Why do we even care about what specifically Eliezer Yudkowsky was trying to do in that post? Isn’t “is it more helpful to try to find the simplest boundary around a list or the simplest coherent explanation of intuitions?” a much better question?
Focus on what matters, work on actually solving problems instead of trying to just win arguments.
The answer to your question is “it depends on the situation”. There are some situations in which are intuitions contain some useful, hidden information which we can extract with this method. There are some situation in which our intuitions differ and it makes sense to consider a bunch of separate lists.
But, regardless, it is simply the case that when Eliezer says
“Perhaps you come to me with a long list of the things that you call “art” and “not art”″
and
“It feels intuitive to me to draw this boundary, but I don’t know why—can you find me an intension that matches this extension? Can you give me a simple description of this boundary?”
he is not talking about “our intuitions”, but a single list provided by a single person.
(It is also the case that I would rather talk about that than whatever useless thing I would instead be doing with my time.)
Why do we even care about what specifically Eliezer Yudkowsky was trying to do in that post? Isn’t “is it more helpful to try to find the simplest boundary around a list or the simplest coherent explanation of intuitions?” a much better question?
Focus on what matters, work on actually solving problems instead of trying to just win arguments.
The answer to your question is “it depends on the situation”. There are some situations in which are intuitions contain some useful, hidden information which we can extract with this method. There are some situation in which our intuitions differ and it makes sense to consider a bunch of separate lists.
But, regardless, it is simply the case that when Eliezer says
“Perhaps you come to me with a long list of the things that you call “art” and “not art”″
and
“It feels intuitive to me to draw this boundary, but I don’t know why—can you find me an intension that matches this extension? Can you give me a simple description of this boundary?”
he is not talking about “our intuitions”, but a single list provided by a single person.
(It is also the case that I would rather talk about that than whatever useless thing I would instead be doing with my time.)