Creating a distinct new concept in one’s mind is an expensive operation (with both short term and long term costs), so I think it’s only to be expected that people will try to match a supposedly new concept to an existing one and see if they can get away with just reusing the existing concept.
Right, but I was reacting to a prior history with that particular commenter, who has been especially prone to doing this (very often where, in my view, it isn’t appropriate).
But also: I regard concept-creation as being a large part of what we’re in the business of doing, here. (At least, it’s a large part of what I’m here for.) That’s what theorization is, and I think we’re here to theorize (maybe among other things). So it’s a cost that I think one has signed up to bear in a context of this sort.
For the most part, it’s great if one has the motivation to write up a thorough exposition of a new concept, starting from very elementary premises (although there’s also the negative aspect of potentially reinforcing a norm of this level of effort being generally expected every time one wants to introduce a new concept). However, one doesn’t always have that motivation (or time, etc.), so it should be allowed sometimes to just point and say “look over here; if you think about this for a while, you may traverse the same inferential path I have, which leads to this conclusion.”
Indeed, that’s basically exactly what I want out of this forum: a place where people can state inferentially-distant conclusions you might not hear elsewhere (without necessarily needing to justify them from first principles—such requirements might, after all, be part of why they’re not heard elsewhere!). This, of course, requires a community where a certain amount of epistemic trust has been built up, but I think that happened already (c. 2009-11).
For epistemic norms designed to avoid false positives, there are skeptics’ forums, and scientific journals. And your grandmother (to paraphrase Feynman). Here, we could use more of the opposite approach (avoiding false negatives). Who else specializes in that (high-quality speculation)? It’s basically an empty niche.
Clearly there are distinct skills within what you call physical cognition, and all those skills are not equally valuable
Perhaps I can “strike a chord” with you in particular by talking about value uncertainty in this context. Even to the extent it’s clear that not all of the “subskills” are equally valuable (which I don’t necessarily concede, in part because its not even clear to me what the right decomposition into subskills is!), it’s not necessarily clear which ones are more valuable, and by how much.
To be honest, I’m a little bit suspicious of the whole approach of trying to decompose something like music (or the “physical cognition” involved therein) into its component subskills, with the aim of measuring their relative values. The reason for this is that I doubt anyone currently understands either music, psychology, or ‘values’ well enough to do this—at least, at any level of detail much beyond what I’ve already done by pointing to the physicality of music. To me, the relation between physicality of this sort and certain especially valuable forms of thought (precise, imaginative) is intuitively obvious, and I think consideration and investigation into the matter will reveal this to others; but I don’t think this translates easily into something like “music study trains Cognitive Skill S X% more effectively than [rival activity]”, especially where we can be confident that S is ontologically sound, and X numerically accurate, “enough”.
What is on more solid ground at the moment is the heuristic, correlational case that it is better to be the kind of person who is interested and experienced in things like music than the kind of person who isn’t. And it’s better to live in the kind of society where such pursuits are enjoyed and admired than in the kind where they’re not.
It would be nice to have a more detailed idea of why this is the case—but I think the study of music, and the other activities in this reference class, is itself a conceptual prerequisite for more fully understanding the phenomenon.
However, one doesn’t always have that motivation (or time, etc.), so it should be allowed sometimes to just point and say “look over here; if you think about this for a while, you may traverse the same inferential path I have, which leads to this conclusion.”
I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation or norm. The expected return from a reader doing something like that is way too low, even in a community like this one. Most new ideas are wrong, and if your idea is wrong then people trying to traverse the same inferential path will get nowhere, and not even know if its their own fault or not. If you write it down then people can figure out where you went wrong and point it out. Even if your idea is right and your reader can be sure of that, why shouldn’t you write an good explanation once, which will then save time for potentially hundreds or thousands of readers? By trying to save that time for yourself, you cause other people to waste their time, and then you end up having to answer their confusions and perhaps not even save time for yourself.
You could make an exception to this if you just had a new idea and you want to find out if anyone else already had a similar idea or can see an obvious flaw in it, before deciding to invest more time into explaining it fully, but that doesn’t seem to be what you’re doing here.
Perhaps I can “strike a chord” with you in particular by talking about value uncertainty in this context. Even to the extent it’s clear that not all of the “subskills” are equally valuable (which I don’t necessarily concede, in part because its not even clear to me what the right decomposition into subskills is!), it’s not necessarily clear which ones are more valuable, and by how much.
I have some uncertainty here, but not that much. I took one semester of piano and one semester of electronic music in high school, and it was intuitively clear that the return from that time spent wasn’t nearly as valuable as say reading science fiction or economics textbooks. There’s obviously a lot of individual differences here, so if my kid naturally has an interest or talent in music or art and wants to study it, I’m not going to stop her. But if your position is that we should more vigorously encourage an interest in artistic pursuits, I’m going to need more evidence and/or better arguments.
To me, the relation between physicality of this sort and certain especially valuable forms of thought (precise, imaginative) is intuitively obvious, and I think consideration and investigation into the matter will reveal this to others;
This is totally unclear to me. I guess even if it’s true, it would be hard for me to figure out on my own since I probably haven’t studied music enough to be familiar with the kind of “physicality” that you’re talking about. Nor do I understand what forms of thought you’re suggesting is related to such physicality. “Precise, imaginative” is pretty vague.
What is on more solid ground at the moment is the heuristic, correlational case that it is better to be the kind of person who is interested and experienced in things like music than the kind of person who isn’t. And it’s better to live in the kind of society where such pursuits are enjoyed and admired than in the kind where they’re not.
I agree with the latter, but I think it’s just because in every society there will be some people who naturally enjoy artistic pursuits and almost everyone at least enjoy consuming art, so if art isn’t being enjoyed and admired, something must have gone terribly wrong to have caused that. On an individual level, such a correlation, if it exists, can be easily explained by the fact that “better” people have more resources available to pursue artistic interests. Again if you’re making the case that artistic pursuits cause people to become better (compared to other pursuits they could spend the time on), you’ll have to give more evidence and/or better arguments.
The expected return from a reader doing something like that is way too low, even in a community like this one. Most new ideas are wrong, and if your idea is wrong then people trying to traverse the same inferential path will get nowhere
I disagree with these statements. (Even in the case of “most new ideas are wrong”, I would ADBOC.)
You’re basically just stating the view that “false positives are a bigger problem than false negatives”, which I already disagreed with explicitly (as applied to this context) in my previous comment.
why shouldn’t you write an good explanation
Because what constitutes a “good explanation” is strongly reader-dependent, and I don’t have good enough models of most readers to know in advance what will satisfy them. It’s worth it to try being very foundational sometimes, but not all the time. It’s also worth it for readers to sometimes practice the skill of traversing inferential paths more nimbly.
if your position is that we should more vigorously encourage an interest in artistic pursuits
I wouldn’t presume to take such a detailed position on how you should relate to your child. (Though I can think of someone you might want to talk to, about not only this but the whole subject of “what to do” with children who are, or who are at “risk” of being, “gifted”—the best way to get into contact with that person would probably be through Jonah Sinick.)
My concern here is only to explain (insofar as is possible within the number of words I’m willing to expend) something about what the value of traditional artistic pursuits is, and, in particular, the ways in which it’s similar to the value of less traditional artistic pursuits like programming. I think you (like many, no doubt, in the LW audience) have bad priors about this due to insufficient exposure in early life (perhaps for socioeconomic reasons—as you said above, “My parents didn’t have the time or money to deliberately cultivate these kinds of interests in me when I was a child). I myself also had relatively little deliberate exposure (for the same reasons), but, exceptionally, was drawn in the relevant direction by an unusually strong intrinsic attraction (such that, had I come from an upper-class background, I would very likely have been involved at a much higher level much earlier). As a result, I think I am in the position of perceiving something about this that most LW readers are probably missing (insofar as they seem to want to reduce interest in these pursuits, implicitly and even explicitly, as we’ve seen here, to some kind of mere class signal—indeed, a form of conspicuous consumption).
There is a kind of pleasure, when one performs a complex movement “just so”, that attracts some people to e.g. martial arts without the goal of learning to defend themselves. (It was so with me, but, well, socioeconomic reasons.) There’s a kind of a message that some people get out of poetry, besides the ‘prosaic sense’ of it, which sometimes gets related in another piece of poetry or even a very different way. I used to wonder, what exactly is its impact on different people’s understanding of the whole, & might not ‘understanding’ be an umbrella word for some orthogonal things… Some of which get called ‘spiritual’ for lack of a better term:)
Right, but I was reacting to a prior history with that particular commenter, who has been especially prone to doing this (very often where, in my view, it isn’t appropriate).
But also: I regard concept-creation as being a large part of what we’re in the business of doing, here. (At least, it’s a large part of what I’m here for.) That’s what theorization is, and I think we’re here to theorize (maybe among other things). So it’s a cost that I think one has signed up to bear in a context of this sort.
For the most part, it’s great if one has the motivation to write up a thorough exposition of a new concept, starting from very elementary premises (although there’s also the negative aspect of potentially reinforcing a norm of this level of effort being generally expected every time one wants to introduce a new concept). However, one doesn’t always have that motivation (or time, etc.), so it should be allowed sometimes to just point and say “look over here; if you think about this for a while, you may traverse the same inferential path I have, which leads to this conclusion.”
Indeed, that’s basically exactly what I want out of this forum: a place where people can state inferentially-distant conclusions you might not hear elsewhere (without necessarily needing to justify them from first principles—such requirements might, after all, be part of why they’re not heard elsewhere!). This, of course, requires a community where a certain amount of epistemic trust has been built up, but I think that happened already (c. 2009-11).
For epistemic norms designed to avoid false positives, there are skeptics’ forums, and scientific journals. And your grandmother (to paraphrase Feynman). Here, we could use more of the opposite approach (avoiding false negatives). Who else specializes in that (high-quality speculation)? It’s basically an empty niche.
Perhaps I can “strike a chord” with you in particular by talking about value uncertainty in this context. Even to the extent it’s clear that not all of the “subskills” are equally valuable (which I don’t necessarily concede, in part because its not even clear to me what the right decomposition into subskills is!), it’s not necessarily clear which ones are more valuable, and by how much.
To be honest, I’m a little bit suspicious of the whole approach of trying to decompose something like music (or the “physical cognition” involved therein) into its component subskills, with the aim of measuring their relative values. The reason for this is that I doubt anyone currently understands either music, psychology, or ‘values’ well enough to do this—at least, at any level of detail much beyond what I’ve already done by pointing to the physicality of music. To me, the relation between physicality of this sort and certain especially valuable forms of thought (precise, imaginative) is intuitively obvious, and I think consideration and investigation into the matter will reveal this to others; but I don’t think this translates easily into something like “music study trains Cognitive Skill S X% more effectively than [rival activity]”, especially where we can be confident that S is ontologically sound, and X numerically accurate, “enough”.
What is on more solid ground at the moment is the heuristic, correlational case that it is better to be the kind of person who is interested and experienced in things like music than the kind of person who isn’t. And it’s better to live in the kind of society where such pursuits are enjoyed and admired than in the kind where they’re not.
It would be nice to have a more detailed idea of why this is the case—but I think the study of music, and the other activities in this reference class, is itself a conceptual prerequisite for more fully understanding the phenomenon.
I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation or norm. The expected return from a reader doing something like that is way too low, even in a community like this one. Most new ideas are wrong, and if your idea is wrong then people trying to traverse the same inferential path will get nowhere, and not even know if its their own fault or not. If you write it down then people can figure out where you went wrong and point it out. Even if your idea is right and your reader can be sure of that, why shouldn’t you write an good explanation once, which will then save time for potentially hundreds or thousands of readers? By trying to save that time for yourself, you cause other people to waste their time, and then you end up having to answer their confusions and perhaps not even save time for yourself.
You could make an exception to this if you just had a new idea and you want to find out if anyone else already had a similar idea or can see an obvious flaw in it, before deciding to invest more time into explaining it fully, but that doesn’t seem to be what you’re doing here.
I have some uncertainty here, but not that much. I took one semester of piano and one semester of electronic music in high school, and it was intuitively clear that the return from that time spent wasn’t nearly as valuable as say reading science fiction or economics textbooks. There’s obviously a lot of individual differences here, so if my kid naturally has an interest or talent in music or art and wants to study it, I’m not going to stop her. But if your position is that we should more vigorously encourage an interest in artistic pursuits, I’m going to need more evidence and/or better arguments.
This is totally unclear to me. I guess even if it’s true, it would be hard for me to figure out on my own since I probably haven’t studied music enough to be familiar with the kind of “physicality” that you’re talking about. Nor do I understand what forms of thought you’re suggesting is related to such physicality. “Precise, imaginative” is pretty vague.
I agree with the latter, but I think it’s just because in every society there will be some people who naturally enjoy artistic pursuits and almost everyone at least enjoy consuming art, so if art isn’t being enjoyed and admired, something must have gone terribly wrong to have caused that. On an individual level, such a correlation, if it exists, can be easily explained by the fact that “better” people have more resources available to pursue artistic interests. Again if you’re making the case that artistic pursuits cause people to become better (compared to other pursuits they could spend the time on), you’ll have to give more evidence and/or better arguments.
I disagree with these statements. (Even in the case of “most new ideas are wrong”, I would ADBOC.)
You’re basically just stating the view that “false positives are a bigger problem than false negatives”, which I already disagreed with explicitly (as applied to this context) in my previous comment.
Because what constitutes a “good explanation” is strongly reader-dependent, and I don’t have good enough models of most readers to know in advance what will satisfy them. It’s worth it to try being very foundational sometimes, but not all the time. It’s also worth it for readers to sometimes practice the skill of traversing inferential paths more nimbly.
I wouldn’t presume to take such a detailed position on how you should relate to your child. (Though I can think of someone you might want to talk to, about not only this but the whole subject of “what to do” with children who are, or who are at “risk” of being, “gifted”—the best way to get into contact with that person would probably be through Jonah Sinick.)
My concern here is only to explain (insofar as is possible within the number of words I’m willing to expend) something about what the value of traditional artistic pursuits is, and, in particular, the ways in which it’s similar to the value of less traditional artistic pursuits like programming. I think you (like many, no doubt, in the LW audience) have bad priors about this due to insufficient exposure in early life (perhaps for socioeconomic reasons—as you said above, “My parents didn’t have the time or money to deliberately cultivate these kinds of interests in me when I was a child). I myself also had relatively little deliberate exposure (for the same reasons), but, exceptionally, was drawn in the relevant direction by an unusually strong intrinsic attraction (such that, had I come from an upper-class background, I would very likely have been involved at a much higher level much earlier). As a result, I think I am in the position of perceiving something about this that most LW readers are probably missing (insofar as they seem to want to reduce interest in these pursuits, implicitly and even explicitly, as we’ve seen here, to some kind of mere class signal—indeed, a form of conspicuous consumption).
There is a kind of pleasure, when one performs a complex movement “just so”, that attracts some people to e.g. martial arts without the goal of learning to defend themselves. (It was so with me, but, well, socioeconomic reasons.) There’s a kind of a message that some people get out of poetry, besides the ‘prosaic sense’ of it, which sometimes gets related in another piece of poetry or even a very different way. I used to wonder, what exactly is its impact on different people’s understanding of the whole, & might not ‘understanding’ be an umbrella word for some orthogonal things… Some of which get called ‘spiritual’ for lack of a better term:)