DaFranker comments on Rationality: Appreciating Cognitive Algorithms - Less Wrong

37 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 October 2012 09:59AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (134)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: TimS 10 October 2012 07:39:16PM -2 points [-]

Postmodernists/relativists have emphasized use of the word 'true' as a mere emphasis, which I admit is a common use.

More boo lights.

Postmodernists assert that object-level morality abuses the concept of truth in order to reinforce the acceptance of normative claims. You noted that some thinkers call that "the halo effect."

Kuhn and Feyerabend assert that the interpretations of evidence and what evidence is available to interpret are affected by social factors than a naive philosophy of science wouldn't suspect.

Common use is not better evidence of postmodern thought than folk psychology is evidence of what Kahneman thinks.

What postmodern position are you actually attacking here?

Comment author: thomblake 10 October 2012 07:50:51PM 2 points [-]

What postmodern position are you actually attacking here?

You seem to have misread. Eliezer's comment was intended to point out connections between what he's talking about and "mainstream" ideas / writing. He noted in the article that "true" is sometimes used as mere emphasis, and noted here that postmodernists have made the same observation. I don't see why that would be characterized as an "attack".

Comment author: TimS 10 October 2012 08:16:56PM -2 points [-]

Eliezer is attacking a particular usage of the word "true." That point is well taken. Further, I appreciate his explicit linking of his thoughts into the larger philosophical debate.

But I am unaware of any philosophical movement that uses "true" the way Eliezer attacks. The sentence I quote could have made the same point (and been more accurate) if postmodernist/relativism was omitted entirely. What purpose do you think including the label had? In particular, why was the label (inaccurately) applied to a position that Eliezer just demonstrated was false?

Comment author: DaFranker 10 October 2012 08:27:03PM *  4 points [-]

From Wikipedia:

In essence, postmodernism is based on the position that reality is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality. Postmodernism is therefore skeptical of explanations that claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually.

If "postmodernists" have this opinion as stated, I suspect that when they aren't using the word "true" to attack or criticize other philosophical ideas, they would be using it as a form of emphasis on a particular interpretation, or to assert the dominance of a particular interpretation, as this interpretation then literally becomes more "true" (in their model, according to my model of their model).

Comment author: TimS 10 October 2012 08:32:38PM 1 point [-]

I think the next paragraph is a bit more accurate:

Postmodernism postulates that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs and are therefore subject to change. It claims that there is no absolute truth and that the way people perceive the world is subjective and emphasises the role of language, power relations, and motivations in the formation of ideas and beliefs. In particular it attacks the use of sharp binary classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial; it holds realities to be plural and relative, and to be dependent on who the interested parties are and the nature of these interests. Postmodernist approaches therefore often consider the ways in which social dynamics, such as power and hierarchy, affect human conceptualizations of the world to have important effects on the way knowledge is constructed and used. Postmodernist thought often emphasizes constructivism, idealism, pluralism, relativism, and scepticism in its approaches to knowledge and understanding.

The key point of political theory post-modernist is that certain social norms are claimed to be true or universal when that is not the case. Further, binary distinctions (black/white, capitalist/proletariat) are inherently misleading, organizing the world in particular ways in order to advance particular moral agendas.

Comment author: DaFranker 10 October 2012 09:06:31PM *  1 point [-]

Thanks, I shall update towards most postmodernists being less of the extreme philosophical kind and more about practical matters like those.

Most self-titled "postmodernists" I've encountered and discussed with were more of the extreme philosophical kind - the kind that would claim ontologically basic mental entities or some other really weird postulate if asked "But where did the first 'reality' come from if there never was any objective reality for us to base our own ones on?"

Comment author: TimS 10 October 2012 09:21:04PM 0 points [-]

As a discipline, postmodernism seems unusually terrible at producing competent practitioners. The average academic chemist is a better scientist than the average postmodernist is as a philosopher.

That said, a lot of conventional wisdom in fields like sociology or Legal Realism have very strong postmodern flavors. Honestly, a lot of the meta-type analysis of norms is using scientific data to show what various humanities thinkers had been saying all along.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 10 October 2012 11:10:03PM 0 points [-]

Further, binary distinctions (black/white, capitalist/proletariat) are inherently misleading,

Some are some aren't. Furthermore, it's impossible to say anything without using distinctions.

Comment author: TimS 11 October 2012 01:49:59AM *  -2 points [-]

Not all moral distinctions are on-off buttons. Some (most?) are sliding scales.


I don't expect king-of-postmodernism-is-nonsense and mister-I-think-postmodernism-makes-good-points to come to agreement, but I'm interested in where exactly we disagree.

  • Do you think some agents could gain advantage by treating a sliding-scale moral quality as discrete?

  • Do you think some agents could gain advantage by treating a discrete moral quality as sliding-scale?

  • What sort of evidence is useful in deciding whether a particular moral quality is discrete or sliding scale?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 11 October 2012 04:31:35AM 1 point [-]

First binary distinctions aren't just for moral systems.

If we restrict to moral distinctions, most moral distinctions are Schelling points.