EY talks about things they don’t, but on the Map is Not the Territory, I don’t see that EY or the usual discussions here have met Korzybski’s level for consciousness of abstraction, let alone surpassed it. General Semantics provides a tidy metamodel of abstracting, identifies and names important concepts within the model, and adds some basic tools and practices for semantic hygiene. I find them generally useful, and I generally recommend them.
For consciousness of abstraction, where and how has EY exceeded Korzybski? What are new and improved bits? Where was K wrong, and EY right?
On second thoughts, when I said “[not] anything to compare with” that was wildly exaggerated. Of course they’re comparable—we are comparing them, and they are not so far apart that the result is a slam-dunk. But I don’t want to get into a blue vs. green dingdong (despite having already veered in that direction in the grandparent).
Here are some brief remarks towards a comparison on the issues that occur to me. I’m sure there’s a lot more to be said on this, but that would be a top-level post that would take (at least for me) weeks to write, with many hours of re-studying the source materials.
Clarity of exposition. There really is no contest here: E wins hands down, and I have “Science and Sanity” in front of me.
Informed by current science. Inevitably, E wins this one as well, just by being informed of another half-century of science. That doesn’t just mean better examples to illustrate the same ideas, but new ideas to build on. I already mentioned Bayesian reasoning and computers, both unavailable to K.
Consciousness of abstraction. Grokking, to use Heinlein’s word, the map-territory distinction. Both E and K have hammered on this one. K refined it more, treating not merely of map/territory, but our capability for unlimited levels of abstraction, maps-of-maps-of-maps-of-etc to any depth. The more levels, the further removed from contact with reality, and the more scope for losing touch with it. Nested thought-bubbles have appeared in Eliezer’s writings, but as far as I recall the spotlight has never been turned on the phenomenon.
The “cortico-thalamic pause”. The name is based on what I suspect is outdated neuroscience, but the idea is still around, with the currently fashionable name of “System 1 vs. System 2″. The idea is current on LessWrong, but I don’t recall if Eliezer himself has written anything on it. The technique consists of giving yourself time to respond rationally to whatever has just happened, time to perceive it clearly and consider (the “cortical” part) without emotional distraction (the “thalamic” part) what the situation is or might be and what to do about it, deploying consciousness of abstraction in order to be mindful of one’s own flaws and see the emotional responses for what they are. This is in the Null-A books as well, so map ≠ territory isn’t the only real-world actionable idea there.
The unity of “body” and “mind”, of “emotion” and “intellect”, of “senses” and “thought”, of “heredity” and “environment”, etc. Our usual language artificially splits these apart (K uses the word “elementalistic”), when in reality they are indissoluble, and we require “non-elementalistic” language to speak accurately of them, hence his coining of the term “semantic reaction” to refer to the response of the organism-as-a-whole to an event. Not a topic that E has devoted attention to as a topic, but on the elementalistic splitting of “choice” from “physical law” there is this.
Something to protect. K was motivated by the state of the world around him, seeing “the human dangers of the abuse of neuro-semantic and neuro-linguistic mechanisms”, the neglect of those dangers in the democratic West, and their exploitation by totalitarian governments (“Science and Sanity”, introduction to 2nd edition, 1941). “We humans after these millions of years should have learned how to utilize the ‘intelligence’ which we supposedly have, with some predictability, etc., and use it constructively, not destructively, as, for example, the Nazis are doing under the guidance of specialists.” E was originally motivated by the Friendly AGI problem. I do not know to what extent he is motivated by the ordinary, pre-Singularity benefits that “raising the sanity waterline” would bring.
Etc., as Korzybski would say. Additions to the list welcome.
Thanks for the elaboration. I agree with the comparative aspects.
For 1), I’d say that although Korzybski was a painfully tedious windbag in Science and Sanity, I’ve seen lots of summaries that were concise and well written, though I don’t remember a comprehensive summary of Science and Sanity that fits the bill.
I was mainly getting at 3), with order of abstraction, multi ordinal terms, and the concrete practices of semantic hygiene such as indexing, etc,. and hyphenated non-elementalism.
I’d add to your list that Korzybski’s aversion to the izzes of identity and predication, along with his intensional vs. extensional distinction, really complement Tabooing a Word and Replacing the Symbol with the Substance. AK elaborates the full evaluative response—the intensional response—of a flesh and blood creature, identifies particularly problematic semantic practices which maladaptively evoke that response, and EY gives the practical method for semantic hygiene in terms of what you should be doing instead.
AK always keeps in views the abstracting nervous system in a way that EY doesn’t, and it think that added reductionism helps. A reductionist model which includes the salient points of human abstraction provides a generative method to make sense of the series of narratives that EY provides on different points on rationality.
Also, AK’s insistence on a physical structural differential, and knowledge based in the structure of various sensory modalities is really a gusher of good ideas.
AK stays closer to the wetware, and whatever the relative limits of science available to him, I think that reductionist focus works to provide a deep model for thinking about abstraction. Focus on a reductionist physical reality, and all sorts of supposed conundrums for speciation, life, and mind evaporate.
I’ve been going off on this because there’s just a ton of material from AK on semantic hygiene, which I take as a core method of getting Less Wrong, and all I usually see mentioned on this list is “The Map is not the Territory”. That’s maybe a country in the world of AK, and I think people should do some travelling and see the rest of his world. There’s a lot more to see.
EY talks about things they don’t, but on the Map is Not the Territory, I don’t see that EY or the usual discussions here have met Korzybski’s level for consciousness of abstraction, let alone surpassed it. General Semantics provides a tidy metamodel of abstracting, identifies and names important concepts within the model, and adds some basic tools and practices for semantic hygiene. I find them generally useful, and I generally recommend them.
For consciousness of abstraction, where and how has EY exceeded Korzybski? What are new and improved bits? Where was K wrong, and EY right?
On second thoughts, when I said “[not] anything to compare with” that was wildly exaggerated. Of course they’re comparable—we are comparing them, and they are not so far apart that the result is a slam-dunk. But I don’t want to get into a blue vs. green dingdong (despite having already veered in that direction in the grandparent).
Here are some brief remarks towards a comparison on the issues that occur to me. I’m sure there’s a lot more to be said on this, but that would be a top-level post that would take (at least for me) weeks to write, with many hours of re-studying the source materials.
Clarity of exposition. There really is no contest here: E wins hands down, and I have “Science and Sanity” in front of me.
Informed by current science. Inevitably, E wins this one as well, just by being informed of another half-century of science. That doesn’t just mean better examples to illustrate the same ideas, but new ideas to build on. I already mentioned Bayesian reasoning and computers, both unavailable to K.
Consciousness of abstraction. Grokking, to use Heinlein’s word, the map-territory distinction. Both E and K have hammered on this one. K refined it more, treating not merely of map/territory, but our capability for unlimited levels of abstraction, maps-of-maps-of-maps-of-etc to any depth. The more levels, the further removed from contact with reality, and the more scope for losing touch with it. Nested thought-bubbles have appeared in Eliezer’s writings, but as far as I recall the spotlight has never been turned on the phenomenon.
The “cortico-thalamic pause”. The name is based on what I suspect is outdated neuroscience, but the idea is still around, with the currently fashionable name of “System 1 vs. System 2″. The idea is current on LessWrong, but I don’t recall if Eliezer himself has written anything on it. The technique consists of giving yourself time to respond rationally to whatever has just happened, time to perceive it clearly and consider (the “cortical” part) without emotional distraction (the “thalamic” part) what the situation is or might be and what to do about it, deploying consciousness of abstraction in order to be mindful of one’s own flaws and see the emotional responses for what they are. This is in the Null-A books as well, so map ≠ territory isn’t the only real-world actionable idea there.
The unity of “body” and “mind”, of “emotion” and “intellect”, of “senses” and “thought”, of “heredity” and “environment”, etc. Our usual language artificially splits these apart (K uses the word “elementalistic”), when in reality they are indissoluble, and we require “non-elementalistic” language to speak accurately of them, hence his coining of the term “semantic reaction” to refer to the response of the organism-as-a-whole to an event. Not a topic that E has devoted attention to as a topic, but on the elementalistic splitting of “choice” from “physical law” there is this.
Something to protect. K was motivated by the state of the world around him, seeing “the human dangers of the abuse of neuro-semantic and neuro-linguistic mechanisms”, the neglect of those dangers in the democratic West, and their exploitation by totalitarian governments (“Science and Sanity”, introduction to 2nd edition, 1941). “We humans after these millions of years should have learned how to utilize the ‘intelligence’ which we supposedly have, with some predictability, etc., and use it constructively, not destructively, as, for example, the Nazis are doing under the guidance of specialists.” E was originally motivated by the Friendly AGI problem. I do not know to what extent he is motivated by the ordinary, pre-Singularity benefits that “raising the sanity waterline” would bring.
Etc., as Korzybski would say. Additions to the list welcome.
Thanks for the elaboration. I agree with the comparative aspects.
For 1), I’d say that although Korzybski was a painfully tedious windbag in Science and Sanity, I’ve seen lots of summaries that were concise and well written, though I don’t remember a comprehensive summary of Science and Sanity that fits the bill.
I was mainly getting at 3), with order of abstraction, multi ordinal terms, and the concrete practices of semantic hygiene such as indexing, etc,. and hyphenated non-elementalism.
I’d add to your list that Korzybski’s aversion to the izzes of identity and predication, along with his intensional vs. extensional distinction, really complement Tabooing a Word and Replacing the Symbol with the Substance. AK elaborates the full evaluative response—the intensional response—of a flesh and blood creature, identifies particularly problematic semantic practices which maladaptively evoke that response, and EY gives the practical method for semantic hygiene in terms of what you should be doing instead.
AK always keeps in views the abstracting nervous system in a way that EY doesn’t, and it think that added reductionism helps. A reductionist model which includes the salient points of human abstraction provides a generative method to make sense of the series of narratives that EY provides on different points on rationality.
Also, AK’s insistence on a physical structural differential, and knowledge based in the structure of various sensory modalities is really a gusher of good ideas.
AK stays closer to the wetware, and whatever the relative limits of science available to him, I think that reductionist focus works to provide a deep model for thinking about abstraction. Focus on a reductionist physical reality, and all sorts of supposed conundrums for speciation, life, and mind evaporate.
I’ve been going off on this because there’s just a ton of material from AK on semantic hygiene, which I take as a core method of getting Less Wrong, and all I usually see mentioned on this list is “The Map is not the Territory”. That’s maybe a country in the world of AK, and I think people should do some travelling and see the rest of his world. There’s a lot more to see.