I think the best pointer for gears-level as it is used nowadays is John Wentworth’s post Gears vs Behavior. And in this summary comment, he explicitly says that the definition is the opposite of a black box, and that gears-level vs black box is a binary distinction.
Gears-level models are the opposite of black-box models.
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One important corollary to this (from a related comment): gears/no gears is a binary distinction, not a sliding scale.
As for the original question, I feel that “mechanistic” can be applied to models that are just one neat equation but with no moving parts, such that you don’t know how to alter the equation when the underlying causal process.
If mechanistic indeed means the opposite of black-box, then in principle we could replace gears-level model.
Huh. That’s a neat distinction. It doesn’t feel quite right, and in particular I notice that in practice there absolutely super duper very much is a sliding scale of gears-ness. But the “no black box” thing does tie together some things nicely. I like it.
A simple counterpoint: There’s a lot of black box in what a “gear” is when you talk about gears in a box. Are we talking about physical gears operating with quantum mechanics to create physical form? A software program such that these are basically data structures? A hypothetical universe in which things actually in fact magically operate according to classical mechanics and things like mass just inherently exist without a quantum infrastructure? And yet, we can and do black-box that level in order to have a completely gears-like model of the gears-in-a-box.
My guess is you have to fuse this black box thing with relevance. And as John Vervaeke points out, relevance is functionally incomputable, at least for humans.
I think the best pointer for gears-level as it is used nowadays is John Wentworth’s post Gears vs Behavior. And in this summary comment, he explicitly says that the definition is the opposite of a black box, and that gears-level vs black box is a binary distinction.
As for the original question, I feel that “mechanistic” can be applied to models that are just one neat equation but with no moving parts, such that you don’t know how to alter the equation when the underlying causal process.
If mechanistic indeed means the opposite of black-box, then in principle we could replace gears-level model.
Huh. That’s a neat distinction. It doesn’t feel quite right, and in particular I notice that in practice there absolutely super duper very much is a sliding scale of gears-ness. But the “no black box” thing does tie together some things nicely. I like it.
A simple counterpoint: There’s a lot of black box in what a “gear” is when you talk about gears in a box. Are we talking about physical gears operating with quantum mechanics to create physical form? A software program such that these are basically data structures? A hypothetical universe in which things actually in fact magically operate according to classical mechanics and things like mass just inherently exist without a quantum infrastructure? And yet, we can and do black-box that level in order to have a completely gears-like model of the gears-in-a-box.
My guess is you have to fuse this black box thing with relevance. And as John Vervaeke points out, relevance is functionally incomputable, at least for humans.