army1987 comments on Wrong Questions - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 March 2008 05:11PM

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Comment author: MugaSofer 12 April 2013 09:12:34PM *  -2 points [-]

Would you disagree with any of the above?

'fraid so.

One option is I can try to answer the question in its general form, which generally results in facile non-answers, like "Because of their various properties and the constraints of their environment," which turns out to answer all three of those questions equally well (or poorly).

I think it would be more helpful to explain why the properties and constraints of their environments led to the actual result, wouldn't it? Rather than describing what kind of explanation how a result might have, in general terms.

For example, buildings are made out of the materials we make them out of because we choose materials that won't collapse, people do what they do because (insert general theory of psychology here) and so on and so forth.

Or I can try to replace the general question with a series of representative specific questions, which I then try to answer, in the hopes of either thereby jointly exhausting the original set, or of thereby finding a general strategy for answering specific questions that I'm confident can be applied to members of the original set as I encounter them.

Of course, someone smarter than me might be able to skip the specific-questions stage altogether and construct such a general strategy or itemized explanation solely by analyzing the general question... but if I'm not that smart, I'm not that smart.

Apparently I'm even less smart, because I have no idea what you're saying here :(

You ask:

"Why is there everything? Including the things you assume exist when providing a naturalistic explanation of, say, penguins?"

If I try to answer that question generally, I get "Everything that exists, exists as a consequence of the way everything that existed a moment earlier existed, and all of that stuff existed as a consequence of the way everything existed a moment before that, and so on and so on." Which is unsatisfyingly general, as expected, but accurate enough. (Or, to quote Lorraine Hansberry: "Things as they are are as they are and have been and will be that way because they got that way because things were as they were in the first place!")

Right, but I'm asking for an explanation of that whole stack of turtles - not how an individual turtle stays up, or even how every turtle stays up, but why the universe is not in the counterfactual no-turtle state.

Maitzen makes a similar argument, which I rebutted in my earlier comment:

The closest he comes to answering the actual question is this...

At this point, defenders of supernaturalism might counter that naturalistic explanations must ultimately bottom out at brute, unexplained posits. But I see no reason naturalistic explanations can’t go forever deeper. One bad reason for concluding that they can’t is the notion that x can’t explain y unless x itself is self explanatory. I don’t see that notion as at all implied by our ordinary concept of explanation, which allows that x can explain y even if something else altogether explains x. Moreover, there are grounds for thinking that naturalistic explanations not only could but must go forever deeper. A common attitude among scientists is that the more they discover, the more there is yet to discover—the more they know, the more they realize they don’t know—a pattern there’s no reason to think won’t continue indefinitely. Indeed, scientific discoveries routinely raise at least as many questions as they answer. Biologists have described some 80,000 species of roundworm, for example, but suspect there might be a million species. More generally, having discovered organisms in places they didn’t think could support life, biologists now worry that they lack even a rough idea of the total number of species; knowing more shows us we know less than we thought we knew. Furthermore, history teaches, just when some scientists begin to think the explanatory end is in sight, a revolution comes along to open domains of further inquiry. Maxwell gives way to Planck and Einstein, and Hilbert gives way to Go¨del. Jonathan Schaffer usefully catalogues several other examples of this kind.

... which, naturally, misses the point. Yes, we can imagine something infinitely old and fractally complex existing - although there may be some technical reason why it's impossible, I don't know of any - but we can also, counterfactually, imagine it not existing, and declaring it's turtles all the way down does not explain why this counterfactual is not true (in fact, I think it probably is true, because blah blah complexity bah blah Occam's Razor.)

f I want a more satisfying answer, I either ask someone much smarter than me, or I start breaking it down into particulars. Why are there penguins? If my answer to that assumes that A exists, why is (or was) there A? Etc., etc., etc. In the hope of thereby finding a general strategy for answering specific "Why is there X?" questions that I'm confident can be applied to everything that exists.

The usual naturalist strategy for this is to describe how other things that exist result in X, but of course this fails when applied to everything that exists.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 12 April 2013 09:49:12PM *  5 points [-]

For example, buildings are made out of the materials we make them out of because we choose materials that won't collapse,

But that simply isn't an adequate explanation for why we build materials out of the materials we make them out of.

This can be easily demonstrated by listing the materials that go into the construction of any building in your town and ranking those materials by how resistant to collapse they are. You will find that lots of the materials involved -- glass, gypsum board, fiberglass insulation, etc, etc, etc. -- are not resistant to collapse; we pick those materials for other reasons.

Of course, someone might complain that I'm being unfair here... of course "because they won't collapse" isn't an explanation of why we choose all the materials we build buildings with, just why we choose sturdy materials like wood or metal or cement to build the framework of a building. Duh.

And, well, yes, this is precisely my point. If I want to usefully answer a question like "Why do we make buildings out of the materials we make them out of?" the most satisfying way to do so is to break it down into more specific questions. "We build frameworks out of these materials because..." "We build windows out of these materials because..." "We build interior walls out of these materials because..." and so forth.

And if someone interrupts us to impatiently say "No, no, no, I don't want to hear about frameworks and windows and interior walls, I asked about buildings!!! I want to know why we build buildings out of the materials we build them out of!!! All parts of a building!!!" all we can really do is encourage them to be less impatient, because we can't usefully answer the question the way they insist on having it answered.

Of course, someone smarter than me might be able to skip the specific-questions stage altogether and construct such a general strategy or itemized explanation solely by analyzing the general question... but if I'm not that smart, I'm not that smart.
Apparently I'm even less smart, because I have no idea what you're saying here :(

Well, for example, suppose Sam asks me "how do I choose what kinds of wine go with what kinds of main course?" I might reply "Well, if I'm serving beef, I serve these wines, and if I'm serving fish, I serve those wines," etc etc etc.

Then Sam, who is much much smarter than me, looks at all of that and goes "Oh! I see. The general rule is to calculate at the ratio between the alcohol content and the tannin content expressed in these units, take that number mod 7, then take the numeric equivalent of the first letter of the main ingredient of the dish in German and take that mod 7, and match wines to dishes based on those two matching numbers."

And I stare incredulously at Sam, perform that calculation for a bunch of main dishes and wines, and ultimately say "Holy crap! You're right!" And Sam says "Of course. Say, why did you choose to answer the question in such a piecemeal way? It seems inefficient."

To which the only answer I can give is "Because I'm not nearly as smart as you are, Sam."

Right, but I'm asking for an explanation of that whole stack of turtles - not how an individual turtle stays up, or even how every turtle stays up, but why the universe is not in the counterfactual no-turtle state.

Right.

And again, my only choices when answering such a general question are:

(1) Be uselessly general ("Things as they are are as they are and have been and will be that way because they got that way because things were as they were in the first place!")
(2) Approach the general question by breaking it down into specifics ("Turtle #1 stays up because of Turtle #2. Turtle #2 stays up because of Turtle #3. Etc."; "We build frameworks out of these materials and windows out of _these materials and etc,")
(3) Be really really smart and come up with a general explanation ("The way you pick a wine is...")

(Of course, another option is the one you adopted for buildings: "we choose materials that won't collapse". Which has the unfortunate defect of being false. The same has historically been true of general theories of human psychology. But, sure, someone really really smart could articulate an accurate general theory here, as per approach #3.)

#3 is obviously preferable, but if I'm not smart enough to do it, I'm not smart enough to do it, in which case #2 is usually my best option.

And if someone impatiently says "No, no, no, I don't want to hear about turtle 1 and turtle 2 and turtle 3, I asked about the stack of turtles!!! I want to know how the stack stays up!!! The whole stack!!!" all I can really do is encourage them to be less impatient, because I can't usefully answer the question the way they insist on having it answered.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2013 01:39:26AM 0 points [-]

"Oh! I see. The general rule is to calculate at the ratio between the alcohol content and the tannin content expressed in these units, take that number mod 7, then take the numeric equivalent of the first letter of the main ingredient of the dish in German and take that mod 7, and match wines to dishes based on those two matching numbers."

http://xkcd.com/1155/ :-)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 13 April 2013 01:42:34AM 1 point [-]

I spent an embarrassingly long time after that xkcd trying to devise "compact" directions to my house from various places.