Here are some words that I’ve not really vetted yet; they’re probably not quite the right words, and I probably don’t quite believe whatever’s picked out by these particular ones in this order:
There’s something special about nature. By “nature” I mean newts and mushrooms and sunlight, and also geometry and probably number theory and abstract algebra. By “nature”, I mean things that have not been contaminated by human design. What is the largest pair of twin primes? They may not crawl in the dirt, but their magnitude (or non-existence) depends no more on human thought and perception than does the average number of spots on the back of a red eft. (Maybe. I dunno, my so called math background barely exists, and also I’m not very settled on central questions in the philosophy of math.)
There are things that are almost entirely of human design, such as Facebook and novels and operatic overtures. There are things that are almost entirely devoid of human design, such as newts and meteorites and the Mariana Trench. And there are many, many things somewhere in the middle: things that came from nature but have been shaped to human purposes, such as my stoneware vase; things that interact with extremely non-human systems but whose human interfaces are extensively designed, such as Python and other programming languages that are very far from the metal (exercise: rank programming languages by how immediately tangled with non-human systems they require the programmer to be); and perhaps things that were dreamed up by human imagination but point themselves quite directly at nature (carbon sequestration technologies, maybe? Some approaches to horticulture? I really don’t know about this third thing, I’m sleepy and I think I’m just completing the pattern I set up).
It is possible, especially if you live in a city, to spend almost literally all of your time engaged with things that are very far on the “contaminated by human design” side of the gradient. Which is kind of like spending all of your time staring at your own reflection. Without even knowing it, maybe, if you were raised in a city by people who were raised this way. Imagine trying to learn about the world while trapped in a room whose walls and ceiling are made entirely of mirrors.
You’re absolutely correct that “knowing the territory takes patient and direct observation” applies to, um, everything? Certainly not just newts and sunlight. The thing about newts and sunlight—the reason I’ve put the central attitudes and approaches of naturalism-qua-natural-history on a pedestal and taken them as the inspiration for a branch of rationality—is that it’s very hard to cheat at newts and sunlight. Compared to interpreting operatic overtures, it’s very hard to quickly make up whatever you like about newts and fail to notice that actual newts do not at all resemble your imaginings, at least if you’re making a good faith effort to study them. If you study newts, especially if you study a particular newt that nobody’s written extensively about, or if you’re a for real 18th century natural historian with no wifi at all, you really just have no recourse but patient and direct observation, and the distance between your map and the territory will smack you in the face nearly every time you try to look.
So, I’m definitely not saying “in order to take this general approach I’m talking about, you need to study newts and sunlight, not AI alignment”. Indeed, AI alignment research is precisely my target for this work (eventually, probably). I’m saying something more like, “It seems to me that the perspectives and methods that have arisen out of fields and communities that are quite divorced from the natural world may be fatally deficient in this thing that entomologists just fucking nail day in and day out”.
And although I want naturalism in Python, and even in the interpretation of operatic overtures, I do think it’s a really good idea to look at newts, sunlight, and geometry while building form. I guess this concluding essay was largely about how and why I got the hang of it, and why I’ve kept the hang of it, and what having the hang of it feels like. Maybe don’t start out trying to learn looking-at-things-other-than-mirrors from inside of a mirror room, ya know? Get as far away from mirrors as you can manage, until you start to get the hang of it.
For now, here is an unsatisfactory response that will be very rambly and probably off topic.
(For what it’s worth, I found it quite helpful to see these motivations laid out like this, and am glad that you Logan wrote this comment and that you Raemon asked the question that provoked it.)
I think naturalism can be directed even at things “contaminated by human design”, if you apply the framing correctly. In a way, that’s how I started out as something of a naturalist, so it is territory I’d consider a bit familiar.
The best starting point I can offer based on Raemon’s comment is to look at changes in a field of study or technology over time, preferably one you already have some interest in (perhaps AI-related?). The naturalist perspective focuses on small observations over time, so I recommend embarking on brief “nature walks” where you find some way to expose yourself to information regarding some innovation in the field, be it ancient or modern. An example of this could be reading up on a new training algorithm you are not already familiar with (since it will be easier to use Original Seeing upon), without expending too much concentration or energy upon trying to calculate major insights.
I like this comment!
I intend to respond to it more extensively at some point. For now, here is an unsatisfactory response that will be very rambly and probably off topic.
At least some of whatever response I want to give is contained in Ben’s recent post about the discovery of nature’s laws. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uiyWHaTrz3ML7JqDX/12-interesting-things-i-learned-studying-the-discovery-of
Here are some words that I’ve not really vetted yet; they’re probably not quite the right words, and I probably don’t quite believe whatever’s picked out by these particular ones in this order:
There’s something special about nature. By “nature” I mean newts and mushrooms and sunlight, and also geometry and probably number theory and abstract algebra. By “nature”, I mean things that have not been contaminated by human design. What is the largest pair of twin primes? They may not crawl in the dirt, but their magnitude (or non-existence) depends no more on human thought and perception than does the average number of spots on the back of a red eft. (Maybe. I dunno, my so called math background barely exists, and also I’m not very settled on central questions in the philosophy of math.)
There are things that are almost entirely of human design, such as Facebook and novels and operatic overtures. There are things that are almost entirely devoid of human design, such as newts and meteorites and the Mariana Trench. And there are many, many things somewhere in the middle: things that came from nature but have been shaped to human purposes, such as my stoneware vase; things that interact with extremely non-human systems but whose human interfaces are extensively designed, such as Python and other programming languages that are very far from the metal (exercise: rank programming languages by how immediately tangled with non-human systems they require the programmer to be); and perhaps things that were dreamed up by human imagination but point themselves quite directly at nature (carbon sequestration technologies, maybe? Some approaches to horticulture? I really don’t know about this third thing, I’m sleepy and I think I’m just completing the pattern I set up).
It is possible, especially if you live in a city, to spend almost literally all of your time engaged with things that are very far on the “contaminated by human design” side of the gradient. Which is kind of like spending all of your time staring at your own reflection. Without even knowing it, maybe, if you were raised in a city by people who were raised this way. Imagine trying to learn about the world while trapped in a room whose walls and ceiling are made entirely of mirrors.
You’re absolutely correct that “knowing the territory takes patient and direct observation” applies to, um, everything? Certainly not just newts and sunlight. The thing about newts and sunlight—the reason I’ve put the central attitudes and approaches of naturalism-qua-natural-history on a pedestal and taken them as the inspiration for a branch of rationality—is that it’s very hard to cheat at newts and sunlight. Compared to interpreting operatic overtures, it’s very hard to quickly make up whatever you like about newts and fail to notice that actual newts do not at all resemble your imaginings, at least if you’re making a good faith effort to study them. If you study newts, especially if you study a particular newt that nobody’s written extensively about, or if you’re a for real 18th century natural historian with no wifi at all, you really just have no recourse but patient and direct observation, and the distance between your map and the territory will smack you in the face nearly every time you try to look.
So, I’m definitely not saying “in order to take this general approach I’m talking about, you need to study newts and sunlight, not AI alignment”. Indeed, AI alignment research is precisely my target for this work (eventually, probably). I’m saying something more like, “It seems to me that the perspectives and methods that have arisen out of fields and communities that are quite divorced from the natural world may be fatally deficient in this thing that entomologists just fucking nail day in and day out”.
And although I want naturalism in Python, and even in the interpretation of operatic overtures, I do think it’s a really good idea to look at newts, sunlight, and geometry while building form. I guess this concluding essay was largely about how and why I got the hang of it, and why I’ve kept the hang of it, and what having the hang of it feels like. Maybe don’t start out trying to learn looking-at-things-other-than-mirrors from inside of a mirror room, ya know? Get as far away from mirrors as you can manage, until you start to get the hang of it.
(For what it’s worth, I found it quite helpful to see these motivations laid out like this, and am glad that you Logan wrote this comment and that you Raemon asked the question that provoked it.)
I think naturalism can be directed even at things “contaminated by human design”, if you apply the framing correctly. In a way, that’s how I started out as something of a naturalist, so it is territory I’d consider a bit familiar.
The best starting point I can offer based on Raemon’s comment is to look at changes in a field of study or technology over time, preferably one you already have some interest in (perhaps AI-related?). The naturalist perspective focuses on small observations over time, so I recommend embarking on brief “nature walks” where you find some way to expose yourself to information regarding some innovation in the field, be it ancient or modern. An example of this could be reading up on a new training algorithm you are not already familiar with (since it will be easier to use Original Seeing upon), without expending too much concentration or energy upon trying to calculate major insights.