The “Disguised Queries” post that first introduced bleggs and rubes makes essentially the point that categories are somewhat arbitrary, that there’s no One True Right Answer to “is it a blegg or a rube?”, and that which answer is best depends on what particular things you care about on a particular occasion.
That’s not how I would summarize that post at all! I mean, I agree that the post did literally say that (“The question ‘Is this object a blegg?’ may stand in for different queries on different occasions”). But it also went on to say more things that I think substantially change the moral—
If [the question] weren’t standing in for some query, you’d have no reason to care.
[...] People who argue that atheism is a religion “because it states beliefs about God” are really trying to argue (I think) that the reasoning methods used in atheism are on a par with the reasoning methods used in religion, or that atheism is no safer than religion in terms of the probability of causally engendering violence, etc… [...]
[...] The a priori irrational part is where, in the course of the argument, someone pulls out a dictionary and looks up the definition of “atheism” or “religion”. [...] How could a dictionary possibly decide whether an empirical cluster of atheists is really substantially different from an empirical cluster of theologians? How can reality vary with the meaning of a word? The points in thingspace don’t move around when we redraw a boundary. [bolding mine—ZMD]
But people often don’t realize that their argument about where to draw a definitional boundary, is really a dispute over whether to infer a characteristic shared by most things inside an empirical cluster...
I claim that what Yudkowsky said about the irrationality about appealing to the dictionary, goes the same for appeal to personal values or priorities. It’s not false exactly, but it doesn’t accomplish anything.
Suppose Bob says, “Abortion is murder, because it’s the killing of a human being!”
Alice says, “No, abortion isn’t murder, because murder is the killing of a sentient being, and fetuses aren’t sentient.”
As Alice and Bob’s hired rationalist mediator, you could say, “You two just have different preferences about somewhat-arbitary category boundaries, that’s all! Abortion is murder-with-respect-to-Bob’s-definition, but it isn’t murder-with-respect-to-Alice’s-definition. Done! End of conversation!”
If different political factions are engaged in conflict over how to define the extension of some common word—common words being a scarce and valuable resource both culturally and information-theoretically—rationalists may not be able to say that one side is simply right and the other is simply wrong, but we can at least strive for objectivity in describing the conflict. Before shrugging and saying, “Well, this is a difference in values; nothing more to be said about it,” we can talk about the detailed consequences of what is gained or lost by paying attention to some differences and ignoring others.
I wasn’t claiming to summarize “Disguised Queries”. I was pointing out one thing that it says, which happens to be the thing that you say no one says other than to push a particular position on trans issues, and which “Disguised Queries” says with (so far as I can tell) no attempt to say anything about transness at all.
Alice and Bob’s conversation doesn’t have to end once they (hopefully) recognize that their disagreement is about category boundaries as much as it is about matters of fact. They may well want to figure out why they draw their boundaries in different places. It might be because they have different purposes; or because they have different opinions on some other matter of fact; or because one or both are really making appeals to emotion for an already-decided conclusion rather than actually trying to think clearly about what sort of a thing a foetus is; etc.
Ending a conversation, or a train of thought, prematurely, is a bad thing. It seems altogether unfair to complain at me merely for using words that could be abused for that purpose. (If you see me actually trying to end a conversation with them, of course, then by all means complain away.)
Over and over again in this discussion, it seems as if I’m being taken to say things I’m fairly sure I haven’t said and certainly don’t believe. If it’s because I’m communicating badly, then I’m very sorry. But it might be worth considering other explanations.
I wasn’t claiming to summarize “Disguised Queries”.
I may have misinterpreted what you meant by the phrase “makes essentially the point that.”
the thing that you say no one says other than to push a particular position on trans issues
I see. I think I made a mistake in the great-great-grandparent comment. That comments’ penultimate paragraph ended: “[...] and who somehow never seem to find it useful to bring up the idea that categories are somewhat arbitrary in seemingly any other context.” I should not have written that, because as you pointed out in the great-grandparent, it’s not true. This turned out to be a pretty costly mistake on my part, because we’ve now just spent the better part of four comments litigating the consequences of this error in a way that we could have avoided if only I had taken more care to phrase the point I was trying to make less hyperbolically.
The point I was trying to make in the offending paragraph is that if someone honestly believes that the choice between multiple category systems is arbitrary or somewhat-arbitrary, then they should accept the choice being made arbitrarily or somewhat-arbitrarily. I agree that “It depends on what you mean by X” is often a useful motion, but I think it’s possible to distinguish when it’s being used to facilitate communication from when it’s being used to impose frame control. Specifically: it’s incoherent to say, “It’s arbitrary, so you should do it my way,” because if it were really arbitrary, the one would not be motivated to say “you should do it my way.” In discussions about my idiosyncratic special interest, I very frequently encounter incredibly mendacious frame-control attempts from people who call themselves “rationalists” and who don’t seem to do this on most other topics. (This is, of course, with respect to how I draw the “incredibly mendacious” category boundary.)
Speaking of ending conversations, I’m feeling pretty emotionally exhausted, and we seem to be spending a lot of wordcount on mutual misunderstandings, so unless you have more things you want to explain to me, maybe this should be the end of the thread? Thanks for the invigorating discussion! This was way more productive than most of the conversations I’ve had lately! (Which maybe tells you something about the quality of those other discussions.)
Happy to leave it here; I have a few final comments that are mostly just making explicit things that I think we largely agree on. (But if any of them annoy you, feel free to have the last word.)
1. Yeah, sorry, “essentially” may have been a bad choice of word. I meant “makes (inter alia) a point which is essentially that …” rather than “makes, as its most essential part, the point that …”.
2. My apologies for taking you more literally than intended. I agree that “it’s arbitrary so you should do it my way” is nuts. On the other hand, “there’s an element of choice here, and I’m choosing X because of Y” seems (at least potentially) OK to me. I don’t know what specific incredibly mendacious things you have in mind, but e.g. nothing in Scott’s TCWMFM strikes me as mendacious and I remain unconvinced by your criticisms of it. (Not, I am fairly sure, because I simply don’t understand them.)
Finally, my apologies for any part of the emotional exhaustion that’s the result of things I said that could have been better if I’d been cleverer or more sensitive or something of the kind.
That’s not how I would summarize that post at all! I mean, I agree that the post did literally say that (“The question ‘Is this object a blegg?’ may stand in for different queries on different occasions”). But it also went on to say more things that I think substantially change the moral—
I claim that what Yudkowsky said about the irrationality about appealing to the dictionary, goes the same for appeal to personal values or priorities. It’s not false exactly, but it doesn’t accomplish anything.
Suppose Bob says, “Abortion is murder, because it’s the killing of a human being!”
Alice says, “No, abortion isn’t murder, because murder is the killing of a sentient being, and fetuses aren’t sentient.”
As Alice and Bob’s hired rationalist mediator, you could say, “You two just have different preferences about somewhat-arbitary category boundaries, that’s all! Abortion is murder-with-respect-to-Bob’s-definition, but it isn’t murder-with-respect-to-Alice’s-definition. Done! End of conversation!”
And maybe sometimes there really is nothing more to it than that. But oftentimes, I think we can do more work to break the symmetry: to work out what different predictions Alice and Bob are making about reality, or what different preferences they have about reality, and refocus the discussion on that. As I wrote in “The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions”:
We had an entire Sequence specifically about this! You were there! I was there! Why doesn’t anyone remember?!
I wasn’t claiming to summarize “Disguised Queries”. I was pointing out one thing that it says, which happens to be the thing that you say no one says other than to push a particular position on trans issues, and which “Disguised Queries” says with (so far as I can tell) no attempt to say anything about transness at all.
Alice and Bob’s conversation doesn’t have to end once they (hopefully) recognize that their disagreement is about category boundaries as much as it is about matters of fact. They may well want to figure out why they draw their boundaries in different places. It might be because they have different purposes; or because they have different opinions on some other matter of fact; or because one or both are really making appeals to emotion for an already-decided conclusion rather than actually trying to think clearly about what sort of a thing a foetus is; etc.
Ending a conversation, or a train of thought, prematurely, is a bad thing. It seems altogether unfair to complain at me merely for using words that could be abused for that purpose. (If you see me actually trying to end a conversation with them, of course, then by all means complain away.)
Over and over again in this discussion, it seems as if I’m being taken to say things I’m fairly sure I haven’t said and certainly don’t believe. If it’s because I’m communicating badly, then I’m very sorry. But it might be worth considering other explanations.
I may have misinterpreted what you meant by the phrase “makes essentially the point that.”
I see. I think I made a mistake in the great-great-grandparent comment. That comments’ penultimate paragraph ended: “[...] and who somehow never seem to find it useful to bring up the idea that categories are somewhat arbitrary in seemingly any other context.” I should not have written that, because as you pointed out in the great-grandparent, it’s not true. This turned out to be a pretty costly mistake on my part, because we’ve now just spent the better part of four comments litigating the consequences of this error in a way that we could have avoided if only I had taken more care to phrase the point I was trying to make less hyperbolically.
The point I was trying to make in the offending paragraph is that if someone honestly believes that the choice between multiple category systems is arbitrary or somewhat-arbitrary, then they should accept the choice being made arbitrarily or somewhat-arbitrarily. I agree that “It depends on what you mean by X” is often a useful motion, but I think it’s possible to distinguish when it’s being used to facilitate communication from when it’s being used to impose frame control. Specifically: it’s incoherent to say, “It’s arbitrary, so you should do it my way,” because if it were really arbitrary, the one would not be motivated to say “you should do it my way.” In discussions about my idiosyncratic special interest, I very frequently encounter incredibly mendacious frame-control attempts from people who call themselves “rationalists” and who don’t seem to do this on most other topics. (This is, of course, with respect to how I draw the “incredibly mendacious” category boundary.)
Speaking of ending conversations, I’m feeling pretty emotionally exhausted, and we seem to be spending a lot of wordcount on mutual misunderstandings, so unless you have more things you want to explain to me, maybe this should be the end of the thread? Thanks for the invigorating discussion! This was way more productive than most of the conversations I’ve had lately! (Which maybe tells you something about the quality of those other discussions.)
Happy to leave it here; I have a few final comments that are mostly just making explicit things that I think we largely agree on. (But if any of them annoy you, feel free to have the last word.)
1. Yeah, sorry, “essentially” may have been a bad choice of word. I meant “makes (inter alia) a point which is essentially that …” rather than “makes, as its most essential part, the point that …”.
2. My apologies for taking you more literally than intended. I agree that “it’s arbitrary so you should do it my way” is nuts. On the other hand, “there’s an element of choice here, and I’m choosing X because of Y” seems (at least potentially) OK to me. I don’t know what specific incredibly mendacious things you have in mind, but e.g. nothing in Scott’s TCWMFM strikes me as mendacious and I remain unconvinced by your criticisms of it. (Not, I am fairly sure, because I simply don’t understand them.)
Finally, my apologies for any part of the emotional exhaustion that’s the result of things I said that could have been better if I’d been cleverer or more sensitive or something of the kind.