pedanterrific comments on The Sciencearchist Manifesto - Less Wrong

-12 [deleted] 19 October 2011 07:31PM

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Comment author: pedanterrific 24 October 2011 10:14:52PM 0 points [-]

definition of 'successful'

Generally this means the opposite of 'failed'. 'Was a good idea' is orthogonal to 'successful'; something can be either one without being the other. You're playing silly games by implicitly defining 'successful' as 'increased happiness' and then pretending this means anything.

and stop wire-heading when ever they want

I've never heard of a form of wireheading in which this was possible.

Comment author: potato 24 October 2011 11:15:54PM *  1 point [-]

I think you must be misreading me somehow. I'm simply saying that I think "if a policy was successful it very probably increased net happiness." And that if someone applies the phrase "that policy was successful" they will likely also be willing to apply the phrase "that policy increased net happiness." These are empirical probabilistic claims, which can be falsified, and are certainly not meaningless. LWers don't use Aristotelian concept theory for definition, for the most part we treat definitions more like pointers to empirical clusters of roughly similar things, as here .

What question am I dodging exactly?

Comment author: pedanterrific 24 October 2011 11:33:33PM 0 points [-]

Could you give me three examples of a successful policy which doesn't increase net happiness, or even out the spread of happiness, or make more options for happiness getting? I'll give up the point if you (or anyone else) can.

  1. The Holocaust, and more generally most of Hitler's political policies, as distinct from the military ones.
  2. North Korea's closed borders.
  3. The US's policy of propping up US-friendly dictators in the third world.

In other words, all selfish policies.

Comment author: potato 24 October 2011 11:44:16PM -2 points [-]

Ok, but you and I would both say these examples increased suffering, and that they were not good ideas, or nice. Therefor these are not examples of the form i asked for.

Comment author: pedanterrific 25 October 2011 03:33:18AM 0 points [-]

So, to clarify: what you are asking for is three examples of a successful policy which

  1. doesn't increase net happiness, and
  2. doesn't even out the spread of happiness, and
  3. doesn't make more options for happiness getting, and
  4. doesn't increase suffering, and
  5. is a good idea, and
  6. is nice.

If I have misunderstood your criteria, could you explain where?

Comment author: potato 25 October 2011 03:40:52AM 0 points [-]

yep, totes. More specifically, that we would say is successful (in the sense of well done, or not a fail), and also say is 1 - 6.

Comment author: damang 24 October 2011 10:38:36PM -1 points [-]

Are you new man? Check this out: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human%27s_Guide_to_Words

Potato is proposing a deffenition as an emperical pointer. It means plenty, it means when people think "success", they think "happiness up". He's just saying that the probabilities of the application of the two phrases are correlated to some significant degree.

Comment author: pedanterrific 24 October 2011 10:52:09PM 1 point [-]

No, he's dodging the question. There are two definitions under discussion, one (the one potato is proposing, also incidentally the nonstandard one) in which he is by definition correct, another in which he has been proven wrong. He's explicitly attempting to conflate the two:

Could you give me three examples of a successful policy which doesn't increase net happiness [...] ?

If successful means "promotes happiness", then I trivially can't. If it means "works as planned", then Holocaust was quite successful in elimination of Jews, to give an extreme example.

Nah, I mean "successful" as in: you and I are both capable of agreeing as well as at least not the minority of experts about that use of "successful". ... when you and I and at least some experts will be tempted to say "That policy was successful.", i.e., "worked", "rocked",

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