I’m not sure we are in disagreement. No one is negating that the territory shapes the maps (which are part of the territory). The central point is just that our perception of the territory is shaped by our perceptors, etc., and need not be the same. It is still conceivable that, due to how the territory shapes this process (due to the most likely perceptors to be found in evolved creatures, etc.), there ends up being a strong convergence so that all maps represent isomorphically certain territory properties. But this is not a given, and needs further argumentation. After all, it is conceivable for a territory to exist that incentivizes the creation of two very different and non-isomorphic types of maps. But of course, you can argue our territory is not such, by looking at its details.
Where “joint carvy-ness” will end up being, I suspect, related to “gears that move the world,” i.e., the bits of the territory that can do surprisingly much, have surprisingly much reach, etc.
I think this falls for the same circularity I point at in the post: you are defining “naturalness of a partition” as “usefulness to efficiently affect / control certain other partitions”, so you already need to care about the latter. You could try to say something like “this one partition is useful for many partitions”, but I think that’s physically false, by combinatorics (in all cases you can always build as many partitions that are affected by another one). More on these philosophical subtleties here: Why does generalization work?
I’m not sure we are in disagreement. No one is negating that the territory shapes the maps (which are part of the territory). The central point is just that our perception of the territory is shaped by our perceptors, etc., and need not be the same. It is still conceivable that, due to how the territory shapes this process (due to the most likely perceptors to be found in evolved creatures, etc.), there ends up being a strong convergence so that all maps represent isomorphically certain territory properties. But this is not a given, and needs further argumentation. After all, it is conceivable for a territory to exist that incentivizes the creation of two very different and non-isomorphic types of maps. But of course, you can argue our territory is not such, by looking at its details.
I think this falls for the same circularity I point at in the post: you are defining “naturalness of a partition” as “usefulness to efficiently affect / control certain other partitions”, so you already need to care about the latter. You could try to say something like “this one partition is useful for many partitions”, but I think that’s physically false, by combinatorics (in all cases you can always build as many partitions that are affected by another one). More on these philosophical subtleties here: Why does generalization work?