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Bayeslisk comments on Open Thread for February 11 - 17 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Has anyone else had one of those odd moments when you've accidentally confirmed reductionism (of a sort) by unknowingly responding to a situation almost identically to the last time or times you encountered it? For my part, I once gave the same condolences to an acquaintance who was living with someone we both knew to be very unpleasant, and also just attempted to add the word for "tomato" in Lojban to my list of words after seeing the Pomodoro technique mentioned.
A freaky thing I once saw... when my daughter was about 3 there were certain things she responded to verbally, I can't remember what the thing was in this example, but something like me asking here "who is your rabbit?" and her replying "Kisses" (which was the name of her rabbit).
I had videoed some of this exchange and was playing it on a TV with her in the room. I was appalled to hear her responding "Kisses" upon hearing me on the TV saying "who is your favorite rabbit." Her response was extremely similar to her response on the video, tremendous overlap in timing tone and inflection. Maybe 20 to 50 ms off in timing (almost sounded like unison).
I really had the sense that she was a machine and it did not feel good.
After a brain surgery, my father developed Anterograde amnesia. Think Memento by Chris Nolan. His reactions to different comments/situations were always identical. If I were to mention a certain word, it would always invoke the same joke. Seeing his wife wearing a certain dress always produces the same witty comment. He was also equally amused by his wittiness every time.
For several months after the surgery he had to be kept on tight watch, and was prone to just do something that was routine pre-op, so we found a joke he finds extremely funny and which he hasn't heard before the surgery, and we would tell it every time we want him to forget where he was going. So, he would laugh for a good while, get completely disoriented, and go back to his sofa.
For a long while, we were unable to convince him that he had a problem, or even that he had the surgery (he would explain the scar away through some fantasy). And even when we manage, it lasts only for a minute or two.. Since then, I've developed several signals I would use if I found myself in an isomorphic situation. I had already read HPMoR by that time, but have discarded Harry's lip-biting as mostly pointless in real life.
These are both pretty much exactly what I'm thinking of! The feeling that someone (or you!) is/are a terrifyingly predictable black box.
My goal in life is to become someone so predictable that you can figure out what I'll do just by calculating what choice would maximize utility.
That seems eminently exploitable and consequently extremely dangerous. Safety and unexpected delight lie in unpredictability.
This doesn't seem related to reductionism to me, except in that most reductionists don't believe in Knightian free will.
Sort of in the sense of human minds being more like fixed black boxes that one might like to think. What's Knightian free will, though?
Knightian uncertainty is uncertainty where probabilities can't even be applied. I'm not convinced it exists. Some people seem to think free will is rescued by it; that the human mind could be unpredictable even in theory, and this somehow means it's "you" "making choices". This seems like deep confusion to me, and so I'm probably not expressing their position correctly.
Reductionism could be consistent with that, though, if you explained the mind's workings in terms of the simplest Knightian atomic thingies you could.
Can you give me some examples of what some people think constitutes Knightian uncertainty? Also: what do they mean by "you"? They seem to be postulating something supernatural.
Again, I'm not a good choice for an explainer of this stuff, but you could try http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1438
Thanks! I'll have a read through this.
I decided I should actually read the paper myself, and... as of page 7, it sure looks like I was misrepresenting Aaronson's position, at least. (I had only skimmed a couple Less Wrong threads on his paper.)
In my case, it seems more likely that the other person will remember that I'd said the same thing before.
In mine, too, at least for the first few seconds. Otherwise, knowing I had already responded a certain way, I would probably respond differently.