tl;dr: No, the subject of the site is wider than that.
Long version: IIRC, EY originally conceived of rationality as comprising two relatively distinct domains: epistemic rationality, the art and science of ensuring the map reflects the territory, and instrumental rationality, the art and science of making decisions and taking actions that constrain the future state of the universe according to one’s goals. Around the time of the fork of CFAR off of SIAI-that-was, EY had expanded his conception of rationality to include a third domain: human rationality, the art and science of coping with ape-brain.
In my view, these three domains have core subject matter and interfacial subject matter: the core of epistemic rationality is Bayesian epistemology; the core of instrumental rationality is expected utility optimization; the core of human rationality is Thinking, Fast and Slow and construal level theory. At the interface of epistemic and instrumental rationality sit topics like explore/exploit trade-offs and value-of-information calculations; at the interface of epistemic rationality and human rationality sit topics like belief vs. alief, heuristics and biases, and practical techniques for updating on and responding to new information in ways large and small; at the interface of instrumental rationality and human rationality sit topics like goal factoring/funging and habit formation; and right at the intersection of all three, I would locate techniques like implementing tight feedback loops.
Might a simple but less jargon-y word/phrase replace “funging” here? (I’m actually not 100% sure what it means here since I’m used to always seeing “against” after “funge”...)
As Vaniver mentioned, it relates to exploring trade-offs among the various goals one has / things one values. A certain amount of it arises naturally in the planning of any complex project, but it seems like the deliberate practice of introspecting on how one’s goals decompose into subgoals and on how they might be traded off against one another to achieve a more satisfactory state of things is an idea that is novel, distinct, and conceptually intricate enough to deserve its own label.
(I’m actually not 100% sure what it means here since I’m used to always seeing “against” after “funge”...)
In most cases, you can replace ‘funge’ with ‘trade,’ and talking about goal factoring/trading makes sense. (It’s not quite as precise, because trading allows you to swap apples for oranges, and here the idea is specifically to acquire more apples through approach A than you would have received through approach B, which funging points at because when goods are fungible they’re mutually interchangeable.)
This is just curiosity, but what community has brought “funge” to have this meaning? The only definition of “funge” I can find is archaic references to either fungus or simpletons.
This is just curiosity, but what community has brought “funge” to have this meaning?
Cyan is correct, with the additional comment that I’m not sure I’ve seen ‘funge’ used as a verb in economics discussions, and so I think the transition to a verb may be due to this community.
tl;dr: No, the subject of the site is wider than that.
Long version: IIRC, EY originally conceived of rationality as comprising two relatively distinct domains: epistemic rationality, the art and science of ensuring the map reflects the territory, and instrumental rationality, the art and science of making decisions and taking actions that constrain the future state of the universe according to one’s goals. Around the time of the fork of CFAR off of SIAI-that-was, EY had expanded his conception of rationality to include a third domain: human rationality, the art and science of coping with ape-brain.
In my view, these three domains have core subject matter and interfacial subject matter: the core of epistemic rationality is Bayesian epistemology; the core of instrumental rationality is expected utility optimization; the core of human rationality is Thinking, Fast and Slow and construal level theory. At the interface of epistemic and instrumental rationality sit topics like explore/exploit trade-offs and value-of-information calculations; at the interface of epistemic rationality and human rationality sit topics like belief vs. alief, heuristics and biases, and practical techniques for updating on and responding to new information in ways large and small; at the interface of instrumental rationality and human rationality sit topics like goal factoring/funging and habit formation; and right at the intersection of all three, I would locate techniques like implementing tight feedback loops.
Nice capsule summary of LW. One minor suggestion about a personal hobby-horse:
Might a simple but less jargon-y word/phrase replace “funging” here? (I’m actually not 100% sure what it means here since I’m used to always seeing “against” after “funge”...)
[Edited to delete an extra “to”.]
As Vaniver mentioned, it relates to exploring trade-offs among the various goals one has / things one values. A certain amount of it arises naturally in the planning of any complex project, but it seems like the deliberate practice of introspecting on how one’s goals decompose into subgoals and on how they might be traded off against one another to achieve a more satisfactory state of things is an idea that is novel, distinct, and conceptually intricate enough to deserve its own label.
In most cases, you can replace ‘funge’ with ‘trade,’ and talking about goal factoring/trading makes sense. (It’s not quite as precise, because trading allows you to swap apples for oranges, and here the idea is specifically to acquire more apples through approach A than you would have received through approach B, which funging points at because when goods are fungible they’re mutually interchangeable.)
This is just curiosity, but what community has brought “funge” to have this meaning? The only definition of “funge” I can find is archaic references to either fungus or simpletons.
Fungible. The term is still current within economics, I believe. If something is fungible, it stands to reason that one can funge it, nu?
Cyan is correct, with the additional comment that I’m not sure I’ve seen ‘funge’ used as a verb in economics discussions, and so I think the transition to a verb may be due to this community.