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Phlogiston is not necessarily a bad thing. Concepts are utilized in reasoning to reduce and structure search space. Concepts can be placed in correspondence with multitude of contexts, selecting a branch with required properties, which correlate with its usage. In this case active 'phlogiston' concept correlates with presence of fire. Unifying all processes that exhibit fire under this tag can help in development of induction contexts. Process of this refinement includes examination of protocols which include 'phlogiston' concept. It's just not a causal model, which can rigorously predict nontrivial results through deduction.
In response to
Fake Causality
More than six years late, but better late than never...
'Concepts are utilized in reasoning to reduce and structure search space' - anyone have any references or ideas for further developments of this line of thought? Seems very interesting and related to the philosophical idea of abduction or inference to the best explanation. (Perhaps the relation is one of justification.)
Also, since I find the OP compelling despite this point, I would be interested to see how far they can be reconciled.
My guess, loosely expressed, is that the stuff in Eliezer's OP above about the importance of good bookkeeping to prevent update messages bouncing back is sound, and should be implemented in designing intelligent systems, but some additional, more abductionesque process could be carefully laid on top. And when interpreting human reasoning, we should perhaps try to learn to distinguish whether, in a given case of a non-predictive empirical belief, the credence comes from bad bookkeeping, in which case it's illegitimate, or an abductive process which may be legitimate, and indeed may be legitimated along the lines of Vladimir's tantalizing hint in the parent comment.
In response to
White Lies
The breakup was a good thing for other reasons, but I still regret not lying to her about what I thought of the play.
Why? Best case scenario is she keeps taking you to unenjoyable plays until you find you have to end the relationship yourself anyway or finally tell her the truth. Out of all the things in a relationship whose end was "a good thing for other reasons", one argument about whether a play was any good seems like a trivial thing to regret.
I can't favour lies as such. I am however on board with people honestly communicating the connotation that they care how you feel at the expense of the denotational literal meaning of their words.
In lies, the intention is not to soften but to deceive. So I don't even like the phrase "white lie". It's like, if you're going to stab me in the back, is it better if it's with a white knife?
'It's like, if you're going to stab me in the back, is it better if it's with a white knife?'
It's not like that at all! 'Deceive' isn't a dirty word - i.e. it doesn't automatically mean something that is bad to do. 'Stabbing in the back', on the other hand, seems to. 'He kindly deceived me' may sound odd, but not at all self-contradictory like 'He kindly stabbed me in the back' (metaphorical meaning intended, of course). It seems perfectly reasonable to me to think that deception is sometimes a very decent, kind, considerate practice to engage in. The idea that it's automatically bad seems childish to me.
I also discovered I was like this as a teenager -- that I had an extremely malleable identity. I think it was related to being very empathetic -- I just accepted whichever world view the person I was speaking with came with, and I think in my case this might have been related to reading a lot growing up, so that it seemed that a large fraction of my total life experience were the different voices of the different authors that I had read. (Reading seems to require quickly assimilating the world view of whomever is first person.)
I also didn't make much distinction between something that could be true and something that was true. I don't know why this was. or if it is related to the first thing. But if I thought about a fact, and it didn't feel currently jarring with anything else readily in mind, it seemed just as true as anything else and I was likely to speak it. So a few times after a conversation, I would shake my head and wonder why I had just said something so absurdly untrue, as though I had believed it.
In my early twenties, I found I needed to create a fixed world view -- in fact, I felt like I was going crazy. Maybe I was, because different world views were colliding and I couldn't hold them separate when action was required (like choosing an actual job) rather than just idle conversation.
That's why I gravitated towards physical materialism. I needed something fixed, a territory behind all of these crazy maps. I think that the map that I have now is pretty good, and well-integrated with the territory, but it took 3-5 years. I'm still flexible with understanding other world views. For example, I was in a workshop a few days ago where we needed to defend different views, and I received one that was marginally morally reprehensible. I was the only one in my group able to defend it. (It wasn't such a useful skill there, I think most people just assumed I had that view, which is unfortunate, but I didn't mind -- if it was important to signal correctly at this workshop I would have lied and said I couldn't relate.)
This is interesting, particularly in connection with your grativation towards materialism - thanks for sharing.
In response to
White Lies
I'm a bit confused by an evangelist for lying. I can see why a person would be a defector, but why on earth would you profess it?
An extended answer to your question is given in the original post - the post is all about answering that question, and it seems very clearly written to me. So I think you're being silly.
In response to
White Lies
Lying is acceptable when done to protect your life or livelihood, but for most of our lives, most opportunities to tell lies won't be in situations like that. You shouldn't lie to friends or romantic partners, because if you can't communicate with them honestly, they shouldn't be your friends/partners in the first place. And I'm not going to respect other people lying to me. Instead of teaching men to accept lies (as in your date example), teach them to accept a "no".
'if you can't communicate with them honestly, they shouldn't be your friends/partners in the first place'
I think that, insofar as this sounds plausible, it doesn't conflict with what Chris is saying in the OP. It seems perfectly possible for it to be the case that you can (and by and large do) communicate with someone honestly, simultaneously with it being the case that it's sometimes best to lie to them.
And FWIW, I think that realizing that lying is sometimes the way to go is part and parcel of a mature and able approach to interpersonal relationships. The other view seems to me both simplistic and morally smug. I find the complete lack of argument in your comment quite telling.
In response to
White Lies
I was at a meetup where we played the game Resistance, and one guy announced before the game began that he had a policy of never lying even when playing games like that.
That's exactly what I'd say too. And then, I'd commence the lying :-)
'Continue', you mean :-)
In response to
Logic as Probability
the law of the excluded middle (P(A|not-A)=0
Isn't this the LNC?
Yeah, this looks more like the Law of Non-Contradiction than the Law of Excluded Middle to me (which makes Manfred's jokey response seem doubly foolish).
It seems to me you are neglecting the proposition "A->B"
Do you know what truth tables are? The statement "A->B" can be represented on a truth table. A and B can be possible. not-A and B can be possible. Not-A and not-B can be possible. But A and not-B is impossible.
A->B and the four statements about the truth table are interchangeable. Even though when I talk about the truth table, I never need to use the "->" symbol. They contain the same content because A->B says that A and not-B is impossible, and saying that A and not-B is impossible says that A->B. For example, "it raining but not being wet outside is impossible."
In the language of probability, saying that P(B|A)=1 means that A and not-B is impossible, while leaving the other possibilities able to vary freely. The product rule says P(A and not-B) = P(A) * P(not-B | A). What's P(not-B | A) if P(B | A)=1? It's zero, because it's the negation of our assumption.
Writing out things in classical logic doesn't just mean putting P() around the same symbols. It means making things behave the same way.
'They contain the same content because A->B says that A and not-B is impossible, and saying that A and not-B is impossible says that A->B. For example, "it raining but not being wet outside is impossible."'
If you're talking about standard propositional logic here, without bringing in probabilistic stuff, then this is just wrong or at best very misleadingly put. All 'A->B' says is that it is not the case that A and not-B - nothing modal.
In response to
Flashes of Nondecisionmaking
This seems well below the standard often reached here. The writing seems very sloppy and telegraphic... for instance, of course we can say and think 'Body, I command you not to bleed'! It just won't do anything.
And: 'At the same time, there's a view that we have full control and choice over our actions in a given situation.' - This seems a bit like a strawman. What's the view exactly? Who has ever held it? And why should not being able to stop bleeding at will constitute a counterexample? No one normally classifies bleeding as an 'action'.
And regarding the two 'takeaways': you acknowledge that the first is probably not very new or important, and the second, as you've summed it up (second last paragraph), seems incredibly trite. We can't choose to not bleed. OK. Things that seem like choices aren't always so. OK, that seems true too, but also trite, and the bleeding thing doesn't seem like an example: who ever thought you could stop bleeding at will, who ever thought there was any choice?
I think Lesswrong can do better than this.
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I wrote an article listing the evidence for 54 suggested strategies for increasing happiness.
http://happierhuman.com/how-to-be-happy/
In general, my writing is more enthusiastic than the evidence would call for, but alas I must excite my readers and get the pageviews. My interpretation is that although some of the studies (e.g. keeping a gratitude journal improves symptoms of depression) may be flawed, follow 10 of them at the same time, and you'll likely have included something that works. No smoking guns, of course.
'my writing is more enthusiastic than the evidence would call for, but alas I must excite my readers and get the pageviews'
For my money, that's just contemptible. And there's no 'must' about it: you can, and probably should, stop doing that, even if it means you get less pageviews.