Alexandros comments on Saturation, Distillation, Improvisation: A Story About Procedural Knowledge And Cookies - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Alicorn 24 May 2009 02:38AM

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Comment author: lavalamp 24 May 2009 05:06:35PM *  1 point [-]

I guess I'm not seeing the distinction between propositional and procedural knowledge. I get that people don't always realize what all the little steps they follow are (or their significance); but things like "Don't introduce any grease into the batter, or peaks will fail to form" are propositional knowledge, are they not?

(or from my own baking experience: It's very important to CUT the butter into scones, but a large percentage of recipes will fail to mention that.)

The phrase "non-propositional knowledge" brings to my mind things like Zen Buddhism...

(EDIT: If you're saying procedural knowledge is a subset of propositional knowledge, then I have no qualms...)

Comment author: Alexandros 25 May 2009 07:34:50PM 0 points [-]

I tend to view procedural knowledge as being infered from propositional knowledge. You have the map (propositional), draw the route (procedural) and then store/transmit essentially only the route without the map (the how without all of the justufucation, although some does leak in). Mentions to automatic habit etc. can essentially be considered caching that persists even after the propositional knowledge has been discarded.

I view Alicorn's method as essentially 1. gathering a lot of (procedural) routes to similar goals, 2. reverse-engineering propositional knowledge from them by using (mostly) voting and 3. adding extra knowledge through experimentation and the current circumstances. This arrives at a new procedure that reaches a goal in cookie-space that is satisfying to Alicorn's taste, constrained resources available to her, in short, an Alicorn-optimized procedure.