That’s an interesting point. I suppose it might be viable to acknowledge that the problem taken literally doesn’t require the prediction to be correct outside of the factual, but nonetheless claim that we should resolve the vagueness inherent in the question about what exactly the counterfactual is by constructing it to meet this condition. I wouldn’t necessarily be strongly against this—my issue is confusion about what an Oracle’s prediction necessarily entails.
Regarding, your notion about things being magically stipulated, I suppose there’s some possible resemblance there with the ideas I proposed before in Counterfactuals As A Matter of Social Convention, although The Nature of Counterfactuals describes where my views have shifted to since then.
Chris_Leong
I presume Vladimir and me are likely discussing this from within the determinist paradigm in which “either the Oracle is wrong, or the choice is illusory” doesn’t apply (although I propose a similar idea in Why 1-boxing doesn’t imply backwards causation).
Isn’t that prediction independent of your decision to grab your coat or not?
Yeah, you want either information about the available counterfactuals or information independent of your decision. Information about just the path taken isn’t something you can condition on.
“The Oracle’s prediction only has to apply to the world where the prediction is delivered”—My point was that predictions that are delivered in the factual don’t apply to counterfactuals, but the way you’ve framed it is better as it handles a more general set of cases. It seems like we’re on the same page.
Oracle predictions don’t apply to non-existent worlds
I read Between the World and Me—and even though I have significiant disagreement with the author—I really did think it was a work of art.
I’m not saying I oppose making advances here, I just want us to think a bit more carefully about what kind of advances are good and bad.
I made a similar, but slightly different argument in Pseudo-Rationality:
“Pseudo-rationality is the social performance of rationality, as opposed to actual rationality.”
I wasn’t intending this as a criticism. I was merely trying to identify the difference in perspective.
I think the quote might make it seem that way—people often quote when they are rejecting a framing—to say that’s what they say, not me. However, I was just trying to indicate that I hadn’t come up with the phrase myself.
Yeah, it isn’t really engaging with a steelman. But then again, the purpose of the passage is to explain a very common dynamic that occurs in post-modernism. And I guess it’d be hard, considering a similar situation, to explain a dynamic that sometimes makes government act dysfunctional, whilst also steelmanning that.
Although I don’t think its accurate to say that its not representative of what post-modernists really argue—maybe it doesn’t accurately represent what philosophers argue—but it seems to fairly accurately represent what everyday people who are a fan of post-modernism would say. And I guess there’s a tension between addressing the best version of an argument and addressing the version that most comes up in real life.
Maybe they are trying to focus on improving the writing of people who are most likely to continue contributing to the forum in the future?
This post may be of interest for you: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nsCwdYJEpmW5Hw5Xm/lesswrong-is-providing-feedback-and-proofreading-on-drafts
Wow, this is really cool! I’m very keen to give it a go.
But it also sounds like you guys will be taking on a lot of load. And I guess I wonder whether that will end up being worth it in the end or whether it would be better to focus on further developing the website instead. But I suppose experimenting is the only way to find out.
I guess one of my worries with developing new co-ordination schemes is that some of these may allow people to better co-ordinate againtst the public interest, so I’m not hugely confident on the sign of developing these.
I then saw numerous reviews from sources I previously deemed decent that treated the book with extreme vitriol.
It might be relevant to bring up near mode and far mode. In near mode, people are thinking about the prospect of being forced to attend one of her seminars and being unable to disagree at risk of losing their jobs, in far mode it is “interesting and provocative”.
Yeah, I’ll highlight some relevant quotes that support my position:
”Nonfiction conveys knowledge, fiction conveys experience. Medical science can extrapolate what would happen to a human unprotected in a vacuum. Fiction can make you live through it.… My point is not to say that journal articles should be written like novels, but that a rationalist should become consciously aware of the experiences which words create. A rationalist must understand the mind and how to operate it. That includes the stream of consciousness, the part of yourself that unfolds in language. A rationalist must become consciously aware of the actual, experiential impact of phrases, beyond their mere propositional semantics”
[Question] What Motte and Baileys are rationalists most likely to engage in?
CDT surgery is pretty effective most of the time, but the OP describes some of its limitations. I’m confused—are you just claiming it is effective most of the time or that we shouldn’t worry too much about these limitations?
Did anything in particular motivate starting this sequence?