Great post! Here is how I reduce your examples to statements about the territory.
(“Too ambiguous” means “Different humans who say this refer to different statements about the territory, and the different reductions immediately split off in contradictory directions.”)
1. All men are created equal.
“It is only right to craft the law such that one’s actions screen off the parameters of one’s birth.”
2. The lottery is a waste of hope.
“Presumably you think it is right and proper for there to exist a correlation between your emotion of hope, your actions, and your rational expectation of future wealth. Feeling hopeful after buying a lottery ticket seems to weaken the desired correlation.”
3. Religious people are intolerant.
Too ambiguous.
4. Government is not the solution; government is the problem.
Too ambiguous.
5. George Washington was a better president than James Buchanan.
“If James Buchanan had been the first president instead of George Washington, commonly agreed upon metrics of national quality would be lower.”
6. The economy is doing worse today than it was ten years ago.
“The economy is doing worse today according to agreed-upon metrics.”
7. God exists.
Too ambiguous.
8. One impulse from a vernal wood can teach you more of man, of moral evil, and of good than all the sages can.
Not sure the degree to which humans will share a dereferencing of this pointer. I don’t understand the “one impulse from a vernal wood” part myself.
9. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Too ambiguous
10. Rationalists should win.
This statement actually captures a unique thought about what “rationality” means, and it’s meaningful because it proposes this fact about the universe: We in this community are motivated when we think the thought that you thought when you read that statement.
Oddly, when I tried to reduce #10 to show its relationship to the territory, I had to stop at the level of human minds processing the statement. I couldn’t follow through and describe what referent the readers’ minds should point to.
Perhaps you describe incorrectly the nameless virtue. How will you discover your mistake? Not by comparing your description to itself, but by comparing it to that which you did not name.
So #10 reduces to a pretty unambiguous thought, but exactly how that thought relates to the territory is what the LW community is trying to work out.
1 and 2: Taboo the word “right”. You haven’t come anywhere close to the territory.
Eliezer can use “right” casually in this discussion, thanks to his 10,000-word reduction of it on OB; I may or may not agree with his reduction, but at least I know what sort of evidence would verify or falsify a claim he makes about “right” and “wrong”.
The rest of us should probably be more cautious with those words when verifiability is in the air.
Yes we know “right”’s relationship to the territory has to do with the complexites of the brain. But the entire “right” module can still be part of a reduction.
Tabooing is useful for:
Making sure your reduction attempt isn’t circular
Figuring out what a speaker actually means when they use a word whose referent is ambiguous (like “make a sound”) or just points to their own confusion (like Searle’s “semantics”)
In that case, I don’t disagree on substance. But as a matter of clarity,
“It is only right to craft the law such that one’s actions screen off the parameters of one’s birth.”
seems too casual for good communication; it’s what a person would say who takes “right” and “wrong” to be simple ontologically basic properties of the universe.
On the other hand, the less misleading locutions I can think of would be pretty unwieldy in everyday conversation. I wonder if there’s better language we can use or invent to talk about morality from this perspective...
Great post! Here is how I reduce your examples to statements about the territory.
(“Too ambiguous” means “Different humans who say this refer to different statements about the territory, and the different reductions immediately split off in contradictory directions.”)
1. All men are created equal. “It is only right to craft the law such that one’s actions screen off the parameters of one’s birth.”
2. The lottery is a waste of hope. “Presumably you think it is right and proper for there to exist a correlation between your emotion of hope, your actions, and your rational expectation of future wealth. Feeling hopeful after buying a lottery ticket seems to weaken the desired correlation.”
3. Religious people are intolerant. Too ambiguous.
4. Government is not the solution; government is the problem. Too ambiguous.
5. George Washington was a better president than James Buchanan. “If James Buchanan had been the first president instead of George Washington, commonly agreed upon metrics of national quality would be lower.”
6. The economy is doing worse today than it was ten years ago. “The economy is doing worse today according to agreed-upon metrics.”
7. God exists. Too ambiguous.
8. One impulse from a vernal wood can teach you more of man, of moral evil, and of good than all the sages can. Not sure the degree to which humans will share a dereferencing of this pointer. I don’t understand the “one impulse from a vernal wood” part myself.
9. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Too ambiguous
10. Rationalists should win. This statement actually captures a unique thought about what “rationality” means, and it’s meaningful because it proposes this fact about the universe: We in this community are motivated when we think the thought that you thought when you read that statement.
Oddly, when I tried to reduce #10 to show its relationship to the territory, I had to stop at the level of human minds processing the statement. I couldn’t follow through and describe what referent the readers’ minds should point to.
It is written:
So #10 reduces to a pretty unambiguous thought, but exactly how that thought relates to the territory is what the LW community is trying to work out.
1 and 2: Taboo the word “right”. You haven’t come anywhere close to the territory.
Eliezer can use “right” casually in this discussion, thanks to his 10,000-word reduction of it on OB; I may or may not agree with his reduction, but at least I know what sort of evidence would verify or falsify a claim he makes about “right” and “wrong”.
The rest of us should probably be more cautious with those words when verifiability is in the air.
Yes we know “right”’s relationship to the territory has to do with the complexites of the brain. But the entire “right” module can still be part of a reduction.
Tabooing is useful for:
Making sure your reduction attempt isn’t circular
Figuring out what a speaker actually means when they use a word whose referent is ambiguous (like “make a sound”) or just points to their own confusion (like Searle’s “semantics”)
No need for it ere.
In that case, I don’t disagree on substance. But as a matter of clarity,
seems too casual for good communication; it’s what a person would say who takes “right” and “wrong” to be simple ontologically basic properties of the universe.
On the other hand, the less misleading locutions I can think of would be pretty unwieldy in everyday conversation. I wonder if there’s better language we can use or invent to talk about morality from this perspective...