EDIT: Want to talk to you further before I try to explain my understanding of your previous work on this, will rewrite this later.
The short version is I understand we disagree, I understand you have a sophisticated position, but I can’t figure out where we start differing and so I don’t know what to do other than vomit out my entire philosophy of language and hope that you’re able to point to the part you don’t like. I understand that may be condescending to you and I’m sorry.
I absolutely deny I am “motivatedly playing dumb” and I enter this into the record as further evidence that we shouldn’t redefine language to encode a claim that we are good at ferreting out other people’s secret motivations.
(Scott and I had a good conversation today. I think I need to write a followup post (working title: “Instrumental Categories, Wireheading, and War”) explaining in more detail exactly what distinction I’m making when I say I want to consider some kinds of appeals-to-consequences invalid while still allowing, e.g. “Requiring semicolons in your programming language will have the consequence of being less convenient for users who forget them.” The paragraphs in “Where to Draw the Boundaries?” starting with “There is an important difference [...]” are gesturing at the distinction, but perhaps not elaborating enough for readers who don’t already consider it “obvious.”)
EDIT: Want to talk to you further before I try to explain my understanding of your previous work on this, will rewrite this later.
The short version is I understand we disagree, I understand you have a sophisticated position, but I can’t figure out where we start differing and so I don’t know what to do other than vomit out my entire philosophy of language and hope that you’re able to point to the part you don’t like. I understand that may be condescending to you and I’m sorry.
I absolutely deny I am “motivatedly playing dumb” and I enter this into the record as further evidence that we shouldn’t redefine language to encode a claim that we are good at ferreting out other people’s secret motivations.
(Scott and I had a good conversation today. I think I need to write a followup post (working title: “Instrumental Categories, Wireheading, and War”) explaining in more detail exactly what distinction I’m making when I say I want to consider some kinds of appeals-to-consequences invalid while still allowing, e.g. “Requiring semicolons in your programming language will have the consequence of being less convenient for users who forget them.” The paragraphs in “Where to Draw the Boundaries?” starting with “There is an important difference [...]” are gesturing at the distinction, but perhaps not elaborating enough for readers who don’t already consider it “obvious.”)