Amanojack

Karma: 406

Amanojack May 3, 2011, 1:05 AM
0 points
in reply to: Jonathan_Graehl’s comment on: The Amazing Virgin Pregnancy
You’re right, I did stop reading carefully toward the end because the Kantian stuff looked like it was just a side note. I’ve now read it carefully, but I still don’t see the significance.

Amanojack May 3, 2011, 12:42 AM
−1 points
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: What is Metaethics?

For example, what is it about the situation that causes me to try to influence Alice and Bob using moral arguments in these cases, whereas I use other methods of influence in other cases?

Guilt works here, for example. (But XiXiDu covered that.) Social pressure also. Veiled threat and warning, too. Signaling your virtue to others as well. Moral arguments are so handy that they accomplish all of these in one blow.

ETA: I’m not suggesting that you in particular are trying to guilt trip people, pressure them, threaten them, or signal. I’m saying that those are all possible explanations as to why someone might prefer to couch their arguments in moral terms: it is more persuasive (as Dark Arts) in certain cases. Though I reject moralist language if we are trying to have a clear discussion and get at the truth, I am not against using Dark Arts to convince Bob not to strangle Alice.
What links here?
- Amanojack's comment on On Being Okay with the Truth by lukeprog (May 3, 2011, 1:12 AM; 1 point)

Amanojack May 3, 2011, 12:37 AM
−1 points
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: What is Metaethics?
Virtue ethicists and deontologists merely express a preference for certain codes of conduct because they believe adhering to these codes will maximize their utility, usually via the mechanism of lowering their time preference.

ETA: And also, as XiXiDu points out, to signal virtuosity.

Amanojack May 3, 2011, 12:34 AM
1 point
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: What is Metaethics?
Upvoted because I strongly agree with the spirit of this post, but I don’t think moral philosophy succeeds in dissolving the confusion. So far it has failed miserably, and I suspect that it is entirely unnecessary. That is, I think this is one field that can be dissolved away.

Amanojack May 3, 2011, 12:28 AM
1 point
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: The Amazing Virgin Pregnancy
The “intelligent” qualification could mean just about anything, and sort functions as an applause light on LW, and the “social” part sounds kind of collectivist. Besides that, this is just called having a low time preference, and is a common self-help concept. I don’t see any need to label this morality.

Amanojack May 3, 2011, 12:21 AM
1 point
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: On Being Okay with the Truth

Ok, so I punish so as to achieve my preference that old ladies not be stolen from. Yet I do not punish to achieve my preferences in other matters.

I’ll bet you do punish people if those matters make you (and enough others) as angry as old ladies being stolen from does.

For that matter, I do not punish to transfer funds from healthy young males to impoverished old ladies who have not been stolen from, though the consequentialist results seem so parallel.

Anyone who votes for welfare does this. (Not saying this is right or wrong, just a fact.)

So, if you can explain why I feel the urge to punish in one case but not the others, you are on your way to “solving metaethics’.

If something makes you angry, and it is socially acceptable to punish it, you may well decide to punish it. I don’t see anything to solve.

Amanojack May 3, 2011, 12:16 AM
2 points
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: On Being Okay with the Truth
The same idea holds for other people’s behavior:

I cringe at the thought of stealing from an old lady, but I get flippin’ angry at the thought of someone else stealing from an old lady. That is why we punish those who steal from old ladies, but don’t (usually) punish any random people who makes us cringe.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 10:43 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
I might call engineers “practical folk”; astrophysicists I’m not so sure. I’d like to see their reason for doing so.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 10:29 AM
−1 points
on: Consequentialism FAQ

Or, put more formally, when asked to select between several possible actions A, B and C, the most moral choice is the one that leads to the best state of the world by whatever standards you judge states of the world by.

This is the key definition, yet it doesn’t seem to actually say anything. Moral choice = the choice that makes you happy. This is a rejection of ethics, not an ethical system. If it were, it would be called individual consequentialism, that is, “Forget all this ethics tripe.”

Yet after that pretense of doing away with all ethics, you gently slip in the collectivist consequentialism as rule-of-thumb principles, but to my mind these can hardly serve as anything other than a political agenda. From then on you seem to equivocate between individual consequentialism and collective consequentialism. It would be a lot clearer—and shorter—if you made that distinction more explicit throughout.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 8:29 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
I can agree with “there are infinitely many primes” if I interpret it as something like “if I ever expect to run out of primes, that belief won’t pay rent.”

In this case, and in most cases in mathematics, these statements may look and operate the same—except mine might be slower and harder to work with. So why do I insist on it? I’m happy to work with infinities for regular math stuff, but there are some cases where it does matter, and these might all be outside of pure math. But in applied math there can be problems if infinity is taken seriously as a static concept rather than as a process where the expectation that it will end will never pay rent.

Like if someone said, “Black holes have infinite density,” I would have to ask for clarification. Can it be put into a verbal form at least? How would it pay rent in terms of measurements? That kind of thing.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 8:04 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms

statements using it could be reconverted (using mathematical operations) into ones that do pay rent.

If statement A can be converted into statement B and statement B pays rent, then statement A pays rent.

Only if the mathematical operation is performed by pure logically entailment, which—if a meaningless definition of infinity is used and that definition is scrapped in the final statement—it would not be. We will just go on about what constitutes a mathematical operation and such, but all I am saying is that if there is a formal manipulation rule that says something like, “You can change the infinity symbol to ‘big enough’* here” (note: this is not logical entailment) then I have no objection to the use of the formal symbol “infinity.”

*ETA: or just use the definition we agree on instead. This is a minor technical point, hard to explain, and I’m not doing a good job of it. I’ll leave it in just in case you started a reply to it already, but I don’t think it will help many people understand what I’m talking about, rather than just reading the parts below this.

I reject infinity as anything more than “a number that is big enough for it’s smallness to be negligible for the purpose at hand.”

Is a terrible one for most purposes, because for them, no matter how big you make a finite number, it won’t serve the purpose.

For example? Although, if we agree on the definition below, there’s maybe no point.

The immediate sense that a word means something is not, itself, the meaning, but only a reliable intuition that the word means something.

That’s why I said “could potentially pay rent.”

The epsilon-delta definition in my highschool textbook didn’t use infinite sequences, except in the sense of “you could go on giving me epsilons and I could go on giving you deltas.”

But then it did use infinite sequences.

That definition of infinity (if we’ll call it that) directly means something to me: “this process of back and forth is not going to end.”

Unlike your original definition, this is a good definition (at least, once it’s been appropriately cleaned up and made precise).

Looks like we’re in agreement, then, and I am not a finitist if that is what is meant by infinite sequences.

But then, to take it back to the original, I still agree with Eliezer that an “infinite set” is a dubious concept. Infinite as an adverb I can take (describes a process that isn’t going to end (in the sense that expecting it to end never pays rent)); infinite as an adjective, and infinity the noun, seem like reification: Harmless in some contexts, but harmful in others.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 7:17 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
“Infinity-noncognitivist” would be more accurate in my case (but it all depends on the definition; I await one that I can see how to interpret, and I accept all the ones that I already know how to interpret [some mentioned above]).

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 7:13 AM
1 point
in reply to: ata’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms

You’re pointing to a concept represented in your brain, using a label which you expect will evoke analogous representations of that concept in readers’ brains, and asserting that that thing is not something that a human brain could represent.

It looks like we agree but you either misread or I was unclear:

I’m not asserting that the definition of infinity I mentioned at the beginning (“a number that is big enough for its smallness to be negligible for the purpose at hand”) is not something a human brain could represent. I’m saying that if the speaker considers “infinity” to be something that a human brain cannot represent, I must question what they are even doing when they utter the word. Surely they are not communicating in the sense Eliezer referred to, of trying to get someone else to have the same content in their head. (If they simply want me to note a mathematical symbol, that is fine, too.)

I also agree that various uses of concepts that could be called infinity in math can be stored in human brains, but that depends on the definitions. I am not “anti-infinity” except if the speaker claims that their infinity cannot be represented in anyone’s mind, but they are talking about it anyway. That would just be a kind of “bluffing,” as it were. If there are sensical definitions of infinity that seem categorically different than the ones I mentioned so far, I’d like to see them.

In short, I just don’t get infinity unless it means one of the things I’ve said so far. I don’t want to be called a “finitist” if I don’t even know what the person means by “infinite.”

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 6:55 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
I did say I’m fine with using infinity in math as a formalism, and also that statements using it could be reconverted (using mathematical operations) into ones that do pay rent. It’s just that the symbol infinity doesn’t immediately mean anything to me (except my original definition).

But I am interested in the separate idea that limits employ infinite sequences. It of course depends on the definition of limit. The epsilon-delta definition in my highschool textbook didn’t use infinite sequences, except in the sense of “you could go on giving me epsilons and I could go on giving you deltas.” That definition of infinity (if we’ll call it that) directly means something to me: “this process of back and forth is not going to end.” There is also the infinitesimal approach of nonstandard analysis, but see my reply to ata for that.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 5:44 AM
1 point
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
Well I agree that I can think just with verbal signs, so long as the verbal sentences or symbolic statements mean something to me (could potentially pay rent*) or the symbols are eventually converted into some other representation that means something to me.

I can think with the infinity symbol, which doesn’t mean anything to me (unless it means what I first said above: in short, “way big enough”), and then later convert the result back into symbols that do mean something to me. So I’m fine with using infinity in math, as long as it’s just a formalism (a symbol) like that.

But here is one reason why I want to object to the “realist” interpretation of infinity via this argument that it’s just a formalism and has no physical or experiential interpretation, besides “way big enough”: The Christian god, for example, is supposed to be infinite this and infinite that. This isn’t intended—AFAIK—as a formalism nor as an approximation (“way powerful enough”), but as an actual statement. Once you realize this really isn’t communicating anything, theological noncognitivism is a snap: the entity in question is shown to be a mere symbol, if anything. (Or, to be completely fair, God could just be a really powerful, really smart dude.) I know there are other major problems with theology, but this approach seems cleanest.

*ETA: This needs an example. Say I have a verbal belief or get trusted verbal data, like a close friend says in a serious and urgent voice, “(You’d better) duck!” The sentence means something to me directly: it means I’ll be better off taking a certain action. That pays rent because I don’t get hit in the head by a snowball or something. To make it into thinking in words (just transforming sentences around using my knowledge of English grammar), my friend might have been a prankster and told me something of the form, “If not A, then not B. If C, then B. If A, then you’d better duck. By the way, C.” Then I’d have to do the semantic transforms to derive the conclusion: “(I’d better) duck!” which means something to me.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 5:01 AM
0 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
Perhaps he meant “seen” in the sense of “visualized.” What happens when we try to introspect on our visualization of some mathematical terms?

Well I can’t visualize an infinite set, but neither can I imagine a finite set, nor the number 5 for that matter. I can imagine five dots, or five apples, but not 5. In terms of my visualization, “5” seems to be an unfinished utterance. My mind wants to know, “5 what?” before it will visualize anything, or else it just puts up 5 black circles or whatever.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 4:24 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
I can visualize the moon. If I say the word “moon,” and you get a picture of the moon in your mind—or some such thing—then I feel like we’re on the same page. But I can’t visualize “infinity,” or when I do it turns out as above. If I say the word “infinity” and you visualize (or taste, or whatever) something similar, I feel like we’ve communicated, but then you would agree with my first line in the above post. Since you don’t agree, when I say “infinity,” you must get some very different representation in your mind. Does it do the concept any more justice that my representations? If so, please tell me how to experience it.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 3:15 AM
−4 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
I reject infinity as anything more than “a number that is big enough for its smallness to be negligible for the purpose at hand.”

My reason for rejecting infinity in it’s usual sense is very simple: it doesn’t communicate anything. Here you said (about communication) “When you each understand what is in the other’s mind, you are done.” In order to communicate, there has to be something in your mind in the first place, but don’t we all agree infinity can’t ever be in your mind? If so, how can it be communicated?

Edit to clarify: I worded that poorly. What I mean to ask is, Don’t we all agree that we cannot imagine infinity (other than imagine something like, say, a video that seems to never end, or a line that is way longer than you’d ever seem to need)? If you can imagine it, please just tell me how you do it!

Also, “reject” is too strong a word; I merely await a coherent definition of “infinity” that differs from mine.
What links here?
- Amanojack's comment on The two meanings of mathematical terms by JamesCole (May 2, 2011, 4:24 AM; 0 points)

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 2:36 AM
1 point
in reply to: NMJablonski’s comment on: What is Metaethics?
I’m fond of including clarification like, “subjective values (values defined in the broadest possible sense, to include even things like your desire to get right with your god, to see other people happy, to not feel guilty, or even to “be good”).”

Some ways I’ve found to dissolve people’s language back to subjective utility:
1. If someone says something is good, right, bad, or wrong, ask, “For what purpose?”
2. If someone declares something immoral, unjust, unethical, ask, “So what unhappiness will I suffer as a result?”
But use sparingly, because there is a big reason many people resist dissolving this confusion.

Amanojack May 2, 2011, 2:14 AM
52 points
on: On Being Okay with the Truth
There is some ineffable something in those who are distinctly uncooperative with requests to define morality or otherwise have a rational discussion on the matter, both here and on all forums where I’ve discussed morality, and I think you’ve hit on what that something is. It is the fear of nihilism, the fear that without their moral compass they might suddenly want to do evil, deplorable things because they’d be A-okay.

What they don’t see, in my opinion, is that it is their very dread at such a possibility that is really what is keeping them from doing those things. “Morality” provides no additional protection; it merely serves as after-the-fact justification of the sentiments that were already there.

We don’t cringe at the thought of stealing from old ladies because it’s wrong, but rather we call it wrong to steal from old ladies because we cringe at the thought.