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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Jul. 25 - Jul. 31, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Comments (133)
If you agree that it covers superforcasting than my argument is right. Using presuppotions is a very particular way of reasoning and there are many other possible heuristics that can be used.
A LW comment also isn't long enough to lay out a complete system of reasoning as complex as the one proposed in Science and Sanity or that proposed in Superforcasting. That why I refer to general arguments are refer to the books for a more detailed explanation of particular heuristics.
There's basically two kinds of reasoning - the kind that can be made manifest (explicit,etc) and the kind that can't. The gold standard of solving of solving the problem of presuppositions (foundations, intuitions) is to show that nothing presupposition-like is needed in explicit reasoning. Failed attempts tend to switch to implicit reasoning, or to take it that sufficiently obvious presupposiitons don't count as presuppositions (We can show this with induction...we can show this with empiricism).
I don't think that's the case. Trying to put complex concepts into two boxes binary boxes is done very frequently in the Western tradition but there no inherent argument that it's the best way to do things. Science and Sanity argues in detail why binary thining is limiting.
As far as this particular case of the implicit/explicit distinction, most kinds of reasoning tend to be a mix. Reasoning that's completely explicit is the kind of reasoning that can be done by a computer with very limited bandwith. For many problems we know that computers can't solve them as easily as calculating 23472349 * 5435408 which can be done completely explicitely. If you limit yourself to what can be made completely explicit you limit yourself to a level of intelligence that can't outperform computers with very limited memory/CPU power.
Explicit reasoning has a its disadvantages, but is still hard to do without. In talking about superforecasters, you are taking it that someone has managed to determine who they are as opposed to ordinary forecasters, raving lunatics, etc. Deterimining that kind of thing is where explicit reasoning..what's the alternative? Groups of people intuiting that each other are reliable intuiters?
That's why you mix it with implicit reasoning if you care about the outcome of the reasoning process. Doing everything implict is as bad as doing everything explicit.
I would have thought the problem with doing everything explicitly is that it is not possible.
Our usual way of combining explicit about and implicit reasoning is to reason explicitly from premises which we find intuitively appealing, ie which we arrive at by implicit reasoning. That isn't a solution to the problem, that is the problem: everything is founded on presuppositions, and if they are implicit we can't check how they are arrived at, and we also can't check how reliable they are without needing to use further presuppositions.
Korzybski seems to be saying we should be using more implicit reasoning. I don't s how that helps.
I don't think that's what he's saying. In the case of "consciousness of abstraction" he even encourages people to be explicit about things that they usually aren't.
Korzybski takes a long book to explain how he thinks reasoning should be done and coins a bunch of basic concepts on which it should be built that are internally consistent. I don't think I can give you a full understanding of how the framework works in the space of a few comments.
Does it address the problem at hand?
Most statements we make in general semantics are about maps about there no presumption that the map is real and is the territory. Indeed being explicit about the fact that it isn't is an important part.
How does that address the Presumption problem? You could say that no statement made by anybody has any bearing on reality, so the presumptions they are based on don't matter...but if that kind of sweeping anti-realism were a good solution , it would have been adopted along ago.