And like I said, there often is substantive disagreement. I was just trying to say that sometimes there isn’t substantive disagreement, and we can figure out whether or not we’re having a substantive disagreement by playing a little Taboo (and by checking anticipations).
To come back to this point, what if we can’t translate a disagreement into disagreement over anticipations (which is the case in many debates over rationality and morality), nor do the participants know how to correctly Taboo (i.e., they don’t know how to capture the meanings of certain key words), but there still seems to be substantive disagreement or the participants themselves claim they do have a substantive disagreement?
Earlier, in another context, I suggested that we extend Eliezer’s “make beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences” into “make beliefs pay rent in decision making”. Perhaps we can apply that here as well, and say that a substantive disagreement is one that implies a difference in what to do, in at least one possible circumstance. What do you think?
But I missed your point in the previous response. The idea of disagreement about decisions in the same sense as usual disagreement about anticipation caused by errors/uncertainty is interesting. This is not bargaining about outcome, for the object under consideration is agents’ belief, not the fact the belief is about. The agents could work on correct belief about a fact even in the absence of reliable access to the fact itself, reaching agreement.
Perhaps we can apply that here as well, and say that a substantive disagreement is one that implies a difference in what to do, in at least one possible circumstance.
It seems that “what to do” has to refer to properties of a fixed fact, so disagreement is bargaining over what actually gets determined, and so probably doesn’t even involve different anticipations.
Both your suggestions sound plausible. I’ll have to think about it more when I have time to work more on this problem, probably in the context of a planned LW post on Chalmer’s Verbal Disputes paper. Right now I have to get back to some other projects.
To come back to this point, what if we can’t translate a disagreement into disagreement over anticipations (which is the case in many debates over rationality and morality), nor do the participants know how to correctly Taboo (i.e., they don’t know how to capture the meanings of certain key words), but there still seems to be substantive disagreement or the participants themselves claim they do have a substantive disagreement?
Earlier, in another context, I suggested that we extend Eliezer’s “make beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences” into “make beliefs pay rent in decision making”. Perhaps we can apply that here as well, and say that a substantive disagreement is one that implies a difference in what to do, in at least one possible circumstance. What do you think?
But I missed your point in the previous response. The idea of disagreement about decisions in the same sense as usual disagreement about anticipation caused by errors/uncertainty is interesting. This is not bargaining about outcome, for the object under consideration is agents’ belief, not the fact the belief is about. The agents could work on correct belief about a fact even in the absence of reliable access to the fact itself, reaching agreement.
It seems that “what to do” has to refer to properties of a fixed fact, so disagreement is bargaining over what actually gets determined, and so probably doesn’t even involve different anticipations.
Wei Dai & Vladimir Nesov,
Both your suggestions sound plausible. I’ll have to think about it more when I have time to work more on this problem, probably in the context of a planned LW post on Chalmer’s Verbal Disputes paper. Right now I have to get back to some other projects.
Also perhaps of interest is Schroeder’s paper, A Recipe for Concept Similarity.