Perrr333 comments on How An Algorithm Feels From Inside - Less Wrong

87 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 February 2008 02:35AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 09 February 2015 11:48:58PM 0 points [-]

This article argues to the effect that the node categorising an unnamed category over 'Blegg' and 'Rube' ought to be got rid of, in favour of a thought-system with only the other five nodes. This brings up the following questions. Firstly, how are we to know which categorisations are the ones we ought to get rid of, and which are the ones we ought to keep? Secondly, why is it that some categorisations ought to be got rid of, and others ought not be?

So far as I can see, the article does not attempt to directly answer the first question (correct me if I am mistaken). The article does seem to try and answer the second question through some kind of Essentialism; that 'Blegg' and 'Rube' don't pick out real "kinds", whilst the other categorisations do. Is this the correct reading of the article? And how exactly would that type of Essentialism pan out?