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NancyLebovitz comments on The noncentral fallacy - the worst argument in the world? - Less Wrong
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Comments (1742)
Thanks.
That's interesting-- as I recall, requests for words to be tabooed are usually at least somewhat honored.
Not in my experience.
You ask for "exist" "true" etc to be tabooed, which is hard. Assuming they even try, it would take a while to wade thru all the philosophical muck and actually get to something, by which point the moment has passed.
My usual response to requests for "X exists" to be tabooed is to start talking about reliably predicting future experiences E2 in a range of contexts C (as C approaches infinity) consistent with the past experiences E1 which led me to to put X in my model in the first place. If someone wants to talk about E2 being reliably predictable even though X "doesn't really exist", it's not in the least bit clear to me what they're talking about.
Thanks! This is a very useful explanation / reduction / taboo.
It also sheds some light and helped me understand quite a bit more, I believe, on this whole "instrumentalism" business some people here seem to really want to protect.
(link is just in case someone misunderstands this as an accusation of "Politics!")
You're welcome. I vaguely remember being involved in an earlier discussion that covered this idea at greater length, wherein I described myself as a compatibilist when it comes to instrumentalism, but the obvious google search doesn't find it so perhaps I'm deluded.
Was it from a couple days ago?
(I found this with Wei Dai's lesswrong_user.php script.)
Ayup, that's the one. Thanks!
Yes. I recently described it as this:
I wholeheartedly approve of this approach. If more people used it, we would avoid the recurrent unproductive discussions of QM interpretations, qualia and such.
EDIT. Just to clarify, the part saying "put X in my model" is the essential bit to preempt the discussion of "but does it exist outside your model?", since the latter would violate this definition of "exist". such as this statement by our esteemed Kaj Sotala:
Oh, I very much doubt that. But I'd like to think so.
EDIT: I wrote the above before your edit, and don't really understand your edit.
Instrumentalism is pretty unproductive when it comes to answering questions about what really exists.
Or at least unusual enough to be brushed aside as "wtf".
There are lots of words that I don't know how to taboo, because I only have a partial and largely intuitive understanding of the concepts I'm referring to by them, and can't fully explain those concepts. Examples: "exist", "truth", "correct", "right", "moral", "rational", "should", "mathematical". I don't think anyone has asked me directly to taboo any of these words, but if someone did, I might ignore the request because I think my time could be better spent trying to communicate with others who seem to already share my understandings of these words.
In the case of "exist", I think that something exists implies that I can care about it and not be irrational. ("care about": for example, have a term for it in my utility function) This seems to at least capture a large part of what I mean when I say something exists, but I'm not sure if "exists" just means (something like) the correct decision theory allows a utility function to have a term for something, or if existence is somehow more fundamental than that and our ability to rationally care about something derives from its existence in that more fundamental sense. Does this make sense?
ETA: See also this relevant post.
Well, apparently TheOtherDave is bold enough to give a meaningful definition of "exist". Would you agree with it? If not, what would be a counterexample?
I disagree with it because an agent (such as one using UDT) does not necessarily have memory and the associated concepts of "future experiences" and "past experiences", but "exist" still seems meaningful even for such an agent.
Would you say that when I say "X exists," and an agent A without memory says "X exists," that I and A are likely expressing the same belief about X?
I confess that I cannot make sense of this without learning more about UDT and your definition of agency. I thought this definition is more basic and independent of the decision theory models one adopts.
I'd say that asking people to taboo "true" is very common, in certain circles outside Less Wrong. That's why Eliezer wrote The Simple Truth.
Unfortunately, the last sensible (to me) exchange in it was around
After that the instrumentalist argument got heavily strawmanned:
It gets worse after that, until EY kills the offending in-strawman-talist with some gusto.
Upvoted entirely for "in-strawman-talist", which I will be giggling about at unpredictable intervals for days, probably requiring me to come up with some entirely false but more easily explained answer to "What's so funny?".
Would you be satisfied if I tabooed "Fs exist" as "The set of all Fs is non-empty"?
I dislike fake formalizations. TheOtherDave's approach makes a lot more sense to me.
Well, it would, given that you're an instrumentalist. Since I'm not an instrumentalist, TheOtherDave's suggestion (in so far as I understand it) clearly differs from what I mean when I talk about existence. Surely you wouldn't maintain that the only possible tabooings of "existence" are instrumentalist-friendly ones.
But why do you think my formulation is a "fake formalization"? It captures what I mean by existence pretty well, I think. Is the worry that I haven't provided an empirical criterion for existence?
Awesome! I love clear differences.
Can you give me an example of some thing that exists, for which my proposed tabooing of "existence" doesn't apply? Or, conversely, of something for which my proposed tabooing applies, but which doesn't exist?
With the caveat that I might not fully understand your proposed tabooing, here's my concern with it. There are models which are empirically equivalent, yet disagree on the furniture of the world. As far as I can see, your tabooing, with its emphasis on predictive success, cannot distinguish between the ontological claims made by these models. I think one can. For instance, even if two theories make identical predictions, I would say the right move would be adopt the ontology of the simpler of the two.
Perhaps I can expand on my proposed tabooing. Instead of just "The set of Fs is non-empty", make it "The set of Fs is non-empty according to our best physical theory", where the "best physical theory" is determined not just by empirical success but by extra-empirical virtues such as simplicity.
Wrt your revised tabooing... that has the odd property that entities come into existence and cease existing as our physical theories change. I guess I'm OK with that... e.g., if you really want to say that quarks didn't exist in 1492, but that quarks in 1492 now existed, I won't argue, but it does seem like an odd way to talk.
Wrt your concern... hrm. Let me try to be more specific.
So, I have two empirically equivalent models M1 and M2, which make different ontological claims but predict the same experiences in a range of contexts C (as C approaches infinity). Let us say that M1 asserts the existence of X, and M2 asserts instead the existence of Y, and X is simpler than Y. I also have a set of experiences E1, on the basis of which I adopt M1 as my model (for several reasons, including the fact that my experiences have led me to prefer simpler models). Based on this, I predict that my future experiences E2 will be consistent with the past experiences E1 which led me to to put X in my model in the first place, which include the experiences that led me to endorse Occam's Razor. If that prediction proves false -- that is, if I have experiences that are inconsistent with that -- I should reduce my confidence in the existence of X. If it proves true -- that is, I have no experiences that are inconsistent with that -- I should remain confident.
Is that example consistent with your understanding of how my proposed tabooing works?
If so, can you say more about your concern? Because it seems to me I am perfectly able to distinguish between M1 and M2 (and choose M1, insofar as I embrace Occam's Razor) with this understanding of existence.
What does "The set of all Fs is non-empty" mean? Surely it means "There exist at least one F", and we are back to what "exist" means. So your definition does not taboo "exist", it just rewords it without adding anything to the understanding of the issue.
Usually it's just a postulate. I've yet to come across a different definition that is not a simple rewording or obfuscation. I would be very interested in seeing something non-instrumentalist that is.