I very much enjoyed your response. But some streak of masochism forces me to take it semi-seriously and respond.
I have no complaint with Eliezer extending the meaning of “choice” to include the results of deterministic search algorithms. I just object to having the meaning restricted to exclude a response to the request “Choose a number between 1 and 10″.
A choice is a result of deliberative procedure, and since you are specifically stating that … explicit reasoning procedures were not the cause, … [it] doesn’t seem to qualify as result of a choice.
Most people, when choosing a number between 1 and 10, do not utilize “explicit reasoning procedures”, and hence, according to VN, are not making a choice.
It is no big deal; I understand that VN has decided not to insist upon deliberation; but that provides the background to my masochistic impulse.
So your brain has a planning algorithm—not a deliberate algorithm that you learned in school, but an instinctive planning algorithm. For all the obvious reasons, this algorithm keeps track of which states have known paths from the start point. I’ve termed this label “reachable”, but the way the algorithm feels from inside, is that it just feels like you can do it. Like you could go there any time you wanted.
At no point does EY propose “deliberative procedure”. I think Cyan was simply assuming that the definitions matched—I know I did.
On June 14, 2008. (I almost feel like this should be cross-posted to the EY facts thread.)
I very much enjoyed your response. But some streak of masochism forces me to take it semi-seriously and respond.
I have no complaint with Eliezer extending the meaning of “choice” to include the results of deterministic search algorithms. I just object to having the meaning restricted to exclude a response to the request “Choose a number between 1 and 10″.
Oh no, don’t do that! Then I’d have to defend my assertion, which is clearly untenable.
How would it exclude that?
It would exclude that if someone happened to believe Vladimir_Nesov’s dictum that
Most people, when choosing a number between 1 and 10, do not utilize “explicit reasoning procedures”, and hence, according to VN, are not making a choice.
It is no big deal; I understand that VN has decided not to insist upon deliberation; but that provides the background to my masochistic impulse.
Oh! That’s VN’s wording, not EY’s—in Cyan’s link:
At no point does EY propose “deliberative procedure”. I think Cyan was simply assuming that the definitions matched—I know I did.
The whole discussion seems to revolve around semantics. What is the actual problem?