I share jessicata’s feeling that the best set of concepts to work with may not be very sensitive to what’s easy to detect. This might depend a little on how we define “concepts”, and you’re right that your visual system or some other fairly “early” bit of processing may well come up with ways of lumping things together, and that that will be dependent on what’s easy to detect, whether or not we want to call those things concepts or categories or percepts or whatever else.
But in the cases I can think of where it’s become apparent that some set of categories needs refinement, there doesn’t seem to be a general pattern of basing that refinement on the existence of convenient detectable features. (Except in the too-general sense that everything ultimately comes down to empirical observation.)
I don’t think your political motivations are nefarious, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a line of thinking that goes “hmm, it seems like the way a lot of people think about X makes them misunderstand an important thing in my life really badly; let’s see what other ways one could think about X, because they might be better”—other than that “hard cases make bad law”, and that it’s easy to fall into an equal-and-opposite error where you think about X in a way that would make you misunderstand a related important thing in other people’s lives. The political hot potato we’re discussing here demonstrably is one where some people have feelings that (so far as I can tell) are as strong as yours and of opposite sign, after all. (Which may suggest, by the way, that if you want an extra category then you may actually need two or more extra categories: “adapted bleggs” may have fundamental internal differences from one another. [EDITED to add:] … And indeed your other writings on this topic do propose two or more extra categories.)
I am concerned that we are teetering on the brink of—if we have not already fallen into—exactly the sort of object-level political/ideological/personal argument that I was worried about when you first posted this. Words like “nefarious” and “terrorist” seem like a warning sign. So I’ll limit my response to that part of what you say to this: It is not at all my intention to endorse any way of talking to you, or anyone else, that makes you, or anyone else, feel the way you describe feeling in that “don’t negotiate with terrorist memeplexes” article.
I share jessicata’s feeling that the best set of concepts to work with may not be very sensitive to what’s easy to detect. [...] there doesn’t seem to be a general pattern of basing that refinement on the existence of convenient detectable features
Yeah, I might have been on the wrong track there. (Jessica’s comment is great! I need to study more!)
I am concerned that we are teetering on the brink of—if we have not already fallen into—exactly the sort of object-level political/ideological/personal argument that I was worried about
I think we’re a safe distance from the brink.
Words like “nefarious” and “terrorist” seem like a warning sign
“Nefarious” admittedly probably was a high-emotional-temperature warning sign (oops), but in this case, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists” is mostly functioning as the standard stock phrase to evoke the timeless-decision-theoretic “don’t be extortable” game-theory intuition, which I don’t think should count as a warning sign, because it would be harder to communicate if people had to avoid genuinely useful metaphors because they happened to use high-emotional-valence words.
I share jessicata’s feeling that the best set of concepts to work with may not be very sensitive to what’s easy to detect. This might depend a little on how we define “concepts”, and you’re right that your visual system or some other fairly “early” bit of processing may well come up with ways of lumping things together, and that that will be dependent on what’s easy to detect, whether or not we want to call those things concepts or categories or percepts or whatever else.
But in the cases I can think of where it’s become apparent that some set of categories needs refinement, there doesn’t seem to be a general pattern of basing that refinement on the existence of convenient detectable features. (Except in the too-general sense that everything ultimately comes down to empirical observation.)
I don’t think your political motivations are nefarious, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a line of thinking that goes “hmm, it seems like the way a lot of people think about X makes them misunderstand an important thing in my life really badly; let’s see what other ways one could think about X, because they might be better”—other than that “hard cases make bad law”, and that it’s easy to fall into an equal-and-opposite error where you think about X in a way that would make you misunderstand a related important thing in other people’s lives. The political hot potato we’re discussing here demonstrably is one where some people have feelings that (so far as I can tell) are as strong as yours and of opposite sign, after all. (Which may suggest, by the way, that if you want an extra category then you may actually need two or more extra categories: “adapted bleggs” may have fundamental internal differences from one another. [EDITED to add:] … And indeed your other writings on this topic do propose two or more extra categories.)
I am concerned that we are teetering on the brink of—if we have not already fallen into—exactly the sort of object-level political/ideological/personal argument that I was worried about when you first posted this. Words like “nefarious” and “terrorist” seem like a warning sign. So I’ll limit my response to that part of what you say to this: It is not at all my intention to endorse any way of talking to you, or anyone else, that makes you, or anyone else, feel the way you describe feeling in that “don’t negotiate with terrorist memeplexes” article.
Yeah, I might have been on the wrong track there. (Jessica’s comment is great! I need to study more!)
I think we’re a safe distance from the brink.
“Nefarious” admittedly probably was a high-emotional-temperature warning sign (oops), but in this case, “I don’t negotiate with terrorists” is mostly functioning as the standard stock phrase to evoke the timeless-decision-theoretic “don’t be extortable” game-theory intuition, which I don’t think should count as a warning sign, because it would be harder to communicate if people had to avoid genuinely useful metaphors because they happened to use high-emotional-valence words.