David Gross

Sequences

Notes on Virtues

Comments

Sorted by

We taboo resemblance all the time for things that refer to other things: Words, for example. The word "mouse" does not resemble a mouse, but we can usefully use the word as a reference. Words that resemble their references are a peculiar and remarkable tiny category (onomatopoeia) that are the exception to the rule.

If you thought your computer interface were an accurate picture of what is going on inside the computer, you might indeed go looking for a microscopic pointer somewhere in the wires. It's because you don't think this that you know to look for correspondences and representations instead. Hoffman's point is that we don't tend to do this with things like space, time, matter, etc.: we think those things in our interface-with-reality correspond to the same sorts of things in reality-under-the-hood (space, time, matter, etc.). He believes we're mistaken.

It's not nonsensical. It's an assertion that can be made sense of with a little effort.

Consider the user interface analogy. On your desktop there is a mouse pointer with which you can drag a file from here to there. In the underlying computer which executes the actions which are represented by this interface, there is nothing that resembles a pointer, a dragging action, or a file. That the interface associates certain activity in the hardware with certain things that appear on the desktop is a useful convention for us, but it is not one that was designed to give us an accurate notion of what is taking place inside the machine. Hoffman suggests that the same thing is true of the interface-reality we perceive and the real-reality underneath. The interface-reality was "designed" by natural selection to be a useful convention for us as we interact with the real-reality which is not apparent to us.

shame—no need to exacerbate such feelings if it can be avoided

 

Shame may be an important tool that people with dark traits can leverage to overcome those traits. Exacerbating it may in some cases be salutary. 

FWIW: I've added my summary of the answers here to my Notes on Industriousness.

To me, the phrase “I decided to trust her” throws an error. It’s the “decided” part that’s the problem: beliefs are not supposed to involve any “deciding”.

 

To trust is more than a passive cognitive reflection like a belief, it is also an action taken upon the world. This might be more easily seen if you consider the more awkward phrasing "I decided to extend my trust to her".

See e.g. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/62fx4bp4W2Bxn4bZJ/notes-on-optimism-hope-and-trust#Trust_vs__expectation_and_reliance 

“So convenient a thing to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do.” ―Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography Ⅳ, 1791)

“[T]he majority of men do not think in order to know the truth, but in order to assure themselves that the life which they lead, and which is agreeable and habitual to them, is the one which coincides with the truth.” ―Tolstoy (The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 1894)

“[A]n aim of philosophy is patiently and unremittingly to sustain the vigilance of reason in the presence of failure and in the presence of that which seems alien to it.” ―Karl Jaspers (Way to Wisdom, 1950)

“He who knows the truth is not equal to him who loves it, and he who loves it is not equal to him who delights in it.” ―Confucius (Analects Ⅵ.18)

“The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.” —Thomas Macaulay (“Lord Bacon” 1837)

Load More