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When I was recently celebrating something, I was asked to share my favorite memory. I realized I didn't have one. Then (since I have been studying Naive Set Theory a LOT), I got tetris-effected and as soon as I heard the words "I don't have a favorite" come out of my mouth, I realized that favorite memories (and in fact favorite lots of other things) are partially ordered sets. Some elements are strictly better than others but not all elements are comparable (in other words, the set of all memories ordered by favorite does not have a single maximal element). This gives me a nice framing to think about favorites in the future and shows that I'm generalizing what I'm learning by studying math which is also nice!
I noticed this too, but when trying to rank music based on my taste. I wonder if when people are asked to give their favorite (of something), do they just randomly give a maximal element, or do they have an implicit aggregate function that kind of converts the partial order into a total order
Hmm, my guess is that people initially pick a random maximal element and then when they have said it once, it becomes a cached thought so they just say it again when asked. I know I did (and do) this for favorite color. I just picked one that looks nice (red) and then say it when asked because it's easier than explaining that I don't actually have a favorite. I suspect that if you do this a bunch / from a young age, the concept of doing this merges with the actual concept of favorite.
I just remembered that Stallman also realized the same thing:
I do not have a favorite food, a favorite book, a favorite song, a favorite joke, a favorite flower, or a favorite butterfly. My tastes don't work that way.
In general, in any area of art or sensation, there are many ways for something to be good, and they cannot be compared and ordered. I can't judge whether I like chocolate better or noodles better, because I like them in different ways. Thus, I cannot determine which food is my favorite.
I agree with most of this but I partially (hah!) disagree with the part that they cannot be compared at all. Only some elements can be compared (e.g. I like the memory of hiking more than the memory of feeling sick.) But not all can be compared.
Someone recently tried to sell me on the Ontological Argument for God which begins with "God is that for which nothing greater can be conceived." For the reasons you described, this is completely nonsensical, but it was taken seriously for a long time (even by Bertrand Russell!), which made me realize how much I took modern logic for granted
1Do adults actually ask each other “What’s your favorite…” whatever? It sounds to me like the sort of question an adult asks a child in order to elicit a “childish” answer, whereupon the adults in the room can nod and wink at each other to the effect of “isn’t that sweeet?” so as to maintain the power differential.
If I am faced with such a question, I ignore the literal meaning and take it to be a conversation hook (of a somewhat unsatisfactory sort, see above) and respond by talking more generally about the various sorts of whatever that I favour, and ignoring the concept of a “favorite”.
"Fantasia: The Sorcerer's Apprentice": A parable about misaligned AI told in three parts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4M-54cEduo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-W8vUXRfxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFiWEjCedzY
Best watched with audio on.
A great example of more dakka: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/health/217-covid-vaccines.html
(Someone got 217 covid shots to sell vaccine cards on the black market; they had high immune levels!)
So, someone volunteered to test the safety of the vaccine, in an extreme way. Thank you for advancing science!
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