@the gears to ascension thanks for reminding me. I have come to really dislike obscurantism and layers of pointless obfuscation, but explaining also takes effort and so it is easy to fall back on tired tropes and witticisms. I want to set an example that I would prefer to follow.
In lots of philosophical teaching there is the idea that “what is on the surface is not all there is”—famously, the opening of the Dao De Jing reads “The dao that can be spoken of is not the [essence, true nature, underlying law or principle] of the dao, the name that can be named is not the [essence, …] of the name. Namelessness is the birth of everything, to name is to nurture and mother everything. Therefore the [essence, …] of lacking desire is to see the [elegance, art, beauty, wonder, miniscule details] of things, and the [essence, …] of desire is to see things at their extremes. These two are from the same root but called different things, together they are called [understanding, truth, secret, order]. Finding [understanding, …] within [understanding, …] is the key to all manner of [elegance, …].”
Similarly there are ideas in buddhism usually expressed something like “the true appearances of things are not true appearances. Therefore, they are called true appearances.” (cannot quite source this quote, possibly a misinterpretation or mishearing) The focus here is on some proposed duality between “appearance” and “essence”, which is related to the Platonic concepts of form and ideal. To make it very literal, one could find appropriate buddhist garments, imitate the motions and speech of monks, and sit for a long time daydreaming every day. Most of us would not consider this “becoming a buddhist”.
In my view the interpretation of these phrases is something like: “things that can be spoken of, imitated, or acted out are the product of an inner quality. The quality is the thing that we want to learn or avoid. Therefore, confusing the products of some inner quality with the quality itself is a mistake. One should instead seek to understand the inner quality over mere appearances.” Again, learning the wisdom of a wise judge probably does not involve buying a gavel, practicing your legal latin, or walking around in long robes.
There are similar ideas behind labelling and naming, where the context of a name is often just as important as the thing that is being named. So the words “I pronounce you man and wife...” can be spoken on a schoolyard or in a church, by a kindergartener or a priest, It is that context that imbues those words with the quality of “an actual marriage pronouncement”, which is important for determining if the speech-act of marrying two people has occurred. What I’m trying to point at here is a transposition of those ideas into the context of labelling neurons, features etc., where it may be that the context (i.e. the discarded parts) of any given activation have just as if not more information than the part we have labelled in itself. To be clear, I could very well be wrong in the specific SAE case, I just wanted to flesh out a thought I had.
@the gears to ascension thanks for reminding me. I have come to really dislike obscurantism and layers of pointless obfuscation, but explaining also takes effort and so it is easy to fall back on tired tropes and witticisms. I want to set an example that I would prefer to follow.
In lots of philosophical teaching there is the idea that “what is on the surface is not all there is”—famously, the opening of the Dao De Jing reads “The dao that can be spoken of is not the [essence, true nature, underlying law or principle] of the dao, the name that can be named is not the [essence, …] of the name. Namelessness is the birth of everything, to name is to nurture and mother everything. Therefore the [essence, …] of lacking desire is to see the [elegance, art, beauty, wonder, miniscule details] of things, and the [essence, …] of desire is to see things at their extremes. These two are from the same root but called different things, together they are called [understanding, truth, secret, order]. Finding [understanding, …] within [understanding, …] is the key to all manner of [elegance, …].”
Similarly there are ideas in buddhism usually expressed something like “the true appearances of things are not true appearances. Therefore, they are called true appearances.” (cannot quite source this quote, possibly a misinterpretation or mishearing) The focus here is on some proposed duality between “appearance” and “essence”, which is related to the Platonic concepts of form and ideal. To make it very literal, one could find appropriate buddhist garments, imitate the motions and speech of monks, and sit for a long time daydreaming every day. Most of us would not consider this “becoming a buddhist”.
In my view the interpretation of these phrases is something like: “things that can be spoken of, imitated, or acted out are the product of an inner quality. The quality is the thing that we want to learn or avoid. Therefore, confusing the products of some inner quality with the quality itself is a mistake. One should instead seek to understand the inner quality over mere appearances.” Again, learning the wisdom of a wise judge probably does not involve buying a gavel, practicing your legal latin, or walking around in long robes.
There are similar ideas behind labelling and naming, where the context of a name is often just as important as the thing that is being named. So the words “I pronounce you man and wife...” can be spoken on a schoolyard or in a church, by a kindergartener or a priest, It is that context that imbues those words with the quality of “an actual marriage pronouncement”, which is important for determining if the speech-act of marrying two people has occurred. What I’m trying to point at here is a transposition of those ideas into the context of labelling neurons, features etc., where it may be that the context (i.e. the discarded parts) of any given activation have just as if not more information than the part we have labelled in itself. To be clear, I could very well be wrong in the specific SAE case, I just wanted to flesh out a thought I had.