn’t that then cause/mean...”, etc., until you get a satisfactory answer.
Trolls are certainly persistent, but that doesn’t mean the resulting conversation record will necessarily be of any use, alas.
You (or someone else) could have gotten just as good of an explanation out of me by saying, “I don’t understand how that’s committing the MPF”, so that’s not really evidence in favor of trolls being valuable.
Sure, in principle, but what really happened was that I read the first few explanations (mostly by Elizier and Dennett) and thought, “Nah, that doesn’t really work. How am I projecting anything? You are all ignoring consciousness!”. When others then mentioned the position, I automatically dismissed it. Only by seeing people stubbornly bring up really bad arguments against reductionism did I finally snap, “C’mon! I’m on your side, but that’s just stupid. If $belief about qualia were true, how would you ever know? What’s the different anticipation here? … Waitaminnit, what am I anticipating here?” and that unraveled the whole thing in the end.
What are these forums for if not for debate? Are participants supposed to accept things uncritically? That’s not rationallity where I come from.
Way to conflate three entirely different things to suggest various deniable conclusions.
Asking a number of separate questions is not conflation. If you are not going to answer questions, I can only draw whatever conclusions I can from your silence.
Are the LW forums for debate, or not?
In other words, you admit to being a troll. Thanks for clarifying that.
Congratulations on at least not being an immediately obvious one; I originally mistook you for an educable
Again. you have this absolutely rigid idea that I (? everybody?) can only possibly be a learner (agreer? disciple?) here, although you actually know nothing about me, and therefore have no idea what I might have to teach. But having labelled me Innately Evil, that’s never going to change. There is no fact of the matter that I am the learner and you the teacher; instead, just a bunch of stop signs in your mind.
Outmoded method of production for object-type [pearl]. Slow, inefficient, no quality control. Pearl only has superficial value. Synthetic pearls significantly less valued than organic: no value to actual physical configuration. Value attached to status associated with expensive or difficult-to-produce item. Recommend elimination of object-type [pearl].
(You’re the irritant that produces something pjeby and I don’t want.)
People who view themselves as annoying others because they make them think tend to be trolls. (Other types of trolls include people who consciously troll for lulz, and people who can’t stick to the local unwritten rules.)
I don’t actually know any example of people consciously thinking of themselves as a pearl-producing irritant who aren’t trolls. People who irritate other people and cause them to produce valuable thoughts tend to do most of the thinking themselves with pearls as a smaller side effect (controversial thinkers). The rest tend to be very poor thinkers whose arguments can be reconstructed by more skilled thinkers for interesting results (some theists; Marx), and they try not to be annoying.
I don’t actually know any example of people consciously thinking of themselves as a pearl-producing irritant who aren’t trolls.
To be entirely fair, I have actually known such a person. It manifested as him showing up at a meditation meetup I went to on a regular basis, sitting quietly, not speaking unless directly asked a question, being generally ineffable when asked questions, and quietly giving up when several months (a year?) of this behavior didn’t get the result he was looking for. I wouldn’t even have known why he left if I hadn’t tracked him down and asked.
Quite fair. If non-troll irritants are usually this unintrusive, there’s a selection bias in my known examples.
Did he tell you what result he wanted? FWIW, I would have done what I do when communication norms break down: sit next to him, watch him, mirror him. (Learning his communication style, testing whether he’s trying to teach by example, taming an animal.) Or maybe done what I do when I want to meet someone but am afraid: watch from afar, never dare approach.
It’s not really relevant here, but he was looking to push the group toward Advaita Vedanta.
FWIW, I would have done what I do when communication norms break down: sit next to him, watch him, mirror him. (Learning his communication style, testing whether he’s trying to teach by example, taming an animal.)
This is basically what he was aiming for, but what he was trying to teach was too subtle to really come across in a situation with as many distractions as that one had (it was a rather unusual mediation group) and also the details of his ineffability raised enough warning flags that he had trouble getting people to take him seriously.
He has a blog here if you’re interested, but I should note that its topic and mode of discussion is a potential memetic hazard, along the lines of nihilism but likely harder to recover from.
If you set out to make people think, yeah. You just end up being a gadfly.
If you set out to produce high-quality thoughts because you need them for something else, you’ll make people think. Of course they’ll already be thinkers (but you’re posting on LW).
High quality thoughts have to be able to answer objections. That’s why there is a comment section underneath each post. That is why lecturers call for questions after they have finished. etc etc.
There’s no reason they can’ be both. Of course what we ultimately want is truth.Mysticism says you can grasp the truth about everything in a flash. According to non-mystical epistemology, it’s a question of tentatively building theories and revising or abandoning them if they go wrong. Justification and corroboration are our proxies for truth.
I’ve conceded that they’re as special as birds that don’t fly. That is, that they’re things which don’t require any special explanation. One of the things you learn from computer programming is that recursion has to bottom out somewhere. To me, the idea that there are experiential primitives is no more surprising than the fact that computer languages have primitive operations: that’s what you make the non-primitives out of. No more surprising than the idea that at some point, we’ll stop discovering new levels of fundamental particles.
Among programmers, it can be a fun pastime to see just how few primitives you can have in a language, but evolution doesn’t have a brain that enjoys such games. So it’s unsurprising that evolution would work almost exclusively in the form of primitives—in other words, a very wide-bottomed pyramid.
Humans are the special ones—the only species that unquestionably uses recursive symbolic communication, and is therefore the only species that makes conceptual pyramids at all.
So, from my point of view, anything that’s not a primitive neural event is the thing that needs a special explanation!
You appear to be distorting my argument, by conflating experiential primitives and experiential grounding. Humans can communicate metaphorically, analogously, and in various other ways… but all of that communication takes place either in symbols (grounded in some prior experience), or through the direct analog means available to us (tone of voice, movement, drawing, facial expressions) to ground a communication in some actual, present-moment experience.
But, I expect you already knew that, which makes me think you’re simply trolling.
Why are you here, exactly?
Clearly, you’re not a Bayesian reductionist, nor do you appear to show any interest whatsoever in becoming one. In not one comment have I ever seen you learn something from your participation, nor do I see anything that suggests you have any interest in learning anything, or really doing anything else but generating a feeling of superiority through your ability to remain unconvinced of anything while putting on a show of your education.
Your language about arguments and concessions strongly suggest that you think this is a debating society, or that arguments are soldiers to be sent forth in support of a bottom line...
And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you ask a single question that wasn’t of the rhetorical, trying-to-score-points-off-your-opponent variety, which suggests you have very little interest in becoming… well, any less wrong than you currently are.
So, why are you here?
That’s vaguely phrased. What does “special” mean? Is my guess about metaphysical explanation correct.?
I know. I’m a programmer.
You appear to be not even responding to my arguments.
I am here to evaluate ideas and argumnents.
I have studied Bayesian reductionism and I find it flawed. I can explain why. Are you saying I should not be examining it critically, or that I should accept it in spite of its flaws?
What sort of effort would that involve? Do you realise how religious your language sounds—“you need to try harder to believe”?
Well, Sir, I haven’t seen you learn anything from me.
Most ideas are wrong, so I remain unconvinced by most of them.
What are these forums for if not for debate? Are participants supposed to accept things uncritically? That’s not rationallity where I come from.
Try considering the hypothesis that all that is true, and is explained by my already knowing how to be rational.
I mean, do you think LW has cornered some market in rationality? Do you think everyone who visits these boards can be assumed to be naively empty-headed? Do you think it might be a step forward to base your ad hominems on actual characteristics rather than assumed ones?
I’m the irritant that produces the pearl.
Way to conflate three entirely different things to suggest various deniable conclusions. A terrific example of the sort of “Dark Arts” debating tactics we are not interested in having on LessWrong.
I think perhaps you’re looking for the Argument Clinic, instead.
In other words, you admit to being a troll. Thanks for clarifying that.
Congratulations on at least not being an immediately obvious one; I originally mistook you for an educable single-topic visitor from another site (rather than a determined troll), who might actually be educable. So, I’ll stop replying entirely now.
This and your recent other discussions about qualia and zombies are a great example of getting useful explanations thanks to trolls. It finally clicked for me that an algorithmic explanation doesn’t actually “leave anything out” and that reductionism doesn’t fail. I kept reading “Mind Projection Fallacy”, but couldn’t see how I was committing it. Thanks for your efforts, PJ!
I’m glad someone got some use out of it.
You (or someone else) could have gotten just as good of an explanation out of me by saying, “I don’t understand how that’s committing the MPF”, so that’s not really evidence in favor of trolls being valuable.
What’s valuable is persistence, in that if you ask the question only once and stop saying, “yeah, but what I don’t get about that is...”, ” wouldn’t that then cause/mean...”, etc., until you get a satisfactory answer.
Trolls are certainly persistent, but that doesn’t mean the resulting conversation record will necessarily be of any use, alas.
Sure, in principle, but what really happened was that I read the first few explanations (mostly by Elizier and Dennett) and thought, “Nah, that doesn’t really work. How am I projecting anything? You are all ignoring consciousness!”. When others then mentioned the position, I automatically dismissed it. Only by seeing people stubbornly bring up really bad arguments against reductionism did I finally snap, “C’mon! I’m on your side, but that’s just stupid. If $belief about qualia were true, how would you ever know? What’s the different anticipation here? … Waitaminnit, what am I anticipating here?” and that unraveled the whole thing in the end.
(Noted, however. Need to ask more.)
Asking a number of separate questions is not conflation. If you are not going to answer questions, I can only draw whatever conclusions I can from your silence.
Are the LW forums for debate, or not?
Dropping out of a debate with questions unanswered and points unmet can make you look irrational—but of course you don’t have to engage with someone Innately Evill, do you?
Again. you have this absolutely rigid idea that I (? everybody?) can only possibly be a learner (agreer? disciple?) here, although you actually know nothing about me, and therefore have no idea what I might have to teach. But having labelled me Innately Evil, that’s never going to change. There is no fact of the matter that I am the learner and you the teacher; instead, just a bunch of stop signs in your mind.
You stopped making substantive replies some time ago. I suppose by “entirely” you will stop Ad Homming as well.
Outmoded method of production for object-type [pearl]. Slow, inefficient, no quality control. Pearl only has superficial value. Synthetic pearls significantly less valued than organic: no value to actual physical configuration. Value attached to status associated with expensive or difficult-to-produce item. Recommend elimination of object-type [pearl].
(You’re the irritant that produces something pjeby and I don’t want.)
Which would be understanding (=ability to explain) rather than unchallenged belief.
People who view themselves as annoying others because they make them think tend to be trolls. (Other types of trolls include people who consciously troll for lulz, and people who can’t stick to the local unwritten rules.)
I don’t actually know any example of people consciously thinking of themselves as a pearl-producing irritant who aren’t trolls. People who irritate other people and cause them to produce valuable thoughts tend to do most of the thinking themselves with pearls as a smaller side effect (controversial thinkers). The rest tend to be very poor thinkers whose arguments can be reconstructed by more skilled thinkers for interesting results (some theists; Marx), and they try not to be annoying.
To be entirely fair, I have actually known such a person. It manifested as him showing up at a meditation meetup I went to on a regular basis, sitting quietly, not speaking unless directly asked a question, being generally ineffable when asked questions, and quietly giving up when several months (a year?) of this behavior didn’t get the result he was looking for. I wouldn’t even have known why he left if I hadn’t tracked him down and asked.
Quite fair. If non-troll irritants are usually this unintrusive, there’s a selection bias in my known examples.
Did he tell you what result he wanted? FWIW, I would have done what I do when communication norms break down: sit next to him, watch him, mirror him. (Learning his communication style, testing whether he’s trying to teach by example, taming an animal.) Or maybe done what I do when I want to meet someone but am afraid: watch from afar, never dare approach.
It’s not really relevant here, but he was looking to push the group toward Advaita Vedanta.
This is basically what he was aiming for, but what he was trying to teach was too subtle to really come across in a situation with as many distractions as that one had (it was a rather unusual mediation group) and also the details of his ineffability raised enough warning flags that he had trouble getting people to take him seriously.
He has a blog here if you’re interested, but I should note that its topic and mode of discussion is a potential memetic hazard, along the lines of nihilism but likely harder to recover from.
I wish. Making someone think is almost impossible.
If you set out to make people think, yeah. You just end up being a gadfly.
If you set out to produce high-quality thoughts because you need them for something else, you’ll make people think. Of course they’ll already be thinkers (but you’re posting on LW).
High quality thoughts have to be able to answer objections. That’s why there is a comment section underneath each post. That is why lecturers call for questions after they have finished. etc etc.
No, which would be hard-fought for beliefs, not correct beliefs.
There’s no reason they can’ be both. Of course what we ultimately want is truth.Mysticism says you can grasp the truth about everything in a flash. According to non-mystical epistemology, it’s a question of tentatively building theories and revising or abandoning them if they go wrong. Justification and corroboration are our proxies for truth.