It seems that the broken hand example is similar to situations where we have a deep understanding of the mechanics of how something works. In those situations, it makes more sense to say “this leg is broken; it cannot do 99% of the normal activities of daily living.” And the doctor can probably fix the leg with pins and a cast without much debate over exactly how disabled the patient is.
Yeah, having or not having a gears model makes a big difference. If you have the model, you can observe each gear separately, for example look at a hurting hand and say how damaged are bones, ligaments, muscles, skin. If you don’t have a gears model, then there is just something that made you pay attention to the entire thing, so in effect you kinda evaluate “how much this matches the thing I have in my mind”.
For example, speaking of intelligence, I have heard a theory that it is a combination of neuron speed and short term memory size. No idea whether this is correct or not, but using it as a thought experiment, suppose that it is true and one day we find out exactly how it works… maybe that day we will stop measuring IQ and start measuring neuron speed and short term memory size separately. Perhaps instead of giving people a test, we will measure the neuron speed directly using some device. We will find people who are exceptionally high at one of these things and low at the other, and observing them will allow us to even better understand how this all works. (Why haven’t we found such people already, e.g. using factor analysis? Maybe they are rare in nature, because the two things strongly correlate. Or maybe it is very difficult to distinguish them by looking at the outputs.)
Similarly, a gears model might split the diagnosis of ADHD into three separate numbers, and autism into seven. (Numbers completely made up.) Until then, we only have one number representing the “general weirdness in this direction”. Or a boolean representing “this person seems weird”.
It seems that the broken hand example is similar to situations where we have a deep understanding of the mechanics of how something works. In those situations, it makes more sense to say “this leg is broken; it cannot do 99% of the normal activities of daily living.” And the doctor can probably fix the leg with pins and a cast without much debate over exactly how disabled the patient is.
Yeah, having or not having a gears model makes a big difference. If you have the model, you can observe each gear separately, for example look at a hurting hand and say how damaged are bones, ligaments, muscles, skin. If you don’t have a gears model, then there is just something that made you pay attention to the entire thing, so in effect you kinda evaluate “how much this matches the thing I have in my mind”.
For example, speaking of intelligence, I have heard a theory that it is a combination of neuron speed and short term memory size. No idea whether this is correct or not, but using it as a thought experiment, suppose that it is true and one day we find out exactly how it works… maybe that day we will stop measuring IQ and start measuring neuron speed and short term memory size separately. Perhaps instead of giving people a test, we will measure the neuron speed directly using some device. We will find people who are exceptionally high at one of these things and low at the other, and observing them will allow us to even better understand how this all works. (Why haven’t we found such people already, e.g. using factor analysis? Maybe they are rare in nature, because the two things strongly correlate. Or maybe it is very difficult to distinguish them by looking at the outputs.)
Similarly, a gears model might split the diagnosis of ADHD into three separate numbers, and autism into seven. (Numbers completely made up.) Until then, we only have one number representing the “general weirdness in this direction”. Or a boolean representing “this person seems weird”.