Richard Dawkins TV - Baloney Detection Kit video

Roko

See this great little rationalist video here.

Well, if I am pro-business, I have to be skeptical about global warming. Wait! How about just following the data?

See this great little rationalist video here.

Well, if I am pro-business, I have to be skeptical about global warming. Wait! How about just following the data?

If this is the problem, that's fine (and I apologize for not giving more emphasis to your posts in replying on this issue). Inferential distance is a real problem.

But that's not how Richard responded. He literally restated the problem in different terminology, replacing the problems with black boxes that have the solution inside. The only thing he said remotely related to inferential distance was that gosh, it's hard to build up all the way from the neuron level.

Of course it is! That's why AI is hard! But he's trying to show one way that it simplifes by using an approach, which would mean he can do more than restate the problem. Even if the inferential distance is great, you can pain tbroad strokes, which would help identify where the disagreement is.

Here's the nagging issue for me: I suspect that what's going on is that you've come up with ad hoc techniques that happen to work, and then "explaining" them by a superficial resemblance to an actual controls problem. But "seeking a mate" actually describes a very complex set of behaviors, and it just doesn't help to reframe that as "tracking the reference of 'having a mate' by outputting behaviors dependent on my distance (measured how?) from that state".

Another data point for my claim is that you didn't seriously approach the challenge I gave you, to check if something known not to work, would be deemed by PCT to work. That would require you to give an example and show where it parts with PCT, which is a pretty simple task.

Also you consider it to be a good thing when a theory requires you to separately solve the very problem it attacks, in order to use it. That suggests another level of confusion.

[me]By the time you've actually described what reference someone is tracking (or even a sub-reference like "sexiness") and how observations are converted into a format capable of being compared, you've already solved the problem

[you]Yes, and that's precisely what's useful.

ETA: Compare that to:

By the time you've come up with all the epicyles needed to predict planet locations, you've have to already know the planet locations!

Yes, and that's precisely why the Ptolemiac model is useful!

But that's not how Richard responded. He literally restated the problem in different terminology, replacing the problems with black boxes that have the solution inside

I was being flippant. I mean, what were you expecting? Imagine that the person who first had the idea that thinking is done by neurons has just published it, and you ask them what you asked me. What can he tell you about finding a girlfriend? Only that it's done by neurons. The leg work to discover just how those neurons are organised to do it is the problem, and finding a mate isn't the p... (read more)

-1pjeby17y

That's because, as I said, Richard completely handwaved the PCT explanation, in the same way as an evolution supporter would likely end up handwaving ideas like "inclusive genetic fitness". To model mate searching in PCT, you would need to include several continuous variables related to mate selection, such as "how attractive am I" and "how often am I getting laid", that would be used to control other variables like for "minimum required desirability-of-partner". Lumping that all together into one variable as Richard suggested would be quite ludicrous. (But note, by the way, that there's mainstream evidence for the existence of such variables in humans and other animals.) Keep in mind that controllers are hierarchical, so low-level behavior patterns are driven by higher level ones. So, the "minimum partner desirability" threshold would gate the program-level controller for mate attraction behaviors... which would include various levels to track of the potential mate's apparent response or interest, etc. You've got levels going all the way down here, implied by "hierarchical control", in the same way that a huge host of behaviors and characteristcs are covered by "inclusive genetic fitness". [...] I did that, in precisely the comment you linked to as saying I didn't. Specifically, I pointed out that the exact set of definitions for e.g. "thinking hard" that wouldn't work in reality, precisely match the ones that PCT predicts would not work, and vice versa for the definitions that would not work. If you're saying, you don't see how that's so from what I wrote and need more detail, that's fine. But to me, I did exactly as you requested, or the best I could given your undefined phrase "thinking hard". [...] You quoted me out of context; the rest of the comment goes on to explain that what I find useful is that PCT tells us what things to look for in order to solve the problem. What I perhaps didn't explain very well is how those "things to look for" differ from

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Richard Dawkins TV - Baloney Detection Kit video

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Richard Dawkins TV - Baloney Detection Kit video

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