It seems to me like the question “How much Rent?” is very easily answered. That’s what Bayes Rule does—it tells us exactly how much weight we should give evidence. I’m not sure the question can be answered any more specifically than the generalized formula of Bayes Rule without going into a specific example, for which you would have priors, likelihood ratios, etc.
The point of the post was that simply having the math is not enough. Knowing bayes rule plus say NS equations is mathematically equivalent to kvothe-style knowing the name of the wind, but thinking that’s the whole story totally misses the point that you don’t have an intuitive system 1 algorithm for predicting or manipulating the thing. The math is the core compressed truth of the matter, but you need to implement it in actual fast algorithms to actually get any use out of it.
Of course we can only talk about specific examples once we get to the level of algorithms, but I don’t see that being a problem because you still have specific beliefs even without good algorithms.
The point is that if we focus more on getting our algorithms fast and intuitive, we can get a lot more mileage out of the same belief. Theres a difference between spending 2 hours calculating the utility of applying different forces to a skateboard and actually being able to do a kick-flip.
That doesn’t make the NS equations wrong. True and fiction-level-utility-generating are not and should not be the same thing. Once you start asking them as separate questions, I think much of the problem of this post disappears.
The NS equations are not themselves wrong, naturally. However, a memorization of NS in a human brain is wrong in nearly the same sense that a copy of Microsoft Office compiled for x86 on an iPhone is wrong. Utility generation from correct beliefs relies on format as much as correctness.
By “wrong,” I meant “false,” “not true.” It’s interesting that the different meanings of the word “wrong” are similar to the categories interchanged in the post, though.
The main beef I have is that what you call “format” is not, in fact, mere format. It’s realio trulio a different set of information. It’s merely a repackaging of the statement “having different information matters,” obscured by using new definitions. Rather than thinking the edgy repackaging is a new thing, it’s more accurate and simpler to just appreciate the complexities of the original statement.
You’re right that I meant more than “mere format”. Let’s taboo the word. And for that matter “wrong” too.
Usually when we think of true information or true belief we consider only the belief itself (the NS equations). Beliefs only exist in contexts (human brains, software implementations, even ink and paper), and some of those contexts are not adequate in themselves to take advantage of the belief. It’s not a question of having different information. It’s a question of having inadequate computational resources. Or in another way of looking at it, it’s a question of having a capable, powerful computational context whose structure is not optimized for the problem at hand.
Right, but the NS equations are probably “wrong” enough to disqualify them as the “name of the wind”. That is, they’re continuum approximations to what are, at tiny scales, actually quantized substances governed by probabilistic laws. (MWI-QM fans, make the appropriate substitution for “probabilistic”; the point stands.) And it’s pretty easy to get chaotic turbulence in air flowing over a tree.
NS is very accurate. The point at which it might break down is on extremely tiny scales that don’t actually matter.
It also breaks down at sonic shockwakes, but not in a fatal way. NS divides by zero at sonic shockwaves and real air has a very short (but present) gradient. The macro predictions are identical beyond the precision of most measurements.
Also, NS is newtonian, so relativistic stuff breaks it.
I would not disqualify the NS based on a few innacuracies at extremes. It is the name of the wind for all practical purposes. You will not encounter the problems with it.
True. If we disregard the fact that humans take time to do computations, and disregard the information contained in restricting our solutions to e.g. fluid flow—reasonable since those things don’t seem much like “names”—our best “name of the X” is the standard model and general relativity, where X is pretty much anything.
Right, from this we get odds at which we should take bets on our beliefs. OP is asking something a little more like: How can we find more wagers to accept?
Not quite wagers. Is tensing the muscles in just the right way to swing a machete to cut something a wager? In some sense yes, but we don’t really think of it that way, and I don’t think we will become more effective from thinking of it that way. We think of it using words like ‘skill’ and ‘tool’. I think it is more effective to talk about how beliefs can be turned into skills than to discuss how skills relate to wagers.
It seems to me like the question “How much Rent?” is very easily answered. That’s what Bayes Rule does—it tells us exactly how much weight we should give evidence. I’m not sure the question can be answered any more specifically than the generalized formula of Bayes Rule without going into a specific example, for which you would have priors, likelihood ratios, etc.
The point of the post was that simply having the math is not enough. Knowing bayes rule plus say NS equations is mathematically equivalent to kvothe-style knowing the name of the wind, but thinking that’s the whole story totally misses the point that you don’t have an intuitive system 1 algorithm for predicting or manipulating the thing. The math is the core compressed truth of the matter, but you need to implement it in actual fast algorithms to actually get any use out of it.
Of course we can only talk about specific examples once we get to the level of algorithms, but I don’t see that being a problem because you still have specific beliefs even without good algorithms.
The point is that if we focus more on getting our algorithms fast and intuitive, we can get a lot more mileage out of the same belief. Theres a difference between spending 2 hours calculating the utility of applying different forces to a skateboard and actually being able to do a kick-flip.
That doesn’t make the NS equations wrong. True and fiction-level-utility-generating are not and should not be the same thing. Once you start asking them as separate questions, I think much of the problem of this post disappears.
The NS equations are not themselves wrong, naturally. However, a memorization of NS in a human brain is wrong in nearly the same sense that a copy of Microsoft Office compiled for x86 on an iPhone is wrong. Utility generation from correct beliefs relies on format as much as correctness.
By “wrong,” I meant “false,” “not true.” It’s interesting that the different meanings of the word “wrong” are similar to the categories interchanged in the post, though.
The main beef I have is that what you call “format” is not, in fact, mere format. It’s realio trulio a different set of information. It’s merely a repackaging of the statement “having different information matters,” obscured by using new definitions. Rather than thinking the edgy repackaging is a new thing, it’s more accurate and simpler to just appreciate the complexities of the original statement.
You’re right that I meant more than “mere format”. Let’s taboo the word. And for that matter “wrong” too.
Usually when we think of true information or true belief we consider only the belief itself (the NS equations). Beliefs only exist in contexts (human brains, software implementations, even ink and paper), and some of those contexts are not adequate in themselves to take advantage of the belief. It’s not a question of having different information. It’s a question of having inadequate computational resources. Or in another way of looking at it, it’s a question of having a capable, powerful computational context whose structure is not optimized for the problem at hand.
Right, but the NS equations are probably “wrong” enough to disqualify them as the “name of the wind”. That is, they’re continuum approximations to what are, at tiny scales, actually quantized substances governed by probabilistic laws. (MWI-QM fans, make the appropriate substitution for “probabilistic”; the point stands.) And it’s pretty easy to get chaotic turbulence in air flowing over a tree.
NS is very accurate. The point at which it might break down is on extremely tiny scales that don’t actually matter.
It also breaks down at sonic shockwakes, but not in a fatal way. NS divides by zero at sonic shockwaves and real air has a very short (but present) gradient. The macro predictions are identical beyond the precision of most measurements.
Also, NS is newtonian, so relativistic stuff breaks it.
I would not disqualify the NS based on a few innacuracies at extremes. It is the name of the wind for all practical purposes. You will not encounter the problems with it.
True. If we disregard the fact that humans take time to do computations, and disregard the information contained in restricting our solutions to e.g. fluid flow—reasonable since those things don’t seem much like “names”—our best “name of the X” is the standard model and general relativity, where X is pretty much anything.
Right, from this we get odds at which we should take bets on our beliefs. OP is asking something a little more like: How can we find more wagers to accept?
Not quite wagers. Is tensing the muscles in just the right way to swing a machete to cut something a wager? In some sense yes, but we don’t really think of it that way, and I don’t think we will become more effective from thinking of it that way. We think of it using words like ‘skill’ and ‘tool’. I think it is more effective to talk about how beliefs can be turned into skills than to discuss how skills relate to wagers.
Hm. OK. Not sure what the OP is trying to ask, to be honest. But fair.