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Decius comments on Things philosophers have debated - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 October 2012 05:09AM

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Comment author: Decius 01 November 2012 11:17:26PM -1 points [-]

Lots of strawman in there- especially with the assumption that trivialism implies meta-trivialism.

Doesn't the strict rationalist have trouble with the truth value of statements conditioned on false statements?

You are looking for a philosophy which tells you what the indicated course of action is. That means that trivialism is poorly suited for you.

You are looking for a philosophy because you want your philosophy to tell you what you should do. That means that trivialism is the perfect philosophy for you to practice.

Trivialism is not nihilism, and only a perfect trivialist could believe that it was.

As a final koan: Why are the characteristics of trivialism that you list negative? So what? Why does that matter?

Comment author: DaFranker 02 November 2012 12:51:32PM 0 points [-]

Sorry, not my intention to strawman. It is alien to me.

Doesn't the strict rationalist have trouble with the truth value of statements conditioned on false statements?

No. Not bayesians, at any rate.

You are looking for a philosophy which tells you what the indicated course of action is. That means that trivialism is poorly suited for you.

What's an "indicated" course of action? How is it different from "what you should do", below?

You are looking for a philosophy because you want your philosophy to tell you what you should do. That means that trivialism is the perfect philosophy for you to practice.

What does trivialism predict? What does it tell us to do? Does trivialism let me predict anything more accurately than any other theory? A single instance of one thing that it would predict more accurately and/or reliably in reality than any other theory would make it instantly much less worthy of derision.

At present, it is to me nothing more than a humorous thought experiment similar to "This sentence is false."

Comment author: Decius comment score below threshold [+] (4 children)

Comment author: DaFranker 02 November 2012 02:21:51PM * 1 point [-]

[...] tools to determine which expected result to choose. Trivialism provides tools more well suited for deciding in the absence of information.

Whoa whoa whoa. Too much inferential distance. I don't even have the slightest remote idea of where to begin imagining how trivialism could possibly be used or imply anything even remotely like a tool for "choosing" anything.

Is there a "Learn Trivialism the Hard Way" thing somewhere that would help me bridge the gap between "X is true for all X" and actually choosing an action, a belief, anything at all? I'm obviously not going to gain much just from the wikipedia page, and googling doesn't seem to provide anything useful either.

Comment author: Decius 02 November 2012 02:48:21PM -1 points [-]

It is going to rain and it is not going to rain.

Do you bring your umbrella?

Personally, I am not a trivialist, because there are no arguments which convince me that trivialism is superior to the blended philosophy that I haphazardly adhere to. That could be because I don't understand it well enough to internalize it, or it could be because trivialism isn't a robust philosophy. Either way, as long as you are trying to use information to make informed choices, you aren't well served by trivialism. Trivialism is best used to make trivial choices; in pure trivialism all choices are trivial. If you believe that a choice is nontrivial, you are not trivialist.

Comment author: DaFranker 02 November 2012 03:01:29PM 0 points [-]

If you believe that a choice is nontrivial, you are not trivialist.

Is it then strawman to say that a good trivialist sees no important distinction between the decision to jump off a cliff and the decision to not jump off a cliff? After all, it is true that they can fly and it is true that they cannot fly - and if I'm interpreting your umbrella example correctly, this should imply that they might as well act as if they did fly with certainty.

Comment author: Decius 03 November 2012 12:44:03AM -1 points [-]

Is that line of though the absolute best line description of trivialism as you understand it?

What the pure, complete trivialist decides does not have much bearing on what an outside rationalist observer observes. It is true that if the trivialist decides to jump off the cliff, they will not jump off the cliff.

A hybrid trivialist rationalist might say "I can fly and I cannot fly. Since I can fly, I gain utility x from jumping off a cliff. Since I cannot fly, I gain negative utility y from jumping off of a cliff. My expected utility from jumping off of a cliff is x-y. This line of thought is neither pure trivialism nor pure rationalism.

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