Peter_Turney

Karma: 59

Peter_Turney May 6, 2008, 2:24 PM
5 points
on: Decoherence is Simple
(The other part of the “experimental evidence” comes from statisticians / computer scientists / Artificial Intelligence researchers, testing which definitions of “simplicity” let them construct computer programs that do empirically well at predicting future data from past data. Probably the Minimum Message Length paradigm has proven most productive here, because it is a very adaptable way to think about real-world problems.)

I once believed that simplicity is the key to induction (it was the topic of my PhD thesis), but I no longer believe this. I think most researchers in machine learning have come to the same conclusion. Here are some problems with the idea that simplicity is a guide to truth:

(1) Solomonoff/Gold/Chaitin complexity is not computable in any reasonable amount of time.

(2) The Minimum Message Length depends entirely on how a situation is represented. Different representations lead to radically different MML complexity measures. This is a general problem with any attempt to measure simplicity. How do you justify your choice of representation? For any two hypotheses, A and B, it is possible to find a representation X such that complexity(A) < complexity(B) and another representation Y such that complexity(A) > complexity(B).

(3) Simplicity is merely one type of bias. The No Free Lunch theorems show that there is no a prior reason to prefer one type of bias over another. Therefore there is nothing special about a bias towards simplicity. A bias towards complexity is equally valid a priori.

http://www.jair.org/papers/paper228.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_bias

Peter_Turney Jan 30, 2008, 7:06 PM
0 points
on: Rationality Quotes 7
The fact that there is a lot of emotional/inept-philosophical baggage to the word does not mean it is irrational to use it.

If your goal is to engage another person in clear, careful, rational discussion, then it is not rational to use terminology that you know to have “a lot of emotional/inept-philosophical baggage”, because to do so would be counter-productive with respect to your goal. I assume that the purpose of a blog called “Overcoming Bias” is to engage in clear, careful, rational discussion.

Peter_Turney Jan 30, 2008, 6:59 PM
0 points
on: Rationality Quotes 7
The point is that some things are pre-analytically evil. No matter how much we worry at the concept, slavery and genocide are still evil—we know these things stronger than we know the preconditions for the reasoning process to the contrary—I submit that there is simply no argument sufficiently strong to overturn that judgment.

In the American civil war, some people fought against slavery and others fought to continue slavery. If your statement above is correct, it would seem that everybody who fought to continue slavery was evil. Was their pre-analytical “sense of evil” somehow missing or damaged? If your statement above is correct, it would seem that there is no possible case in which a rational argument caused a person to change sides in the civil war. This seems highly unlikely to me.

Culture, including ethics, evolves over time. Actions that were once morally acceptable are no longer considered morally acceptable. I don’t claim to understand all the forces that govern the evolution of ethics, but it is plain to see that our ethical systems have evolved. Slavery was once accepted and considered ethical by many; now it is not accepted. Women were once not allowed to vote; now they can vote.

To say that something is “pre-analytically evil” seems to be an excuse for avoiding rational, scientific analysis of the epistemology and ontology of our ethical judgments.

Peter_Turney Jan 26, 2008, 4:39 AM
−3 points
on: Rationality Quotes 7
“When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened.”

This whole quote is sophistry. The capitalized word “Evil” is a metaphorical personification of an abstract concept. A standard definition of “evil” is “morally objectionable behavior”. Suppose we replace the personification “Evil” with “morally objectionable behavior”:

“When one encounters morally objectionable behavior, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened.”

The result is absurd. Suppose we agree that shoplifting is morally objectionable behavior. Is it true that the only solution to shoplifting is violence or the threat of violence? I don’t think so. But “Evil” is an emotionally loaded term that triggers our biases and discourages careful, rational thought. So when we read, “When one encounters Evil, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened,” it is not quite so obviously false as, “When one encounters morally objectionable behavior, the only solution is violence, actual or threatened.”

One problem with the term “evil” is that it is typically applied to a person, rather than to a person’s behavior. For example (see above), “Kevin Giffhorn is Evil.” Compare this to, “Kevin Giffhorn has behaved in a way that is morally objectionable.” The first statement leads to the conclusion that an evil person must be punished. The second statement leads to asking what caused Kevin Giffhorn to behave as he did, and how can we address the cause? To say that he acted evilly because he is evil gets us nowhere.

Peter_Turney Jan 25, 2008, 6:34 PM
−3 points
on: Rationality Quotes 7
“The simple fact is that non-violent means do not work against Evil.”

I believe that this quote is not rational, because thinking of human relations in terms of “good” and “evil” is not rational. I prefer to think in terms of the iterated prisoners’ dilemma; in terms of cooperation and defection. If you frame a conflict in terms of “good” and “evil”, you quickly reach violence. If you frame it in terms of “cooperation” and “defection”, you may be able to negotiate a cooperative agreement. Violence may be necessary in certain situations, but it represents a suboptimal solution to conflict.

In a blog that is dedicated to overcoming bias, the term “evil” should only be used to point out the bias and irrationality that is encouraged by the concept of “evil”.