skepsci comments on What Bayesianism taught me - Less Wrong
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Lumifer, you are falling prey to several of the traps detailed in A Human's Guide to Words. So far I have basically parroted EY's 102 material.
Meditation: Taboo "Knowledge" and describe your relation with riding a bicycle.
Meditation: Taboo "Knowledge" and describe your relation with some field of science you are proficient in.
Meditation: Taboo "Knowledge" and describe a religious person's views on god.
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You and me both know what 'knowledge' is in everyday speech. The problem is what constitues 'knowlege' in extreme situations.
The thing is that "Knowledge" is ambiguous in everyday speech. We misunderstood each other when I initially answered your question: I thought you were speaking about the tried and tired philosophical issue that have been discussed for ages.
The answer in the Philosophical Issue of Knowledge is: "You philosophers are all morons; you are using the same word to mean different things."
Plato has a famous definition of "Knowledge": Justified True Belief. Notice how he has moved the problem of explaining "Knowledge" into the problem of explaining "Justification." (And "True." And "Belief." Neither concepts were actually well explained when Plato was alive and kicking.)
"Knowledge" can also be a synonym for "Skill." Such as knowing how to ride a bicycle. Notice how the grammatical construction "knowing how to <verb phrase>." is different from "knowing <noun phrase> to be true." One could argue that they are the same thing, but I think they are not. So we have at least two types of everyday discussed knowledge: Procedural Knowledge (how to do stuff) and Object Knowledge (facts and stuff).
The distinction between the two is obvious when you really taboo it: Procedural knowledge is like a tool. It is a means to an end, an extension of your primitive action set. Having lots of procedural knowledge is a boon in Instrumental Rationality, but most skills are irrelevant to Epistemological Rationality. (Riding a cicycle will only very rarely tell you the secrets of the universe.)
Object Knowledge, or Facts, are thingies in your mental model of how the world works. This mental model is what you use when you want to predict how the world is going to behave in the future, so that you can make plans. (Because you have goals you want to attain.)
Your world model is updated automatically by processes which you do not control. A sufficiently advanced agent might be able to excercise some control, at least at the design level, of it's updating algorithms. In short, you take in sensory data and crunch some numbers and out comes a bayesian-esque update.
So my standing viewpoint is: I don't care what you call it; "knowledge" or "hunch" or "divine inspiration." I care about what your probability distribution over future events is. I don't care what you call it "skills" or "knowledge" or "talent." I care about what sort of planning algorithm you implement.
And on the topic of subjectivity: If I have trained skills or observed evidence different from you, then yes we have subjectively different "knowledge." I for instance know 12 programming languages and intimate facts about my significant other.
But the thing is that there is only One Correct Way of updating on evidence: Bayes Theorem. If you deviate from that you will have less than optimal predictive power.
I really suggest you go and read some of the core sequences to refresh this.
I think the dichotomy between procedural knowledge and object knowledge is overblown, at least in the area of science. Scientific object knowledge is (or at least should be) procedural knowledge: it should enable you to A) predict what will happen in a given situation (e.g. if someone drops a mento into a bottle of diet coke) and B) predict how to set up a situation to achieve a desired result (e.g. produce pure L-glucose).