thomblake comments on The Golem - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 07 March 2009 06:32PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (4)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: thomblake 08 March 2009 01:29:43AM 2 points [-]

It seems like this 'golem' is just a type of model. All models leave out some of what they're modeling; this is a feature. If you wanted the map to be exactly identical to the territory, you could just look at the territory.

People frequently argue in favor of the models they use. If she believes she has an accurate model of you, she could be justified in believing you're wrong in your assessment of your own character. Of course, claiming that you're actually lying might take this too far.

I don't regard this sort of 'golem' to be necessarily a mistake. We internally model those that we're interacting with in order to predict their behavior. Those who study human cognition using robots (like Scaz) call this having a 'theory of mind', and sometimes regard it as a prerequisite for successful social interaction.