Given some data and multiple competing hypotheses that explain the data equally well, the laws of probability tell us that the simplest hypothesis is the likeliest. We call this principle of preferring simpler hypotheses Occam’s Razor. Moreover, using this principle works well in practice. For example in machine learning, a simpler model will often generalize better. Therefore I know that Occam’s Razor is “any good”. Occam’s Razor is a tool that can be used for problems as described by the italicized text above. It makes no claims regarding arguments or criticisms.
I don’t really see why I would need a coherent/perfect/complete epistemology to make this kind of argument or come to that conclusion. It seems to me, like you are saying, that any claims that aren’t attained via the One True Epistemology are useless/invalid/wrong. That you wouldn’t even accept someone saying that the sky is blue, if that person didn’t first show you that they are using the right epistemology.
I notice that I don’t know what an argument that you would accept could even look like. You’re a big fan of having discussions written down in public. Could you link to an example where you argued for one position and then changed your mind because of somebody else’s argument(s)?
I don’t really see why I would need a coherent/perfect/complete epistemology to make this kind of argument or come to that conclusion.
Epistemology tells you things like what an argument is and how to evaluate whether ideas are good or bad, correct or incorrect. I’m saying you need to offer any epistemology at all under which the arguments you’re currently making are correct. Supposedly you have an induction-based epistemology (I presume), but you haven’t been using it in your comments, you’re using some other unspecified epistemology to guide what you think is a reasonable argument.
The current topic is epistemology, not the color of the sky, so you don’t get to gloss over epistemology as you might in a conversation about some other topic.
The current topic is epistemology, not the color of the sky, so you don’t get to gloss over epistemology as you might in a conversation about some other topic.
So because the discussion in general is about epistemology, you won’t accept any arguments for which the epistemology isn’t specified, even if the topic of that argument doesn’t pertain directly to epistemology, but if the discussion is about something else, you will just engage with the arguments regardless of the epistemology others are using?
That seems… unlikely to work well (if the topic is epistemology) and inconsistent.
I’d like to reiterate, that I would really appreciate a link to an example where somebody convinced you to change your mind. Failing that, you’ve mentioned elsewhere that you often changed your mind in discussions with David Deutsch. If you might reproduce or at least sketch a discussion you’ve had with him, I would be very interested.
I’m literally asking you to specify your epistemology. Offer some rival to CR...? Instead you offer me Occam’s Razer which is correct according to some unspecified epistemology you don’t want to discuss.
CR is a starting point. Do you even have a rival starting point which addresses basic questions like how to create and evaluate ideas and arguments, in general? Seems like you’re just using common sense assumptions, rather than scholarship, to evaluate a variant of Occam’s Razor (in order to defend induction). CR, as far as I can tell, is competing not with any rival philosophy (inductivist or otherwise) but with non-consumption of philosophy. (But philosophy is unavoidable so non-consumption means using intuition, common sense, cultural defaults, bias, etc., rather than thinking about it much.)
If you want stories about my discussions with DD, ask on the FI forum, not here.
You seem to have at least one typo and also to suggest you disagree without directly saying so. Can you please clarify what you’re saying? Also I don’t know how you expect me to explain all the steps involved with CR to you given your ignorance of CR – should I rewrite multiple books in my reply, or will you read references, or do you want a short summary which omits almost everything? If you want a summary, you need to give more information about where you’re coming from, what you’re thinking, and what your point and perspective are, so I can judge which parts to include. I don’t know what you doubt or why, so I don’t know how to select information for the summary you want. I also don’t know what a “supposedly true” proposition is.
I don’t want you to explain the principle in general but illustrate it on the example that you brought up. Explaining general principles on concrete examples is a classic way principles are taught. Students learn physics by working through various test problems. Reasoning by example is a classic way to transfer knowledge.
From your post I take that you believe “you need to offer any epistemology at all under which the arguments you’re currently making are correct” to be true?
If it is you should be able to explain how you came to believe that claim. Otherwise you could say that you hold that belief that have nothing to do with how you claim knowledge should be derived.
If CR can’t be used to derive the knowledge of the example it’s not a general epistomology with practical use.
From your post I take that you believe “you need to offer any epistemology at all under which the arguments you’re currently making are correct” to be true?
If it is you should be able to explain how you came to believe that claim.
Epistemology is the field that tells you the methods of thinking, arguging, evaluating ideas, judging good and bad ideas, etc. Whenever you argue, you’re using an epistemological framework, stated or not. I have stated mine. You should state yours. Induction is not a complete epistemological framework.
I assume you have read Myth of the Framework. Doesn’t Popper himself emphasize that it’s not necessary to share an epistemological framework with someone, nor explicitly verbalize exactly how it works (since doing that is difficult-to-impossible), to make intellectual progress?
Verbalizing your entire framework/worldview is too hard, but CR manages to verbalize quite a lot of epistemology. Does LW have verbalized epistemology to rival CR, which is verbalized in a reasonably equivalent kinda way to e.g. Popper’s books? I thought the claim was that it does. If you don’t have an explicit epistemology, may I recommend one to you? It’s way, way better than nothing! If you stick with unverbalized epistemology, it really lets in bias, common sense, intuition, cultural tradition, etc, and makes it hard to make improvements or have discussions.
Given some data and multiple competing hypotheses that explain the data equally well, the laws of probability tell us that the simplest hypothesis is the likeliest. We call this principle of preferring simpler hypotheses Occam’s Razor. Moreover, using this principle works well in practice. For example in machine learning, a simpler model will often generalize better. Therefore I know that Occam’s Razor is “any good”. Occam’s Razor is a tool that can be used for problems as described by the italicized text above. It makes no claims regarding arguments or criticisms.
I don’t really see why I would need a coherent/perfect/complete epistemology to make this kind of argument or come to that conclusion. It seems to me, like you are saying, that any claims that aren’t attained via the One True Epistemology are useless/invalid/wrong. That you wouldn’t even accept someone saying that the sky is blue, if that person didn’t first show you that they are using the right epistemology.
I notice that I don’t know what an argument that you would accept could even look like. You’re a big fan of having discussions written down in public. Could you link to an example where you argued for one position and then changed your mind because of somebody else’s argument(s)?
Epistemology tells you things like what an argument is and how to evaluate whether ideas are good or bad, correct or incorrect. I’m saying you need to offer any epistemology at all under which the arguments you’re currently making are correct. Supposedly you have an induction-based epistemology (I presume), but you haven’t been using it in your comments, you’re using some other unspecified epistemology to guide what you think is a reasonable argument.
The current topic is epistemology, not the color of the sky, so you don’t get to gloss over epistemology as you might in a conversation about some other topic.
So because the discussion in general is about epistemology, you won’t accept any arguments for which the epistemology isn’t specified, even if the topic of that argument doesn’t pertain directly to epistemology, but if the discussion is about something else, you will just engage with the arguments regardless of the epistemology others are using?
That seems… unlikely to work well (if the topic is epistemology) and inconsistent.
I’d like to reiterate, that I would really appreciate a link to an example where somebody convinced you to change your mind. Failing that, you’ve mentioned elsewhere that you often changed your mind in discussions with David Deutsch. If you might reproduce or at least sketch a discussion you’ve had with him, I would be very interested.
I’m literally asking you to specify your epistemology. Offer some rival to CR...? Instead you offer me Occam’s Razer which is correct according to some unspecified epistemology you don’t want to discuss.
CR is a starting point. Do you even have a rival starting point which addresses basic questions like how to create and evaluate ideas and arguments, in general? Seems like you’re just using common sense assumptions, rather than scholarship, to evaluate a variant of Occam’s Razor (in order to defend induction). CR, as far as I can tell, is competing not with any rival philosophy (inductivist or otherwise) but with non-consumption of philosophy. (But philosophy is unavoidable so non-consumption means using intuition, common sense, cultural defaults, bias, etc., rather than thinking about it much.)
If you want stories about my discussions with DD, ask on the FI forum, not here.
Could you describe how you know this? Take it as an example of how you derive a supposedly true proposition with your favorite epistemology.
Illustrate all the steps that you consider important of Popper’s way to come to knowledge with that claim.
You seem to have at least one typo and also to suggest you disagree without directly saying so. Can you please clarify what you’re saying? Also I don’t know how you expect me to explain all the steps involved with CR to you given your ignorance of CR – should I rewrite multiple books in my reply, or will you read references, or do you want a short summary which omits almost everything? If you want a summary, you need to give more information about where you’re coming from, what you’re thinking, and what your point and perspective are, so I can judge which parts to include. I don’t know what you doubt or why, so I don’t know how to select information for the summary you want. I also don’t know what a “supposedly true” proposition is.
I don’t want you to explain the principle in general but illustrate it on the example that you brought up. Explaining general principles on concrete examples is a classic way principles are taught. Students learn physics by working through various test problems. Reasoning by example is a classic way to transfer knowledge.
From your post I take that you believe “you need to offer any epistemology at all under which the arguments you’re currently making are correct” to be true?
If it is you should be able to explain how you came to believe that claim. Otherwise you could say that you hold that belief that have nothing to do with how you claim knowledge should be derived.
If CR can’t be used to derive the knowledge of the example it’s not a general epistomology with practical use.
Epistemology is the field that tells you the methods of thinking, arguging, evaluating ideas, judging good and bad ideas, etc. Whenever you argue, you’re using an epistemological framework, stated or not. I have stated mine. You should state yours. Induction is not a complete epistemological framework.
I assume you have read Myth of the Framework. Doesn’t Popper himself emphasize that it’s not necessary to share an epistemological framework with someone, nor explicitly verbalize exactly how it works (since doing that is difficult-to-impossible), to make intellectual progress?
Verbalizing your entire framework/worldview is too hard, but CR manages to verbalize quite a lot of epistemology. Does LW have verbalized epistemology to rival CR, which is verbalized in a reasonably equivalent kinda way to e.g. Popper’s books? I thought the claim was that it does. If you don’t have an explicit epistemology, may I recommend one to you? It’s way, way better than nothing! If you stick with unverbalized epistemology, it really lets in bias, common sense, intuition, cultural tradition, etc, and makes it hard to make improvements or have discussions.