Jack comments on Intuitive supergoal uncertainty - Less Wrong

4 Post author: JustinShovelain 04 December 2009 05:21AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (27)
Tags: decision_theory metaethics fai values

Comments (27)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 04 December 2009 05:15:27PM *  4 points [-]

There is a common intuition and feeling that our most fundamental goals may be uncertain in some sense.

In what follows, I will naturalistically explore the intuition of supergoal uncertainty.

These are entirely too representative of this post. I admit it's possible I lack adequate background, but this post seems incredibly dense and convoluted. I literally do not know what you're talking about, and I have enough external evidence of my reading comprehension to conclude that it's significantly the author's fault. The idea may be clear in your mind, but you need to spell it out in clear and simple terms if you want others to follow you. Defining "supergoal uncertainty" would be a necessary step, though it would still be well short of sufficient.

Comment author: Jack 04 December 2009 10:55:06PM 2 points [-]

There also appear to be outright misuses of vocabulary, unless there are technical meanings I am unaware of. I.e. "I may soon post and explore the effects of supergoal uncertainty in its various reifications on making decisions."

Not even the most obscure continental philosophy gets away with using 'reify' that way.

Still, it looks like there might be some interesting ideas somewhere in there.

Comment author: JustinShovelain 05 December 2009 02:04:18AM *  0 points [-]

Addressing your reification point:

By means of reification something that was previously implicit, unexpressed and possibly unexpressible is explicitly formulated and made available to conceptual (logical or computational) manipulation." - Reification(computer science) from wikipedia.

I don't think I did abuse vocabulary outside of possibly generalizing meanings in straightforward ways and taking words and meanings common in one topic and using them in a context where they are rather uncommon (e.g. computer science to philosophy). I rely on context to refine and imbue words with meaning instead of focusing on dictionary definitions (to me all sentences take the form of puzzles and words are the pieces; I've written more words in proofs than in all other contexts combined). I will try to pay more attention to context invariant meanings in the future. Thanks for the criticism.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit