= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread: May 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 (348)
This reminds me of a related bias-- people generally don't have any idea how much of the stuff in their heads was made up on very little evidence, and I will bring up a (hopefully) just moderately warm button issue to discuss it.
What is science fiction? If you're reading this, you probably believe you can recognize science fiction, give a definition, and adjudicate edge cases.
I've read a moderate number of discussions on the subject, and eventually came to the conclusion that people develop very strong intuitions very quickly about human cultural inventions which are actually very blurry around the edges and may be incoherent in the middle. (Why is psi science fiction while magic is fantasy?)
And people generally don't notice that their concepts aren't universally held unless they argue about them with other people, and even then, the typical reaction is to believe that one is right and the other people are wrong.
As for the future and the past, it's easy enough to find historians to tell you, in detail, that your generalizations about the past leave a tremendous amount out. It should be easier to see that futures are estimates at best, but it can be hard to notice even that.
As to whether I could give a definition of science fiction, Similarity Clusters and similar posts have convinced me that the kind of definition I'd normally make would not capture what I meant by the term.
I've noticed a similar thing happen with people trying to define 'literary fiction.' Makes me wonder what other domains might have this bias.
My assumption is that it's all of them.
Reading efforts to define science fiction is why I've never looked at efforts at defining who's a Jew. I have a least a sketchy knowledge of legal definitions for Reform and Orthodox, but that doesn't cover the emotional territory.
What's a poem? What's a real American?
If you can find a area of human creation where there aren't impassioned arguments about what a real whatever is, please let me know.
What's a paperclip?
It's an inwardly-thrice-bent metal wire that can non-destructively fasten paper together at an edge.
So those don't count?
Correct.
Do you value those hunks of plastic more than other hunks of plastic?
Do you value inwardly-thrice-bent plastic wire that can non-destructively fasten paper together at an edge more than other hunks of plastic?
No.
No.
Why?
Because they're not inwardly-thrice-bent metal wires that can non-destructively fasten paper together at an edge?
Is this classification algorithm really that difficult to learn?
I meant why do you not value plastic clips... oh, I get it, you value what you value, just like we do. But do you have any sort of rationalization or argument whereby it makes intuitive sense to you to value metal clips and not plastic ones?
Think for a minute about what it would be like for the WHOLE UNIVERSE to be plastic paperclips, okay? Wouldn't you just be trying to send them into a star or something? What good are plastic papercips? Plastic.
*Shudders*
I find that paperclips often leave imprints of themselves in paper, if left clipped there for a long time. Does this not count as destruction?
Nope, it doesn't count as destruction. Not when compared to pinning, stapling, riveting, nailing, bolting, or welding, anyway.
Good point. I guess physicists don't spend much time arguing what a 'real electron' is, but once you start talking about abstract ideas...
Considerable efforts have been made here to have a stable meaning for rationality. I think it's worked.
It's a stable meaning...so maybe that just forestalls the argument until Less Wrongian rationalists meet other rationalists!