= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
byrnema comments on Open Thread: April 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (194)
Same questions, new formulation.
It seems that here at Less Wrong, we discourage map/territory discrepancies and mind projection fallacies, etc.
However, "winning" is in the map not the territory.
In one extreme aesthetic, we could become agents that have no subjective beliefs about the territory. But then there would be no "winning"; we'd have to give up on that.
So instead we'd like to have our set of beliefs minimally include enough non-objectively-true stuff to make "winning" coherent. Given this, how can we draw a line about which beliefs are good to have? For example, we certainly don't want to have beliefs that are objectively false. But what about the entire set of beliefs that are objectively neither true nor false? Are they all equivalent? Is there any way to define an aesthetic for choosing from this set of beliefs?
I think physical materialism tries 'minimalism' as an aesthetic and fails, because there is a continuous trade-off between fewer and fewer beliefs and a less well-defined sense of "win"; there seems no natural place to make a break.
Instead you could choose beliefs that maximize the sense of winning, and that is what theists do.
Same answer, new formulation.
Nah. Winning isn't determined by the map, it's like a highlighted endpoint (like drawing on a map with a marker). You win when you get there. Note that a little red x or circle on a map isn't really part of the map. There is nothing there that we expect to correspond to the territory (imagine arriving at your destination and everything turns the color of the marker you used!).
The theistic move is like not finding any destination on the map that you're happy with so so you draw in a really cool mountain and make it your endpoint.
Winning isn't in the map because winning conditions are defined by desires, not beliefs.
Thanks for responding.
I'm not sure about the other stuff, but you have to agree that winning is in the map. You can define your win as an objective fact about reality (winning = getting to the mountain) but deciding that any objective fact is a win is subjective.
My problem is that I'm trying to identify any lasting, real difference between deciding that a feature of the territory indicated on your map is 'pretty cool' and deciding that aspects of your map are pretty cool in of themselves, even if they don't map to real features in the terrain.
OK. But just to check: are you pretty sure this is a real distinction?
It is subjective and it isn't in the territory... but that isn't the extent of our ontology. The map corresponds to your beliefs, the territory to external reality. Your desires are something else.
Right. I don't think I have a new way of answering this question. :-). "Pretty cool" is at most an intersubjectively determined adjective. To say something is pretty cool in and of itself is a category error. Put it this way: what would it possibly mean for something to be pretty cool in a universe without anyone to find it cool? (Same goes for finding things moral, just so we're on the same page).
As certain as I get about anything. Beliefs are accountable to reality, if reality changes beliefs change. From the less wrong wiki on the map and territory:
Desires don't generate predictions. In fact, they have exactly the opposite orientation of beliefs. If reality doesn't match our beliefs our beliefs are wrong and we have to change them. If reality doesn't match our desires reality is wrong and we have to change it.
I think there are maps associated with rewards. The reason you want a reward is that you're expecting something good, whether it's a sensation or a chance at further rewards, to be associated with it.
If this has been a difficult question, it suggests that you didn't have your mind (or perhaps your map of your mind) as part of the territory.
Do you mind clarifying this?
I can try, but I'm not sure exactly what's unclear to you, so this is an estimate of what's needed.
It looks to me as though the metaphor is a human looking at a road map, and what's being discussed is whether the human's destination is part of the landscape represented on the map. If you frame it that way, I'd say the answer is no.
However, the map in hand isn't the only representation the human has of the world. The human has a destination, and ideas about what will be accomplished by getting to the destination. I'm saying that the ideas about the goal are a map of how the world works.
From the root of this thread:
This is a means, not an end. The purpose of Less Wrong is to live as well as possible-- we can't live without maps because the world is very much larger than our minds, and very much larger than any possible AI.
The "extreme aesthetic" of eliminating as much representation as possible doesn't strike me as what we're aiming at, but I'm interested in other opinions on that.
If I understand The Principles of Effortless Power correctly, it's about eliminating (conscious?) representation in martial arts fighting, and thereby becoming very good at it. However, the author puts a lot of effort into representing the process.
Pretty much all of it, but that might just be me. It is a little clearer now. Was there something in my comment in particular you were responding to? My puny human brain might just be straining at the limitations of metaphorical reasoning.
I think we have maps for how to reach our goal but the fact that you have picked goal x instead of any other goal doesn't appear to me to be the product of any belief.
Your last three paragraphs still confuse me. In particular, while they all sound like cool insights I'm not entirely sure what they mean exactly and I don't understand how they relate to each other or anything else.
What caught me was your idea that goals are completely unexaminable. Ultimate goals migtht be, but most of the goals we live with are subordinate to larger goals.
I was trying to answer the root post in this thread, and looking at the question of whether we're trying to eliminate maps. I don't think we are.
The last paragraph was the best example I could find of a human being using maps as little as possible.
Got it. And you're right that my claim should be qualified in this way.
I see (I think). I guess my position that is that a free-floating belief that is, one that doesn't constrain anticipated experience, or a desire is like a map-inscription which doesn't correspond to anything on the territory. And there is a sense in which such things aren't really part of the map. They're more like an overlay, than the map itself. You can take the compass rose off a map, it might make the map harder to use or less cool to stare at but it doesn't make the map wrong. And not recognizing that this is the case is a serious error! There is no crazy four pointed island in the middle of the South Pacific. Desires and free-floating beliefs are like this. I don't really want them gone I just want people to realize that they aren't actually in the territory and so in some sense aren't really part of the ideal map (even if you keep them there because it is convenient).
Our sense of "winning" isn't entirely up for grabs: we prefer sensory stimulation to its absence, we prefer novel stimulations to boring old ones, we prefer to avoid protracted pain, we generally prefer living in human company rather than on desert islands, and so on.
In one manner of thinking, our sense of "winning" - considered as a set of statistically reliable facts about human beings - is definitely part of the territory. It's a set of facts about human brains.
"Winning" more reliably entails accumulating knowledge about what constitutes the experience of winning, and it seems that it has to be actual knowledge - it's not enough to say "I will convince myself that my sense of winning is X", where X is some not necessarily coherent predicate which seems to match the world as we see it.
That may work temporarily and for some people, but be shown up as inadequate as circumstances change.
Yeah, most desires are part of the territory, and not really influenced by our beliefs.
As a child I was very drawn to asceticism. I thought that by not qualifying any of my natural desires as 'winning', I could somehow liberate myself from them. I think that I did feel liberated, but I was also very religious and so I imagined there was something else (something transcendent) that I was fulfilling. In later years, I developed a sense that I needed to "choose" earthly desires in order to learn more about the world and cope with existential angst. I considered it a necessary 'selling-out' that I would try for 10 years. All this to explain why I don't tend to think of desires as a given, but as a choice. But I suppose desires are given after all, and in my ascetic years I just believed that being unhappy was winning.
I believe asceticism is just another human drive, and possibly one not shared with other animals. In any case, it needs as much examination to see whether it fits into the context of a life as any other drive.
I have a similar take on the desire to help people.
I think there's a lot of variation. Some people choose very stable lives, and I don't know of anyone who wants everything to change all the time.