DanArmak comments on Getting Over Dust Theory - Less Wrong

6 Post author: jhuffman 15 December 2009 10:40PM

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

Comments (97)

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

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 31 July 2011 10:37:41PM *  3 points [-]

It's unlikely that there are no few reasons much more powerful than all the rest, that everything is aligned exactly. So if one is tempted to explain using many weak reasons, or any reasons visibly weaker than other known reasons, that would suggest that the weak reasons are fake explanations obscuring what's really going on, even if all of these reasons are true.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 31 July 2011 10:59:38PM *  0 points [-]

That's a correct, non-obvious and useful consideration generally. Though in the situation I had in mind (explaining "akrasia": the lack of a thing) there are many "explanations" that are truly useful explanations---just not uniquely powerful ones. And in (a model of) a complex system each (overlapping, continuous...) level of abstraction has its own set of ways to fail. (There's probably some kind of relevant point exemplified by our back-and-forth here.) "Irrationality", like "akrasia", is another lack-of-thing with enticing "explanations", and "rationality" is a thing.