You’re right about omniscience. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that?
Your pulley system belief isn’t really paying rent by any definition. I don’t see how demanding algorithms from your beliefs changes that.
The point wasn’t that we should not believe things that don’t pay rent (that’s quite hard). It was that we should not stop at simply having a correct formulation of the behavior of something. We should take it as far into the realm of useful algorithms as possible before we say “ok, this belief is paying rent”.
The pulley system belief does pay its rent quite easily—it explains my having a memory of doing so. Any other theory requires further intervention which contains a lot more information than the theory that I simply did it and happened to remember doing it.
That’s what rent is about. It’s not a rent of utility, but of credence.
You’re right about omniscience. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that?
Your pulley system belief isn’t really paying rent by any definition. I don’t see how demanding algorithms from your beliefs changes that.
The point wasn’t that we should not believe things that don’t pay rent (that’s quite hard). It was that we should not stop at simply having a correct formulation of the behavior of something. We should take it as far into the realm of useful algorithms as possible before we say “ok, this belief is paying rent”.
The pulley system belief does pay its rent quite easily—it explains my having a memory of doing so. Any other theory requires further intervention which contains a lot more information than the theory that I simply did it and happened to remember doing it.
That’s what rent is about. It’s not a rent of utility, but of credence.