I think what they mean is the intuitve notion of typicality rather than the statistical concept of average.
98 seems approximately 100
but 100 doesn’t seem approximately 98 due to how this heuristic works.
That is typicality is a system 1 heuristic of a similarity cluster, it’s asymmetric.
Here is the post on typicality from a human guide’s to word sequence.
To interpret what you meant when you said “my hair has grown above average” you have a extensional which you refer to with the word “average hair” and you find yourself to be on the outer ends of this extensional cluster in the hairspace. Ideally you would craft an intensional of this extensional instead of “average hair as in mathematical concept Sum of terms/no. of terms” to somewhat like “that’s the amount of hair growth I tend to experience usually” now this statement may or may not be accurate based on how much data you have provided to your inner sim. Or if you mean by average hair as in “the societal stereotype of average hair growth” then that would be subject to cultural factors like what shows you watch etc.
(also if you reply back I won’t be able to reply I have been ratelimited one post per 2 days for an year on lesswrong)
The problem (or maybe just my problem) is that when I say “average” it feels like it’s activating my concept of “mathematical concept of sum/count”, even though the actual thing I’m thinking of is “typical member of class extracted from my mental model”. I find myself treating “average” as if it came from real data even if it didn’t.
I think what they mean is the intuitve notion of typicality rather than the statistical concept of average.
98 seems approximately 100
but 100 doesn’t seem approximately 98 due to how this heuristic works.
That is typicality is a system 1 heuristic of a similarity cluster, it’s asymmetric.
Here is the post on typicality from a human guide’s to word sequence.
To interpret what you meant when you said “my hair has grown above average” you have a extensional which you refer to with the word “average hair” and you find yourself to be on the outer ends of this extensional cluster in the hairspace. Ideally you would craft an intensional of this extensional instead of “average hair as in mathematical concept Sum of terms/no. of terms” to somewhat like “that’s the amount of hair growth I tend to experience usually” now this statement may or may not be accurate based on how much data you have provided to your inner sim. Or if you mean by average hair as in “the societal stereotype of average hair growth” then that would be subject to cultural factors like what shows you watch etc.
(also if you reply back I won’t be able to reply I have been ratelimited one post per 2 days for an year on lesswrong)
The problem (or maybe just my problem) is that when I say “average” it feels like it’s activating my concept of “mathematical concept of sum/count”, even though the actual thing I’m thinking of is “typical member of class extracted from my mental model”. I find myself treating “average” as if it came from real data even if it didn’t.
Sorry for the late reply, I was looking through my past notifs, I would recommend you to taboo the words and replace the symbols with the substance , I would also recommend you to treat language as instrumental since words don’t have inherent meaning, that’s how an algorithm feels from inside.