Understanding truth in terms of “correspondance” brings me noticeably closer to coding up an intelligent reasoner from scratch than those other words.
If the correspendence theory cannot handle maths or morals, you will end up with a reasoner that cannot handle maths or morals.
The simple truth is that brains are like maps, and true-ness of beliefs about reality is analogous to accuracy of maps about territory.
You need to show that that simple theory also deals with the hard cases....because EY didn’t.
But it runs counter to a lot of bad philosophical thinking, which is why Eliezer bothered writing it.
It’s a piece of bad thinking that runs counter to philosophy. You don’t show that something works in all cases by pointing out, however loudly or exasperatedly, that it works in the easy cases ,where it is already well known to work.
Seems like first you objected that TST’s lesson is meaningless, and now you’re objecting that it’s meaningful but limited and wrong. Worth noting that this isn’t a back and forth argument about the same objection.
The rest of LW’s epistemology sequences and meta-morality sequences explain why the foundations in TST also help understand math and morals.
I think you can somewhat rescue the correspondence theory for math by combining claims like “this math is true” with claims like “this part of reality is well modeled by this math” to create factual claims. That approach should be enough for decision making. And you can mostly rescue the correspondence theory for morals by translating claims like “X is better than Y” into factual claims like “my algorithm prefers X to Y”, since we have some idea of how algorithms might have preferences (to the extent they approximate vNM or something). I agree that both areas have unsolved mysteries, though.
I think you can somewhat rescue the correspondence theory for math by combining claims like “this math is true” with claims like “this part of reality is well modeled by this math” to create factual claims
Then you would have some other form of truth in place before you started considering what true maths corresponds to. Which may be what you mean by somewhat rescue...embed correspondence as a one component of a complex theory. But no one is really saying that correspodence is 100% wrong, the debate is more about whether a simple theory covers all cases..
And you can mostly rescue the correspondence theory for morals by translating claims like “X is better than Y” into factual claims like “my algorithm prefers X to Y”, s
Why should I go to jail for going against your preferences… why not the other way round? Getting some sort
of naturalised “should” or “ought” out of preferences is the easy bit. What you need, to solve morality, to handle specifically moral oughts, is a way to resolve conflicts between the preferences of individuals.
I don’t see what your central point is. Is it “The lessons that the author is attempting to teach in the simple truth are not positive contributions to add to one’s philosophy?”
Without having your own central point, it’s easy to just argue against each of my statements individually because they all have caveats.
If the correspendence theory cannot handle maths or morals, you will end up with a reasoner that cannot handle maths or morals.
You need to show that that simple theory also deals with the hard cases....because EY didn’t.
It’s a piece of bad thinking that runs counter to philosophy. You don’t show that something works in all cases by pointing out, however loudly or exasperatedly, that it works in the easy cases ,where it is already well known to work.
Seems like first you objected that TST’s lesson is meaningless, and now you’re objecting that it’s meaningful but limited and wrong. Worth noting that this isn’t a back and forth argument about the same objection.
The rest of LW’s epistemology sequences and meta-morality sequences explain why the foundations in TST also help understand math and morals.
I’ve read them, and, no, not really.
I think you can somewhat rescue the correspondence theory for math by combining claims like “this math is true” with claims like “this part of reality is well modeled by this math” to create factual claims. That approach should be enough for decision making. And you can mostly rescue the correspondence theory for morals by translating claims like “X is better than Y” into factual claims like “my algorithm prefers X to Y”, since we have some idea of how algorithms might have preferences (to the extent they approximate vNM or something). I agree that both areas have unsolved mysteries, though.
Then you would have some other form of truth in place before you started considering what true maths corresponds to. Which may be what you mean by somewhat rescue...embed correspondence as a one component of a complex theory. But no one is really saying that correspodence is 100% wrong, the debate is more about whether a simple theory covers all cases..
Why should I go to jail for going against your preferences… why not the other way round? Getting some sort of naturalised “should” or “ought” out of preferences is the easy bit. What you need, to solve morality, to handle specifically moral oughts, is a way to resolve conflicts between the preferences of individuals.
I don’t see what your central point is. Is it “The lessons that the author is attempting to teach in the simple truth are not positive contributions to add to one’s philosophy?”
Without having your own central point, it’s easy to just argue against each of my statements individually because they all have caveats.