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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Post Your Utility Function - Less Wrong
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Located on the planet Earth.
And this helps your position how?
Your head describes how your head rotates around the Sun.
No, your head is rotating around the Sun, and it contains a description relating the ideas of "head" and "Sun". You are confusing head 1 (the real head) with head 2 (the "head" pictured inside head 1), as well as Sun 1 (the real Sun) and Sun 2 (the "Sun" pictured inside head 1).
No, I'm not confusing them. They are different things. Yet the model simulates the real thing, which means the following (instead of magical aboutness): By examining the model it's possible to discover new properties of its real counterpart, that were not apparent when the model was being constructed, and that can't be observed directly (or it's just harder to do), yet can be computed from the model.
Indeed. Although more precisely, examining the model merely suggests or predicts these "new" (rather, previously undiscovered, unnoticed, or unobservable) properties.
That is what I mean by isomorphism between model and territory. The common usage of "about", however, projects an intention onto this isomorphism - a link that can only exist in the mind of the observer, not the similarity of shapes between one physical process and another.
Since agent's possible actions are one of the things in the territory captured by the model, it's possible to use the model to select an action leading to a preferable outcome, and to perform thus selected action, determining the territory to conform with the plan. The correspondence between the preferred state of the world in the mind and the real world is ensured by this mechanism for turning plans into actuality. Pathologies aside, or course.
I don't disagree with anything you've just said, but it does nothing to support the idea of an isomorphism inherently meaning that one thing is "about" another.
If I come across a near-spherical rock that resembles the moon, does this make the rock "about" the moon? If I find another rock that is shaped the same, does that mean it is about the moon? The first rock? Something else entirely?
The :"aboutness" of a thing can't be in the thing, and that applies equally to thermostats and humans.
The (external) aboutness of a thermostat's actions don't reside in the thermostat's map, and humans are deluded when they project that the (external) aboutness of their own actions actually resides within the same map they're using to decide those actions. It is merely a sometimes-useful (but often harmful) fiction.
Taboo "aboutness" already. However unfathomably confused the philosophic and folk usage of this word is doesn't interest me much. What I mean by this word I described in these comments, and this usage seems reasonably close to the usual one, which justifies highjacking the word for the semi-technical meaning rather than inventing a new one. This is also the way meaning/aboutness is developed in formal theories of semantics.
So, you are saying that you have no argument with my position, because you have not been using either "about" or "preference" with their common usage?
If that is the case, why couldn't you simply say that, instead of continued argument and posturing about your narrower definition of the words? ISTM you could have pointed that out days ago and saved us all a lot of time.
This is also not the first time where I have been reducing the common usage of a word (e.g. "should") and then had you argue that I was wrong, based on your own personal meaning of the word.
Since I have no way of knowing in advance all of the words you have chosen to redefine in your specialized vocabulary, would it be too much to ask if you point out which words you are treating as specialized when you argue that my objection to (or reduction of) the common meaning of the word is incorrect, because it does not apply to your already-reduced personal version of the word?
Then, I could simply nod, and perhaps ask for your reduction in the case where I do not have a good one already, and we would not need to have an extended argument where we are using utterly incompatible definitions for such words as "about", "preference", and "should."
Indeed. If this didn't work then there wouldn't be any practical point in modeling physics!
To the (unknowable*) extent that the portion of my map labelled "territory" is an accurate reflection of the relevant portion of the territory, do I get to say that my preferences are "about" the territory (implicitly including disclaimers like "as mediated by the map")?
* due at the very least to Matrix/simulation scenarios
You can say it all you want, it just won't make it true. ;-) Your preference is "about" your experience, just as the thermostat's heating and cooling preferences are "about" the temperature of its sensor, relative to its setting.
For there to be an "about", there has to be another observer, projecting a relationship of intention onto the two things. It's a self-applied mind projection -- a "strange loop" in your model -- to assert that you can make such statements about your own preferences, like a drawing of Escher wherein Escher is pictured, making the drawing. The whole thing only makes sense within the surface of the paper.
(Heck, it's probably a similar strange loop to make statements about one's self in general, but this probably doesn't lead to the same kind of confusion and behavioral problems that result from making assertions about one's preferences.... No, wait, actually, yes it does! Self-applied nominalizations, like "I'm bad at math" are an excellent example. Huh. I keep learning interesting new things in this discussion.)
That's one way of writing. Another is to edit what you intend to post before you click 'comment'.