I agree to the explicit meaning of this statement but you are sneaking in connotations. Let us look more closely about what ‘authoritarian’ means.
I’m not trying to argue by connotation. It’s hard to avoid connotations and I think the words I’m using are accurate.
You probably mean it in the sense of centralised as opposed to decentralized control, and in that sense I will bite the bullet and say that thinking should be authoritarian.
That’s not what I had in mind, but I do think that centralized control is a mistake.
I take fallibilism seriously: any idea may be wrong, and many are. Mistakes are common.
Consequently, it’s a bad idea to set something up to be in charge of your whole mind. It will have mistakes. And corrections to those mistakes which aren’t in charge will sometimes get disregarded.
However, the word has a number of negative connotations. Corruption, lack of respect for human rights and massive bureaucracy that stifles innovation to name a few. None of those apply to my thinking process, so even though the term may be technically correct it is somewhat intellectually dishonest to use it, something more value-neutral like ‘centralized control’ might be better.
Those 3 things are not what I had in mind. But I think the term is accurate. You yourself used the word “force”. Force is authoritarian. The reason for that is that the forcer is always claiming some kind of authority—I’m right, you’re wrong, and never mind further discussion, just obey.
You may find this statement strange. How can this concept apply to ideas within one mind? Doesn’t it only apply to disagreements between separate people?
But ideas are roughly autonomous portions of a mind (see: http://fallibleideas.com/ideas). They can conflict, they can force each other in the sense of one taking priority over another without the conflict being settled rationally.
Force is a fundamentally epistemological concept. Its political meanings are derivative. It is about non-truth-seeking ways of approaching disputes. It’s about not reaching agreement by one idea wins out anyway (by force).
Settling conflicts between the ideas in your mind by force is authoritarian. It is saying some ideas have authority/preference/priority/whatever, so they get their way. I reject this approach. If you don’t find a rational way to resolve a conflict between ideas, you should say you don’t know the answer, never pick a side b/c the ideas you deem the central controllers are on that side, and they have the authority to force other ideas to conform to them.
This is a big topic, and not so easy to explain. But it is important.
Force, in the sense of solving difficulties without argument, is not what I meant when I said I force my thoughts to follow certain rules. I don’t even see how that could work, my individual ideas do not argue with each-other, if they did I would speak to a psychiatrist.
I’m afraid you are going to have to explain in more detail.
They argue notionally. They are roughly autonomous, they have different substance/assertions/content, sometimes their content contradicts, and when you have two or more conflicting ideas you have to deal with that. You (sometimes) approach the conflict by what we might call an internal argument/debate. You think of arguments for all the sides (the substance/content of the conflict ideas), you try to think of a way to resolve the debate by figuring out the best answer, you criticize what you think may be mistakes in any of the ideas, you reject ideas you decide are mistaken, you assign probabilities to stuff and do math, perhaps, etc...
When things go well, you reach a conclusion you deem to be an improvement. It resolves the issue. Each of the ideas which is improved on notionally acknowledges this new idea is better, rather than still conflicting. For example, if one idea was to get pizza, and one was to get sushi, and both had the supporting idea that you can’t get both because it would cost too much, or take too long, or make you fat, then you could resolve the issue by figuring out how to do it quickly, cheaply and without getting fat (smaller portions). If you came up with a new idea that does all that, none of the previously conflicting ideas would have any criticism of it, no objection to it. The conflict is resolved.
Sometimes we don’t come up with a solution that resolves all the issues cleanly. This can be due to not trying, or because it’s hard, or whatever.
Then what?
Big topic, but what not to do is use force: arbitrarily decide which side wins (often based on some kind of authority or justification), and declare it the winner even though the substance of the other side is not addressed. Don’t force some of your ideas, which have substantive unaddressed points, to defer to the ideas you put in charge (granted authority).
Big topic, but what not to do is use force: arbitrarily decide which side wins (often based on some kind of authority or justification), and declare it the winner even though the substance of the other side is not addressed. Don’t force some of your ideas, which have substantive unaddressed points, to defer to the ideas you put in charge (granted authority).
I certainly don’t advocate deciding arbitrarily. The would fall into the fallacy of just making sh*t up which is the exact of everything Bayes stands for. However, I don’t have to be arbitrary, most of the ideas that run up against Bayes don’t have the same level of support. In general, I’ve found that a heuristic of “pick the idea that has a mathematical proof backing it up” seems to work fairly well.
There are also sometimes other clues, rationalisations tend to have a slightly different ‘feel’ to them if you introspect closely (in my experience at any rate), and when the ideas going up against Bayes seem to include a disproportionately high number of rationalisations, I start to notice a pattern.
I also disagree about ideas being autonomous. Ideas are entangled with each other in complex webs of mutual support and anti-support.
Did you read my link? Where did the argument about approximately autonomous ideas go wrong?
I did. To see what is wrong with it let me give an analogy. Cars have both engines and tyres. It is possible to replace the tyres without replacing the engine. Thus you will find many cars with very different tyres but identical engines, and many different engines but identical tyres. This does not mean that tyres are autonomous and would work fine without engines.
Well this changes the topic. But OK. How do you decide what has support? What is support and how does it differ from consistency?
Well, mathematical proofs are support, and they are not at all the same a consistency. In general however, if some random idea pops into my head, and I spot that it in fact it only occurred to me as a result of conjunction bias I am not going to say “well, it would be unfair of me to reject this just because it contradicts probability theory, so I must reject both it and probability theory until I can find a superior compromise position”. Frankly, that would be stupid.
@autonomous—you know we said “approximately autonomous” right? And that, for various purposes, tires are approximately autonomous, which means things like they can be replaced individually without touching the engine or knowing what type of engine it is. And a tire could be taken off one car and put on another.
No one was saying it’d function in isolation. Just like a person being autonomous doesn’t mean they would do well in isolation (e.g. in deep space). Just because people do need to be in appropriate environments to function doesn’t make “people are approximately autonomous” meaningless or false.
Well, mathematical proofs are support, and they are not at all the same a consistency.
First,l you have not answered my question. What is support? The general purpose definition. I want you to specify how it is determined if X supports Y, and also what that means (why should we care? what good is “support”?).
Second, let’s be more precise. If a person writes what he thinks to be a proof, what is supported? What he thinks is the conclusion of what he thinks is a proof, and nothing else? An infinite set of things which have wildly different properties? Something else?
No one was saying it’d function in isolation. Just like a person being autonomous doesn’t mean they would do well in isolation (e.g. in deep space). Just because people do need to be in appropriate environments to function doesn’t make “people are approximately autonomous” meaningless or false.
You argue from ideas being approximately autonomous to the fact that words like ‘authoritarian’ apply to them, and that the approximately debate, but this is not true in the car analogy. Is it ‘authoritarian’ that the brakes, accelerator and steering wheel have total control of the car, while the tyres and engine get no say, or is it just efficient?
I didn’t give a loose argument by analogy. You’re attacking a simplified straw man. I explained stuff at some length and you haven’t engaged here with all of what I said. e.g. your comments on “authoritarian” here do not mention or discuss anything I said about that. You also don’t mention force.
I’m not trying to argue by connotation. It’s hard to avoid connotations and I think the words I’m using are accurate.
That’s not what I had in mind, but I do think that centralized control is a mistake.
I take fallibilism seriously: any idea may be wrong, and many are. Mistakes are common.
Consequently, it’s a bad idea to set something up to be in charge of your whole mind. It will have mistakes. And corrections to those mistakes which aren’t in charge will sometimes get disregarded.
Those 3 things are not what I had in mind. But I think the term is accurate. You yourself used the word “force”. Force is authoritarian. The reason for that is that the forcer is always claiming some kind of authority—I’m right, you’re wrong, and never mind further discussion, just obey.
You may find this statement strange. How can this concept apply to ideas within one mind? Doesn’t it only apply to disagreements between separate people?
But ideas are roughly autonomous portions of a mind (see: http://fallibleideas.com/ideas). They can conflict, they can force each other in the sense of one taking priority over another without the conflict being settled rationally.
Force is a fundamentally epistemological concept. Its political meanings are derivative. It is about non-truth-seeking ways of approaching disputes. It’s about not reaching agreement by one idea wins out anyway (by force).
Settling conflicts between the ideas in your mind by force is authoritarian. It is saying some ideas have authority/preference/priority/whatever, so they get their way. I reject this approach. If you don’t find a rational way to resolve a conflict between ideas, you should say you don’t know the answer, never pick a side b/c the ideas you deem the central controllers are on that side, and they have the authority to force other ideas to conform to them.
This is a big topic, and not so easy to explain. But it is important.
Force, in the sense of solving difficulties without argument, is not what I meant when I said I force my thoughts to follow certain rules. I don’t even see how that could work, my individual ideas do not argue with each-other, if they did I would speak to a psychiatrist.
I’m afraid you are going to have to explain in more detail.
They argue notionally. They are roughly autonomous, they have different substance/assertions/content, sometimes their content contradicts, and when you have two or more conflicting ideas you have to deal with that. You (sometimes) approach the conflict by what we might call an internal argument/debate. You think of arguments for all the sides (the substance/content of the conflict ideas), you try to think of a way to resolve the debate by figuring out the best answer, you criticize what you think may be mistakes in any of the ideas, you reject ideas you decide are mistaken, you assign probabilities to stuff and do math, perhaps, etc...
When things go well, you reach a conclusion you deem to be an improvement. It resolves the issue. Each of the ideas which is improved on notionally acknowledges this new idea is better, rather than still conflicting. For example, if one idea was to get pizza, and one was to get sushi, and both had the supporting idea that you can’t get both because it would cost too much, or take too long, or make you fat, then you could resolve the issue by figuring out how to do it quickly, cheaply and without getting fat (smaller portions). If you came up with a new idea that does all that, none of the previously conflicting ideas would have any criticism of it, no objection to it. The conflict is resolved.
Sometimes we don’t come up with a solution that resolves all the issues cleanly. This can be due to not trying, or because it’s hard, or whatever.
Then what?
Big topic, but what not to do is use force: arbitrarily decide which side wins (often based on some kind of authority or justification), and declare it the winner even though the substance of the other side is not addressed. Don’t force some of your ideas, which have substantive unaddressed points, to defer to the ideas you put in charge (granted authority).
I certainly don’t advocate deciding arbitrarily. The would fall into the fallacy of just making sh*t up which is the exact of everything Bayes stands for. However, I don’t have to be arbitrary, most of the ideas that run up against Bayes don’t have the same level of support. In general, I’ve found that a heuristic of “pick the idea that has a mathematical proof backing it up” seems to work fairly well.
There are also sometimes other clues, rationalisations tend to have a slightly different ‘feel’ to them if you introspect closely (in my experience at any rate), and when the ideas going up against Bayes seem to include a disproportionately high number of rationalisations, I start to notice a pattern.
I also disagree about ideas being autonomous. Ideas are entangled with each other in complex webs of mutual support and anti-support.
Did you read my link? Where did the argument about approximately autonomous ideas go wrong?
Well this changes the topic. But OK. How do you decide what has support? What is support and how does it differ from consistency?
I did. To see what is wrong with it let me give an analogy. Cars have both engines and tyres. It is possible to replace the tyres without replacing the engine. Thus you will find many cars with very different tyres but identical engines, and many different engines but identical tyres. This does not mean that tyres are autonomous and would work fine without engines.
Well, mathematical proofs are support, and they are not at all the same a consistency. In general however, if some random idea pops into my head, and I spot that it in fact it only occurred to me as a result of conjunction bias I am not going to say “well, it would be unfair of me to reject this just because it contradicts probability theory, so I must reject both it and probability theory until I can find a superior compromise position”. Frankly, that would be stupid.
@autonomous—you know we said “approximately autonomous” right? And that, for various purposes, tires are approximately autonomous, which means things like they can be replaced individually without touching the engine or knowing what type of engine it is. And a tire could be taken off one car and put on another.
No one was saying it’d function in isolation. Just like a person being autonomous doesn’t mean they would do well in isolation (e.g. in deep space). Just because people do need to be in appropriate environments to function doesn’t make “people are approximately autonomous” meaningless or false.
First,l you have not answered my question. What is support? The general purpose definition. I want you to specify how it is determined if X supports Y, and also what that means (why should we care? what good is “support”?).
Second, let’s be more precise. If a person writes what he thinks to be a proof, what is supported? What he thinks is the conclusion of what he thinks is a proof, and nothing else? An infinite set of things which have wildly different properties? Something else?
You argue from ideas being approximately autonomous to the fact that words like ‘authoritarian’ apply to them, and that the approximately debate, but this is not true in the car analogy. Is it ‘authoritarian’ that the brakes, accelerator and steering wheel have total control of the car, while the tyres and engine get no say, or is it just efficient?
I didn’t give a loose argument by analogy. You’re attacking a simplified straw man. I explained stuff at some length and you haven’t engaged here with all of what I said. e.g. your comments on “authoritarian” here do not mention or discuss anything I said about that. You also don’t mention force.