So if your friends are using concepts which are optimized for other things, then either (1) you’ve got differing goals and you now would do well to sort out which of their concepts have been gerrymandered, (2) they’ve inherited gerrymandered concepts from someone else with different goals, or (3) your friends and you are all cooperating to gerrymander someone else’s concepts (or, (4), someone is making a mistake somewhere and gerrymandering concepts unnecessarily).
So? That’s a very particular set of problems. If you try to solve them by banning all unscientific concepts, then you lose all the usefulness they have in other contexts.
I’m just saying there’s something special about avoiding these things, whenever possible,
Wherever possible, or wherever beneficial? Does it make the world a better place to keep pointing out that tomatoes are fruit?
because if you care deeply about clear thinking, and don’t want the overhead of optimizing your memes for political ends (or de-optimizing memes from friends from those ends), this is the way to do it.
You personally can do what you like. If you don’t assume that everyone has to have the same solution, then there is no need for conflict.
If you use a gerrymandered concept, you may have no understanding of the non-gerrymandered versions; or you may have some understanding, but in any case not the fluency to think in them.
I’m not following you any more. Of course unscientific concepts can go wrong—anything can. But if you’re not saying everyone should use scientific conceotts all the time, what are you saying?
I see Zack as (correctly) ruling in mere optimization of concepts to predict the things we care about, but ruling out other forms of optimization of concepts to be useful.
I think that is Zacks argument, and that it s fallacious. Because we do things other than predict.
Low level manipulation is ubiquitous. You need to argue for “manipulative in an egregiously bad way” separately
I’m arguing that Zack’s definition is a very good Schelling fence to put up
You are arguing that it is remotely possible to eliminate all manipulation???
One of Zack’s recurring arguments is that appeal to consequences is an invalid argument when considering where to draw conceptual boundaries
Obtaining good consequences is a very good reason to do a lot of things.
So if your friends are using concepts which are optimized for other things, then either (1) you’ve got differing goals and you now would do well to sort out which of their concepts have been gerrymandered, (2) they’ve inherited gerrymandered concepts from someone else with different goals, or (3) your friends and you are all cooperating to gerrymander someone else’s concepts (or, (4), someone is making a mistake somewhere and gerrymandering concepts unnecessarily).
So? That’s a very particular set of problems. If you try to solve them by banning all unscientific concepts, then you lose all the usefulness they have in other contexts.
It seems like part of our persistent disagreement is:
I see this as one of very few pathways, and by far the dominant pathway, by which beliefs can be beneficial in a different way from useful-for-prediction
You see this as one of many many pathways, and very much a corner case
I frankly admit that I think you’re just wrong about this, and you seem quite mistaken in many of the other pathways you point out. The argument you quoted above was supposed to help establish my perspective, by showing that there would be no reason to use gerrymandered concepts unless there was some manipulation going on. Yet you casually brush this off as a very particular set of problems.
I’m just saying there’s something special about avoiding these things, whenever possible,
Wherever possible, or wherever beneficial? Does it make the world a better place to keep pointing out that tomatoes are fruit?
As a general policy, I think that yes, frequently pointing out subtler inaccuracies in language helps practice specificity and gradually refines concepts. For example, if you keep pointing out that tomatoes are fruit, you might eventually be corrected by someone pointing out that “vegetable” is a culinary distinction rather than a biological one, and so there is no reason to object to the classification of a tomato as a vegetable. This could help you develop philosophically, by providing a vivid example of how we use multiple overlapping classification systems rather than one; and further, that scientific-sounding classification criteria don’t always take precedence (IE culinary knowledge is just as valid as biology knowledge).
If you use a gerrymandered concept, you may have no understanding of the non-gerrymandered versions; or you may have some understanding, but in any case not the fluency to think in them.
I’m not following you any more. Of course unscientific concepts can go wrong—anything can. But if you’re not saying everyone should use scientific conceotts all the time, what are you saying?
In what you quoted, I was trying to point out the distinction between speaking a certain way vs thinking a certain way. My overall conversational strategy was to try to separate out the question of whether you should speak a specific way from the question of whether you should think a specific way. This was because I had hoped that we could more easily reach agreement about the “thinking” side of the question.
More specifically, I was pointing out that if we restrict our attention to how to think, then (I claim) the cost of using concepts for non-epistemic reasons is very high, because you usually cannot also be fluent in the more epistemically robust concepts, without the non-epistemic concepts losing a significant amount of power. I gave an example of a Christian who understands the atheist worldview in too much detail.
I see Zack as (correctly) ruling in mere optimization of concepts to predict the things we care about, but ruling out other forms of optimization of concepts to be useful.
I think that is Zacks argument, and that it s fallacious. Because we do things other than predict.
I need some kind of map of the pathways you think are important here.
I 100% agree that we do things other than predict. Specifically, we act. However, the effectiveness of action seems to be very dependent on the accuracy of predictions. We either (a) come up with good plans by virtue of having good models of the world, or (b) learn how to take effective actions “directly” by interacting with the world and responding to feedback. Both of these rely on good epistemics (because learning to act “directly” still relies on our understanding of the world to interpret the feedback—ie the same reason ML people sometimes say that reinforcement learning is essentially learning a classifier).
That view—that by far the primary way in which concepts influence the world is via the motor output channels, which primarily rely on good predictions—is the foundation of my view that most of the benefits of concepts optimized for things other than prediction must be manipulation.
Low level manipulation is ubiquitous. You need to argue for “manipulative in an egregiously bad way” separately
I’m arguing that Zack’s definition is a very good Schelling fence to put up
You are arguing that it is remotely possible to eliminate all manipulation???
Suppose we’re starting a new country, and we are making the decision to outlaw theft. Someone comes to you and says “it isn’t remotely possible to eliminate all theft!!!” … you aren’t going to be very concerned with their argument, right? The point of laws is not to entirely eliminate a behavior (although it would be nice). The point is to help make the behavior uncommon enough that the workings of society are not too badly impacted.
In Zack’s case, he isn’t even suggesting criminal punishment be applied to violations. It’s more like someone just saying “stealing is bad”. So the reply “you’re saying that we can eliminate all theft???” seems even less relevant.
One of Zack’s recurring arguments is that appeal to consequences is an invalid argument when considering where to draw conceptual boundaries
Obtaining good consequences is a very good reason to do a lot of things.
Again, I’m going to need some kind of map of how you see the consequences flowing, because I think the main pathway for those “good consequences” you’re seeing is manipulation.
I frankly admit that I think you’re just wrong about this, and you seem quite mistaken in many of the other pathways you point out
I dont think you have shown that.
Wherever possible, or wherever beneficial? Does it make the world a better place to keep pointing out that tomatoes are fruit?
As a general policy, I think that yes, frequently pointing out subtler inaccuracies in language helps practice specificity and gradually refines concepts. Everything else is Manipulation, and Manipulation is always bad”.
I agree that gaining a meta level undertanding of jargons and the assumptions behind them is useful. I don’t agree that, once you have such an understanding, it reduces to, “everything is or should be passive reflection of statistical regularities in pre-existing reality.
In what you quoted, I was trying to point out the distinction between speaking a certain way vs thinking a certain way. My overall conversational strategy was to try to separate out the question of whether you should speak a specific way from the question of whether you should think a specific way. This was because I had hoped that we could more easily reach agreement about the “thinking” side of the question.
Arguing against whom? I dont believe that ones thinking should be constrained by some narrow set of interests. I have never said it should. On the contrary, I have been arguing against the narrowness of “everything is or should be passive reflection of statistical regularities in pre existing reality”.
More specifically, I was pointing out that if we restrict our attention to how to think, then (I claim) the cost of using concepts for non-epistemic reasons is very high, because you usually cannot also be fluent in the more epistemically robust concepts, without the non-epistemic concepts losing a significant amount of power.
That is yet another surreptitious appeal to the unproven assumption that passive reflection is the only game in town. The agument can easilly be inverted: assuming that what we are doing is constructing a better world or ourselves, then we would be hampered by only using concepts that are”epistemic” in the sense of being restricted to restricted to labelling what is already there.
Of course, construction isnt the only game in town either.
I need some kind of map of the pathways you think are important here.
what has been offered already are the ideas of:-
self-fulffilling prophecies, AKA blueprints AKA social constructs
co-ordination.
fuctionality. Treating a tomato as a vegeable tells you wha to do with it for culinary puposes.
What hasn’t been offered is any reason to think those things don’t exist, or aren’t important, or aren’t useful. My 1) and 2) are Zack’s b) and d). Zack dismissed b) and d) without argument.
We either (a) come up with good plans by virtue of having good models of the world,
Of course, you can’t come up with a plan for making the world better that consists of nothing but a passive model of the world, however accurate it might be.
You seem to be confusing necessity and sufficiency.
That view—that by far the primary way in which concepts influence the world is via the motor output channels, which primarily rely on good predictions—is the foundation of my view that most of the benefits of concepts optimized for things other than prediction must be manipulation
There’s nothing anyone can say to you that would change the automatic and unconscious operation of your motor channels.
In Zack’s case, he isn’t even suggesting criminal punishment be applied to violations. It’s more like someone just saying “stealing is bad”. So the reply “you’re saying that we can eliminate all theft???” seems even less relevant.
You are arguing that not wanting to eliminate all manipulation is compatible with believing all manipulation to be bad. That falls short of showing that all manipulation is bad. (We’re holding a debate. So, you’re trying to change my mind, and I yours..isn’t that manipulation?)
I think the main pathway for those “good consequences” you’re seeing is manipulation.
I don’t think you have shown that either. And it wouldn’t matter unless All Manipulation is Bad.
You haven’t refuted the counterexamples to everything-that-isnt-reflection-is-manipulation, and you havent shown that all manipulation is bad, either.
I feel like you’re taking my attempts to explain my position and requiring that each one be a rigorous defense. Sometimes we just have to spend some time trying to understand each other before we can bring the knives out or whatever, yeah? Sorry if I’m guilty of the same thing—I tried to unpack some more details after my flat statement that I thought you were wrong, but it probably came off as just being argumentative.
>>>If you use a gerrymandered concept, you may have no understanding of the non-gerrymandered versions; or you may have some understanding, but in any case not the fluency to think in them.
>>I’m not following you any more. Of course unscientific concepts can go wrong—anything can. But if you’re not saying everyone should use scientific conceotts all the time, what are you saying?
>In what you quoted, I was trying to point out the distinction between speaking a certain way vs thinking a certain way. My overall conversational strategy was to try to separate out the question of whether you should speak a specific way from the question of whether you should think a specific way. This was because I had hoped that we could more easily reach agreement about the “thinking” side of the question.
Arguing against whom? I dont believe that ones thinking should be constrained by some narrow set of interests. I have never said it should. On the contrary, I have been arguing against the narrowness of “everything is or should be passive reflection of statistical regularities in pre existing reality”.
(Sorry, I just don’t get how this is relevant to the quote you’re apparently responding to; I didn’t use the words ‘arguing against’ there, and was describing my conversational goal, rather than arguing something. So I’m going to try to make some more clarifying remarks which may not answer your question:)
You ask “if you’re not saying everyone should use scientific concepts all the time, what are you saying?”
I have attempted to separately argue the following:
Much of the time, using “unscientific concepts” is a mistake. In particular, by trying to separate thinking vs speaking, I was trying to point out that even in cases where it’s plausible that you are better off speaking in epistemically unhygenic ways, it’s not plausible that you’re better off thinking in those ways: there’s a high cost to pay in not understanding the world. (Note the weak “much of the time” qualifier here—I endorse this point and think it’s important to the discussion, but I’m endorsing a rather weak statement, on purpose.)
Most of the time, using “unscientific concepts” is useful only for manipulative purposes. My argument here is based on the idea that agents with shared goals will communicate in a way which shares as much information as possible (in the bits communicated—IE, modulo communication costs, redundancy built into the language to ensure communication over noisy channels, etc). Therefore, behavior contrary to this must be either uncooperative or simply sub-optimal. This doesn’t mean it’s irrational (a consequentialist might manipulate others), but I presume that you would be less happy to argue in favor of unscientific concepts if you conceded that they were almost always manipulative. Your response to this was to call my argument a “very special case”. I do not concede this; I think it is a very general case. (I do not currently understand why you called it a very special case.)
Very nearly all of the time, it makes sense to separate out pure epistemic quality and consider it as a coherent goal, talk about how to achieve it, etc. (Not pursue it singlemindedly, but distinguish it as a comprehensible thing.) In particular, it makes sense to have this discussion about nearly any statement. I perceive you as having a large disagreement with me about this, thinking that it makes a lot less sense for some statements, EG those about marriage and money.
Some of the time, it makes sense to have a social norm against appeals to consequences (as an argument for changing epistemic stances), in order to safeguard ‘scientific’ thought-processes against distortion. In particular, I think it makes sense on lesswrong. This is not a claim that all conceptual gerrymandering can be eliminated, but rather, that we should make the attempt (at least in specific arenas of discourse).
what has been offered already are the ideas of:-
1) self-fulffilling prophecies, AKA blueprints AKA social constructs
2) co-ordination.
3) fuctionality. Treating a tomato as a vegeable tells you wha to do with it for culinary puposes.
What hasn’t been offered is any reason to think those things don’t exist, or aren’t important, or aren’t useful. My 1) and 2) are Zack’s b) and d). Zack dismissed b) and d) without argument.
I fully conceded #1 earlier in our discussion—I have no qualms with this pathway, and I think it’s important. I don’t think it entails accepting less-accurate beliefs (a self-fulfilling prophecy is, after all, true!), but I do think it entails valid appeals-to-consequences for what might otherwise seem like purely epistemic questions. Furthermore I think this is relatively common.
I fully concede #3, and also perceive Zack as explicitly doing so, as part of his central argument.
I am not trying to defend a norm against #1 or #3, nor am I defending a concept of “pure epistemics” which regards #1 or #3 as impurities, in my own points 1-4 earlier. I think “pure epistemics” without your #1 would be very limited, because it becomes ill-defined in the presence of self-fulfilling prophecies or other predictions which are relevant to their own outcomes. I think “pure epistemics” without your #3 is very nearly useless, due to a lack of focus on useful questions. Both of these things are coherent things to talk about, but not very useful to agents, and therefore less descriptively apt for discussing and understanding agents, nor as normatively apt for a community of agents.
As for #2, I think some of this is covered by #1. Everything else, I claim is manipulative, like EG promising a good afterlife if you help build a pyramid in the middle of the desert. Manipulation works, but I continue to presume it’s not what you’re defending when you defend ‘unscientific concepts’.
So I suppose either (a) we can agree on all of that, and don’t have any remaining disagreement, or (b) our main disagreement is with #2, and we should focus on my argument that epistemic impurities are going to be manipulative, or (c) your 1-3 don’t cover all the bases you think are important, and we should talk about what other channels make unscientific concepts useful. (Or perhaps some mix of a-c.)
I feel like you’re taking my attempts to explain my position and requiring that each one be a rigorous defense.
If someone has made a position clear, they need to move onto defending it at some stage, or else it’s all just opinion.
You clearly think that some concepts lack objectivity .. that’s been explained a great length with equations and diagrams...and you think that the very existence of scientific objectivity is in danger. But between these two claims there are any number of intermediate steps that have not been explained or defended.
Much of the time, using “unscientific concepts” is a mistake
I don’t see why. It’s not a mistake to use special purpose or value laden concepts appropriately. So how can it be usually be a mistake to use them? Are you saying that they are usually used inappropriately?
Most of the time, using “unscientific concepts” is useful only for manipulative purposes. My argument here is based on the idea that agents with shared goals will communicate in a way which shares as much information as possible (in the bits communicated—IE, modulo communication costs, redundancy built into the language to ensure communication over noisy channels, etc).
No. If they have shared goals, they will already have a lot of shared information ( ie. small inferential distance) and they will already use a special purpose jargon.
Special interest groups always have special language. Objective, scientific language is what scientists use, and not that many people are scientists, so it is not the default.
In any case, how is that evidence of manipulation?
but I presume that you would be less happy to argue in favor of unscientific concepts if you conceded that they were almost always manipulative.
I don’t concede that they are always manipulative, in an objectionable sense. We are at the stage where you need to clarify that.
Your response to this was to call my argument a “very special case”. I do not concede this; I think it is a very general case. (I do not currently understand why you called it a very special case).
How common is manipulation? If you set the bar on what constitutes manipulation very low, then it is very common, even including this discussion. But if it is very common, how can it be very bad? If you think that all gerrymandered concepts are “manipulative” in the sense of micro manipulations, where’s the problem?
I think this a central weakness of your case: you need to choose one of “manipulation common”, and “manipulation bad”.
Very nearly all of the time, it makes sense to separate out pure epistemic quality and consider it as a coherent goal, talk about how to achieve it, etc.
Why? And for whom?
Some of the time, it makes sense to have a social norm against appeals to consequences (as an argument for changing epistemic stances), in order to safeguard ‘scientific’ thought-processes against distortion
Well, if it’s only some of the time, you can achieve that by saying that scientists are special people who do have an obligation to be as objective as possible , but no obligation to be consequentialist. But that’s not novel.
As for #2, I think some of this is covered by #1. Everything else, I claim is manipulative, like EG promising a good afterlife if you help build a pyramid in the middle of the desert
That seems like a weakman to me. What about cases where coordination is of benefit to the people doing the coordinating...like obeying traffic laws? A speed limit is a gerrymandered concept.
So? That’s a very particular set of problems. If you try to solve them by banning all unscientific concepts, then you lose all the usefulness they have in other contexts.
Wherever possible, or wherever beneficial? Does it make the world a better place to keep pointing out that tomatoes are fruit?
You personally can do what you like. If you don’t assume that everyone has to have the same solution, then there is no need for conflict.
I’m not following you any more. Of course unscientific concepts can go wrong—anything can. But if you’re not saying everyone should use scientific conceotts all the time, what are you saying?
I think that is Zacks argument, and that it s fallacious. Because we do things other than predict.
You are arguing that it is remotely possible to eliminate all manipulation???
Obtaining good consequences is a very good reason to do a lot of things.
It seems like part of our persistent disagreement is:
I see this as one of very few pathways, and by far the dominant pathway, by which beliefs can be beneficial in a different way from useful-for-prediction
You see this as one of many many pathways, and very much a corner case
I frankly admit that I think you’re just wrong about this, and you seem quite mistaken in many of the other pathways you point out. The argument you quoted above was supposed to help establish my perspective, by showing that there would be no reason to use gerrymandered concepts unless there was some manipulation going on. Yet you casually brush this off as a very particular set of problems.
As a general policy, I think that yes, frequently pointing out subtler inaccuracies in language helps practice specificity and gradually refines concepts. For example, if you keep pointing out that tomatoes are fruit, you might eventually be corrected by someone pointing out that “vegetable” is a culinary distinction rather than a biological one, and so there is no reason to object to the classification of a tomato as a vegetable. This could help you develop philosophically, by providing a vivid example of how we use multiple overlapping classification systems rather than one; and further, that scientific-sounding classification criteria don’t always take precedence (IE culinary knowledge is just as valid as biology knowledge).
In what you quoted, I was trying to point out the distinction between speaking a certain way vs thinking a certain way. My overall conversational strategy was to try to separate out the question of whether you should speak a specific way from the question of whether you should think a specific way. This was because I had hoped that we could more easily reach agreement about the “thinking” side of the question.
More specifically, I was pointing out that if we restrict our attention to how to think, then (I claim) the cost of using concepts for non-epistemic reasons is very high, because you usually cannot also be fluent in the more epistemically robust concepts, without the non-epistemic concepts losing a significant amount of power. I gave an example of a Christian who understands the atheist worldview in too much detail.
I need some kind of map of the pathways you think are important here.
I 100% agree that we do things other than predict. Specifically, we act. However, the effectiveness of action seems to be very dependent on the accuracy of predictions. We either (a) come up with good plans by virtue of having good models of the world, or (b) learn how to take effective actions “directly” by interacting with the world and responding to feedback. Both of these rely on good epistemics (because learning to act “directly” still relies on our understanding of the world to interpret the feedback—ie the same reason ML people sometimes say that reinforcement learning is essentially learning a classifier).
That view—that by far the primary way in which concepts influence the world is via the motor output channels, which primarily rely on good predictions—is the foundation of my view that most of the benefits of concepts optimized for things other than prediction must be manipulation.
Suppose we’re starting a new country, and we are making the decision to outlaw theft. Someone comes to you and says “it isn’t remotely possible to eliminate all theft!!!” … you aren’t going to be very concerned with their argument, right? The point of laws is not to entirely eliminate a behavior (although it would be nice). The point is to help make the behavior uncommon enough that the workings of society are not too badly impacted.
In Zack’s case, he isn’t even suggesting criminal punishment be applied to violations. It’s more like someone just saying “stealing is bad”. So the reply “you’re saying that we can eliminate all theft???” seems even less relevant.
Again, I’m going to need some kind of map of how you see the consequences flowing, because I think the main pathway for those “good consequences” you’re seeing is manipulation.
I dont think you have shown that.
I agree that gaining a meta level undertanding of jargons and the assumptions behind them is useful. I don’t agree that, once you have such an understanding, it reduces to, “everything is or should be passive reflection of statistical regularities in pre-existing reality.
Arguing against whom? I dont believe that ones thinking should be constrained by some narrow set of interests. I have never said it should. On the contrary, I have been arguing against the narrowness of “everything is or should be passive reflection of statistical regularities in pre existing reality”.
That is yet another surreptitious appeal to the unproven assumption that passive reflection is the only game in town. The agument can easilly be inverted: assuming that what we are doing is constructing a better world or ourselves, then we would be hampered by only using concepts that are”epistemic” in the sense of being restricted to restricted to labelling what is already there.
Of course, construction isnt the only game in town either.
what has been offered already are the ideas of:-
self-fulffilling prophecies, AKA blueprints AKA social constructs
co-ordination.
fuctionality. Treating a tomato as a vegeable tells you wha to do with it for culinary puposes.
What hasn’t been offered is any reason to think those things don’t exist, or aren’t important, or aren’t useful. My 1) and 2) are Zack’s b) and d). Zack dismissed b) and d) without argument.
Of course, you can’t come up with a plan for making the world better that consists of nothing but a passive model of the world, however accurate it might be.
You seem to be confusing necessity and sufficiency.
There’s nothing anyone can say to you that would change the automatic and unconscious operation of your motor channels.
You are arguing that not wanting to eliminate all manipulation is compatible with believing all manipulation to be bad. That falls short of showing that all manipulation is bad. (We’re holding a debate. So, you’re trying to change my mind, and I yours..isn’t that manipulation?)
I don’t think you have shown that either. And it wouldn’t matter unless All Manipulation is Bad.
You haven’t refuted the counterexamples to everything-that-isnt-reflection-is-manipulation, and you havent shown that all manipulation is bad, either.
I feel like you’re taking my attempts to explain my position and requiring that each one be a rigorous defense. Sometimes we just have to spend some time trying to understand each other before we can bring the knives out or whatever, yeah? Sorry if I’m guilty of the same thing—I tried to unpack some more details after my flat statement that I thought you were wrong, but it probably came off as just being argumentative.
(Sorry, I just don’t get how this is relevant to the quote you’re apparently responding to; I didn’t use the words ‘arguing against’ there, and was describing my conversational goal, rather than arguing something. So I’m going to try to make some more clarifying remarks which may not answer your question:)
You ask “if you’re not saying everyone should use scientific concepts all the time, what are you saying?”
I have attempted to separately argue the following:
Much of the time, using “unscientific concepts” is a mistake. In particular, by trying to separate thinking vs speaking, I was trying to point out that even in cases where it’s plausible that you are better off speaking in epistemically unhygenic ways, it’s not plausible that you’re better off thinking in those ways: there’s a high cost to pay in not understanding the world. (Note the weak “much of the time” qualifier here—I endorse this point and think it’s important to the discussion, but I’m endorsing a rather weak statement, on purpose.)
Most of the time, using “unscientific concepts” is useful only for manipulative purposes. My argument here is based on the idea that agents with shared goals will communicate in a way which shares as much information as possible (in the bits communicated—IE, modulo communication costs, redundancy built into the language to ensure communication over noisy channels, etc). Therefore, behavior contrary to this must be either uncooperative or simply sub-optimal. This doesn’t mean it’s irrational (a consequentialist might manipulate others), but I presume that you would be less happy to argue in favor of unscientific concepts if you conceded that they were almost always manipulative. Your response to this was to call my argument a “very special case”. I do not concede this; I think it is a very general case. (I do not currently understand why you called it a very special case.)
Very nearly all of the time, it makes sense to separate out pure epistemic quality and consider it as a coherent goal, talk about how to achieve it, etc. (Not pursue it singlemindedly, but distinguish it as a comprehensible thing.) In particular, it makes sense to have this discussion about nearly any statement. I perceive you as having a large disagreement with me about this, thinking that it makes a lot less sense for some statements, EG those about marriage and money.
Some of the time, it makes sense to have a social norm against appeals to consequences (as an argument for changing epistemic stances), in order to safeguard ‘scientific’ thought-processes against distortion. In particular, I think it makes sense on lesswrong. This is not a claim that all conceptual gerrymandering can be eliminated, but rather, that we should make the attempt (at least in specific arenas of discourse).
I fully conceded #1 earlier in our discussion—I have no qualms with this pathway, and I think it’s important. I don’t think it entails accepting less-accurate beliefs (a self-fulfilling prophecy is, after all, true!), but I do think it entails valid appeals-to-consequences for what might otherwise seem like purely epistemic questions. Furthermore I think this is relatively common.
I fully concede #3, and also perceive Zack as explicitly doing so, as part of his central argument.
I am not trying to defend a norm against #1 or #3, nor am I defending a concept of “pure epistemics” which regards #1 or #3 as impurities, in my own points 1-4 earlier. I think “pure epistemics” without your #1 would be very limited, because it becomes ill-defined in the presence of self-fulfilling prophecies or other predictions which are relevant to their own outcomes. I think “pure epistemics” without your #3 is very nearly useless, due to a lack of focus on useful questions. Both of these things are coherent things to talk about, but not very useful to agents, and therefore less descriptively apt for discussing and understanding agents, nor as normatively apt for a community of agents.
As for #2, I think some of this is covered by #1. Everything else, I claim is manipulative, like EG promising a good afterlife if you help build a pyramid in the middle of the desert. Manipulation works, but I continue to presume it’s not what you’re defending when you defend ‘unscientific concepts’.
So I suppose either (a) we can agree on all of that, and don’t have any remaining disagreement, or (b) our main disagreement is with #2, and we should focus on my argument that epistemic impurities are going to be manipulative, or (c) your 1-3 don’t cover all the bases you think are important, and we should talk about what other channels make unscientific concepts useful. (Or perhaps some mix of a-c.)
If someone has made a position clear, they need to move onto defending it at some stage, or else it’s all just opinion.
You clearly think that some concepts lack objectivity .. that’s been explained a great length with equations and diagrams...and you think that the very existence of scientific objectivity is in danger. But between these two claims there are any number of intermediate steps that have not been explained or defended.
I don’t see why. It’s not a mistake to use special purpose or value laden concepts appropriately. So how can it be usually be a mistake to use them? Are you saying that they are usually used inappropriately?
No. If they have shared goals, they will already have a lot of shared information ( ie. small inferential distance) and they will already use a special purpose jargon. Special interest groups always have special language. Objective, scientific language is what scientists use, and not that many people are scientists, so it is not the default.
In any case, how is that evidence of manipulation?
I don’t concede that they are always manipulative, in an objectionable sense. We are at the stage where you need to clarify that.
How common is manipulation? If you set the bar on what constitutes manipulation very low, then it is very common, even including this discussion. But if it is very common, how can it be very bad? If you think that all gerrymandered concepts are “manipulative” in the sense of micro manipulations, where’s the problem?
I think this a central weakness of your case: you need to choose one of “manipulation common”, and “manipulation bad”.
Why? And for whom?
Well, if it’s only some of the time, you can achieve that by saying that scientists are special people who do have an obligation to be as objective as possible , but no obligation to be consequentialist. But that’s not novel.
That seems like a weakman to me. What about cases where coordination is of benefit to the people doing the coordinating...like obeying traffic laws? A speed limit is a gerrymandered concept.