Categories are never arbitrary. They are created to serve purposes. They can serve those purposes better or worse. There can be multiple purposes, leading to multiple categories overlapping and intersecting. Purposes can be lost (imagine a link to the Sequences posting on lost purposes). “Arbitrary” is a “buffer” or “lullaby” word (imagine another link, I might put them in when I’m not writing on a phone on a train) that obscures all that.
It seems to me that you’re saying a bunch of things I already said, and saying them as if they are corrections to errors I’ve made. For instance:
RK: “Categories are never arbitrary.” gjm: “categories are not completely arbitrary.”
RK: “They are created to serve purposes.” gjm: “the relative merits of these depend on the agent’s goals”
RK: “They can serve those purposes better or worse.” gjm: “Some categorizations are better than others [...] the relative merits of these depend on the agent’s goals.”
So, anyway, I agree with what you say, but I’m not sure why you think (if you do—it seems like you do) I was using “arbitrary” as what you call a “lullaby word”. I’m sorry if for you it obscured any of those points about categories, though clearly it hasn’t stopped you noticing them; you may or may not choose to believe me when I said it didn’t stop me noticing them either.
For what it’s worth, I think what I mean when I say “categories are somewhat arbitrary” is almost exactly the same as what you mean when you say “they are created to serve purposes”.
Categories are never arbitrary. They are created to serve purposes. They can serve those purposes better or worse. There can be multiple purposes, leading to multiple categories overlapping and intersecting. Purposes can be lost (imagine a link to the Sequences posting on lost purposes). “Arbitrary” is a “buffer” or “lullaby” word (imagine another link, I might put them in when I’m not writing on a phone on a train) that obscures all that.
It seems to me that you’re saying a bunch of things I already said, and saying them as if they are corrections to errors I’ve made. For instance:
RK: “Categories are never arbitrary.” gjm: “categories are not completely arbitrary.”
RK: “They are created to serve purposes.” gjm: “the relative merits of these depend on the agent’s goals”
RK: “They can serve those purposes better or worse.” gjm: “Some categorizations are better than others [...] the relative merits of these depend on the agent’s goals.”
So, anyway, I agree with what you say, but I’m not sure why you think (if you do—it seems like you do) I was using “arbitrary” as what you call a “lullaby word”. I’m sorry if for you it obscured any of those points about categories, though clearly it hasn’t stopped you noticing them; you may or may not choose to believe me when I said it didn’t stop me noticing them either.
For what it’s worth, I think what I mean when I say “categories are somewhat arbitrary” is almost exactly the same as what you mean when you say “they are created to serve purposes”.