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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Post Your Utility Function - Less Wrong
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Is human knowledge also not just in the map, but exclusively of the map? If not, what's the difference?
Any knowledge about the actual territory can in principle be reduced to mechanical form without the presence of a human being in the system.
To put it another way, a preference is not a procedure, process, or product. The very use of the word "preference" is a mind projection - mechanical systems do not have "preferences" - they just have behavior.
The only reason we even think we have preferences in the first place (let alone that they're about the territory!) is because we have inbuilt mind projection. The very idea of having preferences is hardwired into the model we use for thinking about other animals and people.
You never answered my question.
You said, "if not, what's the difference", and I gave you the difference. i..e, we can have "knowledge" of the territory.
So, knowledge exists in the structure of map and is about the territory, while preference can't be implemented in natural artifacts. Preference is a magical property of subjective experience, and it is over maps, or about subjective experience, but not, for example, about the brain. Saying that preference exists in the structure of map or that it is about the territory is a confusion, that you call "mind projection" Does that summarize your position? What are the specific errors in this account?
No, "preference" is an illusory magical property projected by brains onto reality, which contains only behaviors.
Our brains infer "preferences" as a way of modeling expected behaviors of other agents: humans, animals, and anything else we perceive as having agency (e.g. gods, spirits, monsters). When a thing has a behavior, our brains conclude that the thing "prefers" to have either the behavior or the outcome of the behavior, in a particular circumstance. In other words, "preference" is a label attached to a clump of behavior-tendency observations and predictions in the brain -- not a statement about the nature of the thing being observed.
Thus, presuming that these "preferences" actually exist in the territory is supernaturalism, i.e., acting as though basic mental entities exist.
My original point had more to do with the types of delusion that occur when we reason on the basis of preferences actually existing, rather than the idea simply being a projection of our own minds. However, the above will do for a start, as I believe my other conclusions can be easily reached from this point.
Do you think someone is advocating the position that goodness of properties of the territory is an inherent property of territory (that sounds like a kind of moral realism)? This looks like the lack of distinction between 1-place and 2-place words. You could analogize preference (and knowledge) as a relation between the mind and the (possible states of the) territory, that is neither a property of the mind alone, nor of the territory alone, but a property of them being involved in a certain interaction.
No, I assume that everybody who's been seriously participating has at least got that part straight.
Now you're getting close to what I'm saying, but on the wrong logical level. What I'm saying is that the logical error is that you can't express a 2-place relationship between a map, and the territory covered by that map, within that same map, as that amounts to claiming the territory is embedded within that map.
If I assert that my preferences are "about" the real world, I am making a category error because my preferences are relationships between portions of my map, some of which I have labeled as representing the territory.
The fact that there is a limited isomorphism between that portion of my map, and the actual territory, does not make my preferences "about" the territory, unless you represent that idea in another map.
That is, I can represent the idea that "your" preferences are about the territory in my map... in that I can posit a relationship between the part of my map referring to "you", and the part of my map referring to "the territory". But that "aboutness" relationship is only contained in my map; it doesn't exist in reality either.
That's why it's always a mind projection fallacy to assert that preferences are "about" territory: one cannot assert it of one's own preferences, because that implies the territory is inside the map. And if one asserts it of another person's preferences, then that one is projecting their own map onto the territory.
I initially only picked on the specific case of self-applied projection, because understanding that case can be very practically useful for mind hacking. In particular, it helps to dissolve certain irrational fears that changing one's preferences will necessarily result in undesirable futures. (That is, these fears are worrying that the gnomes and fairies will be destroyed by the truth, when in fact they were never there to start with.)
How's that? You can write Newton's law of universal gravitation describing the orbit of the Earth around the Sun on a piece of paper located on the surface of a table standing in a house on the surface of the Earth. Where does this analogy break from your point of view?
"...but, you can't fold up the territory and put it in your glove compartment"
The "aboutness" relationship between the written version of Newton's law and the actual instances of it is something that lives in the map in your head.
IOW, the aboutness is not on the piece of paper. Nor does it exist in some supernatural link between the piece of paper and the objects acting in accordance with the expressed law.
I feel your frustration, but throwing the word "magical" in there is just picking a fight, IMO. Anyway, I too would like to see P.J. Eby summarize his position in this format.
I have a certain technical notion of magic in mind. This particular comment wasn't about frustration (some of the others were), I'm trying out something different of which I might write a post later.