I’d like to point out a preference for not being deceived even if you will never realize it isn’t an error—it’s prima facie evidence that human preferences are over the territory as well as the map.
That preference is not universal, which to me makes it absolutely part of the map. And it’s not just the fictional evidence of Cypher wanting to go back in the Matrix and forget, guys routinely pay women for various forms of fantasy fulfillment, willingly suspending disbelief in order to be deceived.
Not enough? How about the experimental philosophers who re-ran the virtual world thought experiment until they found that people’s decision about living in a fantasy world that they’d think was real, was heavily dependent upon whether they 1) had already been living in the fantasy, 2) whether their experience of life would significantly change, and 3) whether their friends and loved ones were also in the fantasy world.
If anything, those stats should be quite convincing that it’s philosophers and extreme rationalists who have a pathological fear of deception, rather than a inbuilt human preference for actually knowing the truth… and that most likely, if we have an inbuilt preference against deception, it’s probably aimed at obtaining social consensus rather than finding truth.
All that having been said, I will concede that there perhaps you could find some irreducible microkernel of “map” that actually corresponds to “territory”. I just don’t think it makes sense (on the understanding-people side) to worry about it. If you’re trying to understand what people want or how they’ll behave, the territory is absolutely the LAST place you should be looking. (Since the distinctions they’re using, and the meanings they attach to those distinctions, are 100% in the map.)
That preference is not universal, which to me makes it absolutely part of the map.
I don’t see how it supposed to follow from the fact that not everyone prefers not-being-decieved, that those who claim to prefer not-being-deceived must be wrong about their own preferences. Could you explain why you seem to think it does?
The claim others are defending here (as I understand it) is not that everyone’s preferences are really over the territory; merely that some people’s are. Pointing out that some people’s preferences aren’t about the territory isn’t a counterargument to that claim.
I don’t see how it supposed to follow from the fact that not everyone prefers not-being-decieved, that those who claim to prefer not-being-deceived must be wrong about their own preferences.
I’m saying that the preferences point to the map because your entire experience of reality is in the map—you can’t experience reality directly. The comments about people’s differences in not-being-deceived were just making the point that that preference is more about consensus reality than reality reaity. In truth, we all care about our model of reality, which we labeled reality and think is reality, but is actually not.
The comments about people’s differences in not-being-deceived were just making the point that that preference is more about consensus reality than reality reaity [sic].
I’m afraid I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. It seems to me like you’re just repeating your conclusion over and over again using different words, which unfortunately doesn’t constitute an argument. Maybe to you it seems like we’re doing the same thing, I don’t know.
Alternatively, maybe we’re still talking past each other for the reasons suggested here (which everyone seemed to agree with at the time.) In which case, I wonder why we’re still having this conversation at all, and apologise for my part in pointlessly extending it. ;)
Alternatively, maybe we’re still talking past each other for the reasons suggested here (which everyone seemed to agree with at the time.) In which case, I wonder why we’re still having this conversation at all, and apologise for my part in pointlessly extending it.
It’s probably because I replied to an unclosed subthread, causing an unintended resurrection. Also, at one point Vladimir Nesov did some resurrection too, and there have also been comments by Cyan and Saturn that kept things going.
Anyway, yes, as you said, we already agreed we are talking about different things, so let’s stop now. ;-)
If you agree that you are just talking about a different thing, and given that “utility” is a term understood to mean different thing from what you were talking about, kindly stop using that term for your separate concept to avoid unnecessary confusion and stop arguing about the sound of fallen tree.
1) Why would people differ so much? Even concrete preferences don’t get reversed, magical mutants don’t exist.
2) Even if you only care about your map, you still care about your map as a part of the territory, otherwise you make the next step and declare that you don’t care about state of your brain either, you only care about caring itself, at which point you disappear in a “puff!” of metaphysical confusion. It’s pretty much inevitable.
Even if you only care about your map, you still care about your map as a part of the territory,
...a “territory” that exists only in your brain, since you cannot directly perceive or operate upon the real territory.
otherwise you make the next step and declare that you don’t care about state of your brain either, you only care about caring itself, at which point you disappear in a “puff!” of metaphysical confusion.
...and note too, that all of this modeling is taking place in a brain. When you point to something and label it “reality”, you are pointing to a portion of your map. It is not, and cannot be the actual territory. It doesn’t matter how many times you try to say, “but no, I mean real reality”, because the only thing you have to represent that idea with is your brain.
It is still the idea of reality, a model of reality, that exists in your map.
Yes, the map is represented physically within the territory. The map “runs on” a platform made of territory, just as “you” run on a platform made of map. All I am saying is, “you” cannot access the territory directly, because your platform is made of map, just as the map’s platform is made of territory. Everything we perceive or think or imagine is therefore map… including the portion of the map we refer to as the territory.
We want our preferences to point to the territory, but they cannot do so in actual reality. We have the illusion that they can, because we have the same representative freedom as an artist drawing a picture of hands drawing each other—we can easily represent paradoxical and unreal things within the surface of the map.
(I remember reading at one point a tutorial in General Semantics that illustrated this point much better than I am doing, but sadly I cannot seem to find it at the moment.)
We want our preferences to point to the territory, but they cannot do so in actual reality.
There’s a distinction to be made between the fact that our knowledge about whether our preferences are satisfied is map-bound and the assertion that our preferences only take the map into account.
That preference is not universal, which to me makes it absolutely part of the map. And it’s not just the fictional evidence of Cypher wanting to go back in the Matrix and forget, guys routinely pay women for various forms of fantasy fulfillment, willingly suspending disbelief in order to be deceived.
Not enough? How about the experimental philosophers who re-ran the virtual world thought experiment until they found that people’s decision about living in a fantasy world that they’d think was real, was heavily dependent upon whether they 1) had already been living in the fantasy, 2) whether their experience of life would significantly change, and 3) whether their friends and loved ones were also in the fantasy world.
If anything, those stats should be quite convincing that it’s philosophers and extreme rationalists who have a pathological fear of deception, rather than a inbuilt human preference for actually knowing the truth… and that most likely, if we have an inbuilt preference against deception, it’s probably aimed at obtaining social consensus rather than finding truth.
All that having been said, I will concede that there perhaps you could find some irreducible microkernel of “map” that actually corresponds to “territory”. I just don’t think it makes sense (on the understanding-people side) to worry about it. If you’re trying to understand what people want or how they’ll behave, the territory is absolutely the LAST place you should be looking. (Since the distinctions they’re using, and the meanings they attach to those distinctions, are 100% in the map.)
I don’t see how it supposed to follow from the fact that not everyone prefers not-being-decieved, that those who claim to prefer not-being-deceived must be wrong about their own preferences. Could you explain why you seem to think it does?
The claim others are defending here (as I understand it) is not that everyone’s preferences are really over the territory; merely that some people’s are. Pointing out that some people’s preferences aren’t about the territory isn’t a counterargument to that claim.
I’m saying that the preferences point to the map because your entire experience of reality is in the map—you can’t experience reality directly. The comments about people’s differences in not-being-deceived were just making the point that that preference is more about consensus reality than reality reaity. In truth, we all care about our model of reality, which we labeled reality and think is reality, but is actually not.
I’m afraid I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. It seems to me like you’re just repeating your conclusion over and over again using different words, which unfortunately doesn’t constitute an argument. Maybe to you it seems like we’re doing the same thing, I don’t know.
Alternatively, maybe we’re still talking past each other for the reasons suggested here (which everyone seemed to agree with at the time.) In which case, I wonder why we’re still having this conversation at all, and apologise for my part in pointlessly extending it. ;)
It’s probably because I replied to an unclosed subthread, causing an unintended resurrection. Also, at one point Vladimir Nesov did some resurrection too, and there have also been comments by Cyan and Saturn that kept things going.
Anyway, yes, as you said, we already agreed we are talking about different things, so let’s stop now. ;-)
If you agree that you are just talking about a different thing, and given that “utility” is a term understood to mean different thing from what you were talking about, kindly stop using that term for your separate concept to avoid unnecessary confusion and stop arguing about the sound of fallen tree.
Yay!
1) Why would people differ so much? Even concrete preferences don’t get reversed, magical mutants don’t exist.
2) Even if you only care about your map, you still care about your map as a part of the territory, otherwise you make the next step and declare that you don’t care about state of your brain either, you only care about caring itself, at which point you disappear in a “puff!” of metaphysical confusion. It’s pretty much inevitable.
...a “territory” that exists only in your brain, since you cannot directly perceive or operate upon the real territory.
...and note too, that all of this modeling is taking place in a brain. When you point to something and label it “reality”, you are pointing to a portion of your map. It is not, and cannot be the actual territory. It doesn’t matter how many times you try to say, “but no, I mean real reality”, because the only thing you have to represent that idea with is your brain.
It is still the idea of reality, a model of reality, that exists in your map.
Yes, the map is represented physically within the territory. The map “runs on” a platform made of territory, just as “you” run on a platform made of map. All I am saying is, “you” cannot access the territory directly, because your platform is made of map, just as the map’s platform is made of territory. Everything we perceive or think or imagine is therefore map… including the portion of the map we refer to as the territory.
We want our preferences to point to the territory, but they cannot do so in actual reality. We have the illusion that they can, because we have the same representative freedom as an artist drawing a picture of hands drawing each other—we can easily represent paradoxical and unreal things within the surface of the map.
(I remember reading at one point a tutorial in General Semantics that illustrated this point much better than I am doing, but sadly I cannot seem to find it at the moment.)
There’s a distinction to be made between the fact that our knowledge about whether our preferences are satisfied is map-bound and the assertion that our preferences only take the map into account.
You’ve just ignored Cyan’s counterexample, and presented a few of your own that support your point of view.
I answered it here, actually.