Thanks for your comment, but I think it misses the mark somewhat.
While googling to find someone who expresses a straw-man position in the real-world is a form of straw-manning itself, this comment goes further to misrepresent a colloquial use of the word “magical” to mean literal (supernatural) “magic”.
While I haven’t read the book referenced, the quotes provided do not give enough context to claim that the author doesn’t mean what he obviously means (to me at least) that the development of an emergent phenomena seems magical… does it not seem magical? Seeming magical is not a claim that something is not reducible to its component parts, it just means it’s not immediately reducible without some thorough investigation into the mechanisms at work. Part and parcel of the definition of emergence is that it is a non-magical (bottom-up) way of understanding phenomena that seem remarkable (magical), which is why he uses a clearly non-supernatural system like an anthill to illustrate it.
Despite all this, the purpose of the post was to give a clear definition of emergence that doesn’t fall into Yudkowsky’s strawman—not a claim that no one has ever used the word loosely in the past. As conceded in the preamble (paraphrasing) I don’t expect something written 18 years ago to perfectly reflect the conceptual landscape of today.
Despite all this, the purpose of the post was to give a clear definition of emergence that doesn’t fall into Yudkowsky’s strawman
I am taking Eliezer’s word for it that he has encountered people seriously using the word “emergence” in the way that he criticises, that it is not a straw man. The sources I found bolster that view. (In the Steven Johnson interview I took him to be using “magical” figuratively, but as various people have pointed out, if someone thinks the world is weird, they’re weird for thinking that the world should carry on behaving just like the tiny fragment of it they know about so far.) To respond by inventing a different concept and calling it by the same name does not bear on the matter.
This is an error I see people making over and over. They disagree with some criticism of an idea, but instead of arguing against that criticism, they come up with a different idea and use the same name for it. This leaves the criticism still standing. Witness the contortions people go through to defend a named theory of causal reasoning (CDT, EDT, etc.) by changing the theory and keeping the same name. That is not a defence of the theory, but a different theory. That different theory may be a useful new development! But that is what it is, not a defence of the original theory.
This is an error I see people making over and over… That different theory may be a useful new development! But that is what it is, not a defence of the original theory.
I think this is the crux of our disagreement. Yudkowsky was denying the usefulness of a term entirely because some people use it vaguely. I am trying to provide a less vague and more useful definition of the term—not to say Yudkowsky is unjustified in criticising the use of the term, but that he is unjustified in writing it off completely because of some superficial flaws in presentation, or some unrefined aspects of the concept.
An error that I see happening often is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and I’ve read people on Less Wrong (even Yudkowsky I think, though I can’t remember where, sorry) write in support of ideas like “Error Correction” as a virtue and Bayesian updating whereby we take criticisms as an opportunity to refine a concept rather than writing it off completely.
I am trying to take part in that process, and I think Yudkowsky would have been better served had he done the same—suggested a better definition that is useful.
Thanks for your comment, but I think it misses the mark somewhat.
While googling to find someone who expresses a straw-man position in the real-world is a form of straw-manning itself, this comment goes further to misrepresent a colloquial use of the word “magical” to mean literal (supernatural) “magic”.
While I haven’t read the book referenced, the quotes provided do not give enough context to claim that the author doesn’t mean what he obviously means (to me at least) that the development of an emergent phenomena seems magical… does it not seem magical? Seeming magical is not a claim that something is not reducible to its component parts, it just means it’s not immediately reducible without some thorough investigation into the mechanisms at work. Part and parcel of the definition of emergence is that it is a non-magical (bottom-up) way of understanding phenomena that seem remarkable (magical), which is why he uses a clearly non-supernatural system like an anthill to illustrate it.
Despite all this, the purpose of the post was to give a clear definition of emergence that doesn’t fall into Yudkowsky’s strawman—not a claim that no one has ever used the word loosely in the past. As conceded in the preamble (paraphrasing) I don’t expect something written 18 years ago to perfectly reflect the conceptual landscape of today.
I am taking Eliezer’s word for it that he has encountered people seriously using the word “emergence” in the way that he criticises, that it is not a straw man. The sources I found bolster that view. (In the Steven Johnson interview I took him to be using “magical” figuratively, but as various people have pointed out, if someone thinks the world is weird, they’re weird for thinking that the world should carry on behaving just like the tiny fragment of it they know about so far.) To respond by inventing a different concept and calling it by the same name does not bear on the matter.
This is an error I see people making over and over. They disagree with some criticism of an idea, but instead of arguing against that criticism, they come up with a different idea and use the same name for it. This leaves the criticism still standing. Witness the contortions people go through to defend a named theory of causal reasoning (CDT, EDT, etc.) by changing the theory and keeping the same name. That is not a defence of the theory, but a different theory. That different theory may be a useful new development! But that is what it is, not a defence of the original theory.
I think this is the crux of our disagreement. Yudkowsky was denying the usefulness of a term entirely because some people use it vaguely. I am trying to provide a less vague and more useful definition of the term—not to say Yudkowsky is unjustified in criticising the use of the term, but that he is unjustified in writing it off completely because of some superficial flaws in presentation, or some unrefined aspects of the concept.
An error that I see happening often is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and I’ve read people on Less Wrong (even Yudkowsky I think, though I can’t remember where, sorry) write in support of ideas like “Error Correction” as a virtue and Bayesian updating whereby we take criticisms as an opportunity to refine a concept rather than writing it off completely.
I am trying to take part in that process, and I think Yudkowsky would have been better served had he done the same—suggested a better definition that is useful.