= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
BloodyShrimp comments on Open Thread for February 11 - 17 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (325)
Has anyone else had one of those odd moments when you've accidentally confirmed reductionism (of a sort) by unknowingly responding to a situation almost identically to the last time or times you encountered it? For my part, I once gave the same condolences to an acquaintance who was living with someone we both knew to be very unpleasant, and also just attempted to add the word for "tomato" in Lojban to my list of words after seeing the Pomodoro technique mentioned.
This doesn't seem related to reductionism to me, except in that most reductionists don't believe in Knightian free will.
Sort of in the sense of human minds being more like fixed black boxes that one might like to think. What's Knightian free will, though?
Knightian uncertainty is uncertainty where probabilities can't even be applied. I'm not convinced it exists. Some people seem to think free will is rescued by it; that the human mind could be unpredictable even in theory, and this somehow means it's "you" "making choices". This seems like deep confusion to me, and so I'm probably not expressing their position correctly.
Reductionism could be consistent with that, though, if you explained the mind's workings in terms of the simplest Knightian atomic thingies you could.
Can you give me some examples of what some people think constitutes Knightian uncertainty? Also: what do they mean by "you"? They seem to be postulating something supernatural.
Again, I'm not a good choice for an explainer of this stuff, but you could try http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1438
Thanks! I'll have a read through this.
I decided I should actually read the paper myself, and... as of page 7, it sure looks like I was misrepresenting Aaronson's position, at least. (I had only skimmed a couple Less Wrong threads on his paper.)