Will_Newsome comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: katydee 02 January 2013 05:23PM

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 January 2013 07:07:41AM 14 points [-]

[O]ne may also focus on a single problem, which can appear in different guises in various disciplines, and vary the methods. An advantage of viewing the same problem through the lens of different models is that we can often begin to identify which features of the problem are enduring and which are artifacts of our particular methods or background assumptions. Because abstraction is a license for us to ignore information, looking at several approaches to modeling a problem can give you insight into what is important to keep and what is noise to ignore. Moreover, discovering robust features of a problem, when it happens, can reshape your intuitions.

— Gregory Wheeler, "Formal Epistemology"

Comment author: RobinZ 03 January 2013 09:38:44PM 7 points [-]

Is there a concrete example of a problem approached thus?

Comment author: Sengachi 04 January 2013 07:44:41AM 4 points [-]

Viewing the interactions of photons as both a wave and a billiard ball. Both are wrong, but by seeing which traits remain constant in all models, we can project what traits the true model is likely to have.

Comment author: RobinZ 05 January 2013 04:58:19AM 2 points [-]

Does that work? I don't know enough physics to tell if that makes sense.

Comment author: Sengachi 06 January 2013 10:11:10AM 4 points [-]

It doesn't give you all the information you need, but that's how the problem was originally tackled. Scientists noticed that they had two contradictory models for light, which had a few overlapping characteristics. Those overlapping areas allowed them to start formulating new theories. Of course it took ridiculous amounts of work after that to figure out a reasonable approximation of reality, but one has to start somewhere.

Comment author: CCC 14 January 2013 08:21:20AM 0 points [-]

I had a thought recently; considering reproduction in animals (for simpicity, let me assume mammals) via a programming metaphor. The DNA contributed by mother and father is the source code; the mother's womb is the compiler; and the baby is the executable code.

The first thing that's noted is that there is a very good chance (around 50%) that the executable code will include its own compiler. And this immediately leads to the possibility that the compiler can slip in any little changes to the executable code that it wants; it can, in fact, elect to entirely ignore the father's input and simply clone itself. (It seems that it doesn't). Or, in other words, the DNA is quite possibly only a partial description of the resulting baby.

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