= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, Apr. 13 - Apr. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (319)
Even if such a map would exist we could only have a map of that map in our head.
Even today a lot of physicist use "natural law" in a way where they aren't clear about map/territory distinctions.
But maps of maps are supposed to be potentially 100% accurate i.e. being copies of each other? Are you saying lossless copying is not possible through the senses?
If I read text and as a result neurons in my brain fire those two maps of ideas aren't identical copies of each other. Translating from one medium into another isn't loseless.
More fundamentally the point is that consciousness of abstraction isn't only important when you go from x to m(x) but also when you go from m(x) to n(m(x)). "consciousness of abstraction" is a term from Alfred Korzybski Science and Sanity which coined "the map is not the territory". An important part of sanity is to be conscious about the abstraction on which one operates.
As a computer programmer you might have a lot of levels:
Specification for the software, Scala code, Java Code, Assembler Code, Machine Code, the actual execution of the code.
If you ask a question such as "did autism increase in the last three decades" it's important to be conscious of what abstraction of autisms you are thinking about. There the number of autism diagnosis done by doctors. There an official definition of what autism happens to be. There's also a physical state of brains that corresponds to autism.
Consciousness of abstraction is also important when talking about things like inflation or unemployement. Official inflation numbers is a map of a more abstract inflation concept. Different countries measure their inflation slightly differently.