Hopefully_Anonymous comments on Possibility and Could-ness - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 June 2008 04:38AM

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Comment author: Hopefully_Anonymous 14 June 2008 09:21:00AM 0 points [-]

Michael, I don't think I'm "confusing" the explicit deliberation of verbal reasoning with the implicit deliberation of neural algorithms any more than Eliezer is in his various recent posts and admonitions on this topic. But I think it's a useful distinction you're bringing up.

Nick, I'm going a little farther than that- I'm saying that the deliberation, that the rationalizing of conclusions, as you put it, may be illusory in that there may be no personal agency in that process either. In Eliezer's terms, it would be impossible for one to rationalize that process any differently, or to choose not to rationalize that process.

Eliezer, what I mean isn't anything outside of your original post we're all commenting on. As you summed up quite well "A blank map does not correspond to a blank territory. Not even an agonizingly uncertain map corresponds to an agonizingly uncertain territory." The idea that one is choosing one's route AND that one could have chosen differently may be illusory. It's a model of reality, and I'm not sure it's the best model. But I don't think it should be dismissed simply because it undermines the way some people want to create status hierarchies (personal moral culpability), which I think is an unhelpful undercurrent in some of these discussions.