whpearson comments on Alien parasite technical guy - Less Wrong

61 Post author: PhilGoetz 27 July 2010 04:51PM

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Comment author: MichaelVassar 28 July 2010 02:37:25PM 11 points [-]

Good article, and an improvement on common sense, but as a narrative as old as Plato and popular since Freud, I suspect that it's at least somewhat anthropomorphic. (and 'stop anthropomorphizing people' is one of my core beliefs). Maybe you are a technical guy who uses reason to try to accomplish some of George's goals and some goals opposed to him, but my guess is that 'you' and 'I' simply aren't the same 'agent', in the Minsky sense, from minute to minute. Instead, 'I' am less like any of George's team, and more like the movie itself, a bunch of snap-shots of non-representative bits of the lives of all of the members of the team and as a bunch of other people as well.

Comment author: whpearson 28 July 2010 02:52:01PM 2 points [-]

I'd agree. For me the technical agent that fixes up social problems (using folk psychology) seems to be a different one that fixes up scientific problems (that is not to say that there are singular agents for both, but I can tell the difference between the two).

I can apply the scientific one to the social problems, but I feel less good when doing so and takes more time.