I like the word entanglement, because it’s a messy concept. Reality, whatever else it might be, is messy. That’s why statements like the preceding sentence can’t ever be completely true. The messiness makes it hard to talk about anything real in any absolutely definitive sort of way.
I can be definitive about artificial constructs in an artificial world, yes. Hence, mathematics. But when you or I try to capture the real world with that comforting clarity, we are doomed. Well, mostly doomed. 85.27% doomed, plus or minus an unknown set of unknowns.
That’s the problem I have with your otherwise (as usual) thought provoking post: YES, our perceptions are entangled with the state of the world and that often influences our beliefs which then may entangle our utterances and therefore eventually entangle other people’s beliefs. BUT what is the nature of that entanglement? You can’t know for sure. What specifically are the beliefs that you intend to refer to? You can’t know for sure.
The factor I expected to see in your essay, but did not, is interpretation based on mental models. There are many models I might have in my mind that could influence what counts as evidence.
You wrote: “For an event to be evidence about a target of inquiry, it has to happen differently in a way that’s entangled with the different possible states of the target.”
If we put the missing material about interpretation in there this might read:
“For me to consider an event to be evidence about a target of inquiry, I must first possess or construct a model of that event and that target and also a model of the world that contains and relates the event and target with each other. Then, for the event to be evidence CORROBORATING a particular theory about the target, I must imagine plausible alternative events that would that would CONTRADICT that theory.”
Unfortunately, our models can be wrong, and are often wrong in interesting ways. So, we can satisfy your version of the statement, or my version, and still be counting as evidence things that may be no evidence at all. Example: “I was about to go for a car ride and a black cat crossed my path, which I interpret as a portent of evil, so I went back into my house. The black cat was evidence of evil in that particular situation because a black cat crossing my path is a rare event; it is possible for the cat not to have crossed my path; and in my culture, which is the collective product of successful experience staying alive and procreating, it is considered a portent of evil for a black cat to cross one’s path. Had a black cat not crossed my path, I would consider that evidence (weak evidence) that I was not about to experience misfortune.”
Hi Eliezer,
I like the word entanglement, because it’s a messy concept. Reality, whatever else it might be, is messy. That’s why statements like the preceding sentence can’t ever be completely true. The messiness makes it hard to talk about anything real in any absolutely definitive sort of way.
I can be definitive about artificial constructs in an artificial world, yes. Hence, mathematics. But when you or I try to capture the real world with that comforting clarity, we are doomed. Well, mostly doomed. 85.27% doomed, plus or minus an unknown set of unknowns.
That’s the problem I have with your otherwise (as usual) thought provoking post: YES, our perceptions are entangled with the state of the world and that often influences our beliefs which then may entangle our utterances and therefore eventually entangle other people’s beliefs. BUT what is the nature of that entanglement? You can’t know for sure. What specifically are the beliefs that you intend to refer to? You can’t know for sure.
The factor I expected to see in your essay, but did not, is interpretation based on mental models. There are many models I might have in my mind that could influence what counts as evidence.
You wrote: “For an event to be evidence about a target of inquiry, it has to happen differently in a way that’s entangled with the different possible states of the target.”
If we put the missing material about interpretation in there this might read:
“For me to consider an event to be evidence about a target of inquiry, I must first possess or construct a model of that event and that target and also a model of the world that contains and relates the event and target with each other. Then, for the event to be evidence CORROBORATING a particular theory about the target, I must imagine plausible alternative events that would that would CONTRADICT that theory.”
Unfortunately, our models can be wrong, and are often wrong in interesting ways. So, we can satisfy your version of the statement, or my version, and still be counting as evidence things that may be no evidence at all. Example: “I was about to go for a car ride and a black cat crossed my path, which I interpret as a portent of evil, so I went back into my house. The black cat was evidence of evil in that particular situation because a black cat crossing my path is a rare event; it is possible for the cat not to have crossed my path; and in my culture, which is the collective product of successful experience staying alive and procreating, it is considered a portent of evil for a black cat to cross one’s path. Had a black cat not crossed my path, I would consider that evidence (weak evidence) that I was not about to experience misfortune.”