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The ladder of abstraction and giving examples

-6 Elo 16 August 2016 05:31AM

Original post:  http://bearlamp.com.au/examples/

When we talk about a concept or a point it's important to understand the ladder of abstraction.  Covered before on lesswrong and in other places as advice for communicators on how to bridge a gap of knowledge.

Knowing, understanding and feeling the ladder of abstraction prevents things like this:

  1. Speakers who bury audiences in an avalanche of data without providing the significance.
  2. Speakers who discuss theories and ideals, completely detached from real-world practicalities.

When you talk to old and wise people, they will sometimes give you stories of their lives.  "back in my day...".  Seeing that in perspective is a good way to realise that might be people's way of shifting around the latter of abstraction.  As an agenty-agent of agenty goodness - your job is to make sense of this occurrence.  The ladder of abstraction is very powerful when used effectively and very frustrating when you find yourself on the wrong side of it.

The flipside to this example is when people talk at a highly theoretical level.  I suspect this happens to philosophers, as well as hippies.  They are very good at being able to tell you about the connections between things that are "energy" or "desire", but lack the grounding to explain how that applies to real life.  I don't blame them.  One day I will be able to think completely abstractly.  Today is not that day.  Since today is not that day, it is my duty and your's to ask and specify.  To give the explanation of what the ladder of abstraction is, and then tell them you have no idea what they are talking about.  Or as for the example above - ask them to go up a level in the ladder of abstraction.  "If I were to learn something from your experiences - what would it be?".

Lesswrong doing it wrong

I care about adding the conceptual ladder of abstraction to the repertoire for a reason.  LW'ers are very good at paying attention to details.  A really powerful and important ability.  After all - the fifth virtue is argument, the tenth is precision.  If you can't be precise about what you are communication, you fail to value what we value.

Which is why it's great to see critical objections to what OP's provide as examples.

I object when defeating an example does not defeat the rule.  Our delightful OP may see their territory, stride forth and exclaim to have a map for this territory and a few similar mountains or valleys.  Correcting the mountains and valleys map mentioned doesn't change the rest of the territory and does not change the rest of the map.

This does matter. Recently a copy of this dissertation came around the slack - https://cryptome.org/2013/09/nolan-nctc.pdf.  It is a report detailing the ridiculous culture inside the CIA and other US government security institutions.  One of the biggest problems within that culture can be shown through this example (page 34 of the report):

The following exchange is a good example, told to me by a CIA analyst who was explaining the rules of baseball to visitors who didn’t know the game: 

Analyst A: So there are four bases-- 
Analyst B: -- Well, no, it’s really three bases plus home plate.
Analyst A: ... Okay, three bases plus home plate. The batter hits the ball and advances through the bases one by one— 
Analyst C: -- Well, no, it doesn’t have to be one base at a time.

And these ones on page 35:

The following excerpts from stories people have told me or that I witnessed further illustrate this concept: 

John: I see you’ve drawn a star on that draft. 
Bridget: Yeah, that’s just my doodle of choice. I just do it unconsciously sometimes. 
John: Don’t you mean subconsciously? 

Scott: Good morning! 
Employee in the parking lot: Well, I don’t know if it’s good, but here we are. 

Helene: I am so thirsty today! I seriously have a dehydration problem. 
Lucy: Actually, you have a hydration problem. 

Victoria: My hopes have been squashed like a pancake. 
James: Don’t you mean flattened like a pancake?

For those of us that don't have time to read 215 pages.  The point is that analyst culture does this.  A lot.  From the outside it might seem ridiculous.  We can intellectually confidently say that the analysts A, B and C in the first example were all right, and if they paid attention to the object of the situation they would skip the interruptions and get to the point of explaining how baseball works.  But that's not what it feels like when you are on the inside.

The report outlines that these things make analyst culture a difficult one to be a part of or be engaged in because of examples like these.

We do the same thing.  We nitpick at examples, and fight over irrelevant things.  If I were to change everyone's mind, I would rather see something like this:

No one denies that people have different metabolisms.

Statements including "no one denies that ..." are usually false.  Regardless, my goal here was to...  

Taken literally, yes. However these statements are not intended to be taken literally...

Turn into:

No one denies that people have different metabolisms.

My goal here was to ask people...

(*yes this is not a very good example of an example, this is an example of a turn of speech that was challenged, but the same effect of nitpicking on irrelevant details is present).

Nitpicking is not necessary.  

Sometimes we forget that we are all in the same boat together, racing down the river at the rate that we can uncover truth.  Sometimes we feel like we are in different boats racing each other.  In this sense it would be a good idea to compete and accuse each other of our failures on the journey to get ahead.  However we do not want to do that.

It's in our nature to compete, the human need to be right! But we don't need to compete against each other, we need to support each other to compete against Moloch, Akrasia, Entropy, Fallacies and biases (among others).

I am guilty myself.  In my personal life as well as on LW.  If I am laying blame, I blame myself for failing to point this out sooner, more than I blame anyone else for nitpicking examples.  

The plan of action.

Next time you go to comment; Next time I go to comment, think very carefully about if you can improve, if I can improve - the post I am commenting on, before I level my objections at it.  We want to make the world a better place.  People wiser, older, sharper and witter than me have already said it; "if you are looking for where to start...  you need only look in the mirror".

Meta: this took 3 hours to write.

Comments (3)

Internet Research (with tangent on intelligence analysis and collapse)

11 [deleted] 31 July 2013 04:58AM

Want to save time? Skip down to "I'm looking to compile a thread on Internet Research"!

Opinionated Preamble:

There is a lot of high level thinking on Less Wrong, which is great. It's done wonders to structure and optimize my own decisions. I think the political and futurology-related issues that Less Wrong cover can sometimes get out of sync with the reality and injustices of events in the immediate world. There are comprehensive treatments of how medical science is failing, or how academia cannot give unbiased results, and this is the milieu of programmers and philosophers in the middle-to-upper-class of the planet. I at least believe that this circle of awareness can be expanded, even if it's treading into mind-killing territory. If anything I want to give people a near-mode sense of the stakes aside from x-risk: all in all the x-risk scenarios I've seen Less Wrong fear the most, kill humanity somewhat instantly. A slower descent into violence and poverty is to me much more horrifying, because I might have to live in it and I don't know how. In a matter of fact, I have no idea of how to predict it.

This is one reason why I'm drawn to the Intelligence Operations performed by the military and crime units, among other things. Intelligence product delivery is about raw and immediate *fact*, and there is a lot of it. The problems featured in IntelOps are one of the few things rationality is good for - highly uncertain scenarios with one-off executions and messy or noisy feedback. Facts get lost in translation as messages are passed through, and of course the feeding and receiving fake facts are all a part of the job - but nevertheless, knowing *everything* *everywhere* is in the job description, and some form of rationality became a necessity.

It gets ugly. The demand for these kinds of skills often lie in industries that are highly competitive, violent, and illegal. I believe that once a close look is taken on how force and power is applied in practice then there isn't any pretending anymore that human evils are an accident.

Open Source Intelligence, or "OSINT", is the mining of data and facts from public information databases, news articles, codebases, journals. Although the amount of classified data dwarfs the unclassified, the size and scope of the unclassified is responsible for a majority of intelligence reports - and thus is involved in the great majority of executive decisions made by government entities. It's worth giving some thought as to how much that we know, that they do too. As illustrated in this expose, the processing of OSINT is a great big chunk of what modern intelligence is about aside from many other things. I think understanding how rationality as developed on Less Wrong can contribute to better IntelOps, and how IntelOps can feed the rationality community, would be awesome, but that's a post for another time.

--

The Show

Through my investigations into IntelOps I've noticed the emphasis on search. Good search.

I'm looking to compile a thread on Internet Research. I'm wondering if there is any wisdom on Less Wrong that can be taken advantage of here on how to become more effective searchers.  Here are some questions that could be answered specifically, but they are just guidelines - feel free to voice associated thoughts, we're exploring here.

  • Before actually going out and searching, what would be the most effective way of drafting and optimizing a collection plan? Are there any formal optimization models that inform our distribution of time and attention? Exploration vs exploitation comes to mind, but it would be worth formulating something specific. I heard that the multi-armed bandit problem is solved?
  • Do you have any links or resources regarding more effective search?
  • Do you have any experiences regarding internet research that you can share? Any patterns that you've noticed that have made you more effective at searching?
  • What are examples of closed-source information that are low-hanging fruit in terms of access (e.g. academic journals)? What are possible strategies for acquiring closed source data (e.g. enrolling in small courses at universities, e-mailing researchers, cohesion via the law/Freedom of Information Act, social engineering etc)?
  • I would like to hear from SEOs and software developers on what their interpretation of semantic web technologies and how they are going to affect end-users. I am somewhat unfamiliar with the semantic web, but from my understanding information that could not be indexed is now indexed; and new ontologies will emerge as this information is mined. What should an end-user expect and what opportunities will there be that didn't exist in the current generation of search?

That should be enough to get started. Below are some links that I have found useful with respect to Internet Research.

--

Meta-Search Engines or Assisted Search:

Summarizers:

Bots/Collectors/Automatic Filters:

Compilations and Directories:

Guides:

Practice:

I don't really care how you use this information, but I hope I've jogged some thinking of why it could be important.

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