Vladimir_Nesov comments on Unnatural Categories - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 August 2008 01:00AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 24 August 2008 09:17:56AM 1 point [-]

You normally build categories around what occurs in environment in such a way that there is little ambiguity, you choose a concept to fit the environment. When you use these categories, you don't care about the warping of its boundary, you for example can communicate these categories without worrying that your audience will interpret the label slightly differently, because in the end both interpretations will include one and the same answer actually existing in the environment. When environment changes, you can just dream up new categories that work fine in new environment. Not so for goal-related categories. When communicating a goal, you need to communicate a concept, with all its shades of gray, not just what is designated by this concept in current environment.