Stabilizer

• Stabilizer 27 Aug 2020 21:21 UTC

  13 points

  AF

  on: What is the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the do() op­er­a­tor?

  I don’t think one should see Pearl-type theories, which fall under the general heading of interventionist accounts, as reductive theories, i.e., as theories that reduce causal relations to something non-causal (even though Pearl might claim that his account is indeed reductive). I think such theories indeed make irreducible appeal to causal notions in explicating causal relations.

  One reason why this isn’t problematic is that these theories are explicating causal relations between some variables in terms of causal relations between those variables and the interventions and correlational information between the variables. So such theories are not employing causal information between the variables themselves in order to explain causal relations about them—which would indeed be viciously circular. This point is explained clearly here.

  If you want a reductive account of causation, I think that’s a much harder problem, and indeed there might not even be one. See here for more details on attempts to provide reductive accounts of causation.

• Stabilizer 20 Jul 2020 16:31 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: Charlie Steiner’s comment on: Si­tu­at­ing LessWrong in con­tem­po­rary philos­o­phy: An in­ter­view with Jon Livengood

  If you’d like to learn non-backwards-looking philosophy, which is indeed how most philosophy in mainstream American departments is done, then I highly recommend skipping undergraduate courses, which for some weird reason, kinda “talk down” to the students. Instead, I suggest three things:

  (1) Just read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Pick a topic you like, such as causation or time or animal ethics, and just read the article or related articles.

  (2) Read or skim academic papers or books. Most of them are surprisingly readable, especially the introductory parts. Notwithstanding criticisms of academic writing, I do think that analytic philosophy places unusual emphasis on writing clearly and plainly. (We can thank Russell and Moore for that in large part. Though, Plato wrote beautifully as well.) You can find good ideas for what to read from the Stanford Encyclopedia or track down philosophers whose work you find interesting.

  (3) Listen to podcasts. Philosophy Bites’s archive is a treasure trove: it has so many important philosophers on and they all have interesting and clear explanations of some central idea. Also check out Matt Teichman’s elucidations. And there are a few more I’m forgetting. And then if you find something interesting, track the philosopher down, and read their books or papers. (Unfortunately, blogging by philosophers isn’t as active as one might wish; I think this tracks the general reduction in blogging on the Internet.)

  You’ll learn a lot more this way than through undergraduate classes, which are usually slow and dull. I’m in philosophy grad school, but never took any philosophy undergraduate classes, but I picked up a significant background in philosophy using the 3 techniques above. I’m really happy for that. I love research-level philosophy, but undergraduate classes are too slow for me to sit through.

• Stabilizer 25 Jul 2017 21:43 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: The dark arts: Ex­am­ples from the Har­ris-Adams conversation

  You’re right: it was probably wrong of me to ask people to only find errors in his reasoning. It is indeed an invitation to fall under the spell of confirmation bias. It would’ve been better to also ask people to find places where he makes good arguments.

  Where I disagree with you is the claim that attacking someone’s epistemological method is necessarily the same as attacking the positions they hold. (Though, I agree with you that it might be interpreted that way.) In a different comment, I try to make it clear that my goal was not necessarily to attack particular positions that Adams holds (though I disagree with him on many positions), but to point out the methods that he uses that might be persuasive to some folks, but ought not to be persuasive, because these methods are not truth-seeking.

  Adams uses several techniques (listed in the post) that could be used to argue for any position—even one that I wholeheartedly agree with. I suspect that in such a case I might not be quite so enthusiastic to point out the flaws in the reasoning. But as someone trying to be more truth-seeking, I ought to be sensitive to bad argumentation in those cases as well.

• Stabilizer 24 Jul 2017 18:41 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Fivehundred’s comment on: Can any­one re­fute these ar­gu­ments that we live on the in­te­rior of a hol­low Earth?

  Stars become invisible at high altitudes because the Earth becomes very bright compared to the stars. This happens because when you are higher up, you see more of the sunlight reflected by the Earth. This happens because at higher altitudes more of the Earth is visible to you. Thus, your eyes or your cameras cannot distinguish the relatively dim light of the stars. The sky still appears black because there is no atmosphere to make the light scatter and give you feeling of being light outside that you experience on the surface of the Earth. You can see the stars if you are on the night side, you have good cameras, and you set the focal point to the sky.

  I’ll get to the equinox thing later.

• Stabilizer 24 Jul 2017 18:20 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: dogiv’s comment on: Can any­one re­fute these ar­gu­ments that we live on the in­te­rior of a hol­low Earth?

  Thanks. You’re right. I mis-interpreted their experiment as written. I’ll try to read it again to see what’s going on and see if it’s explicable.

• Stabilizer 24 Jul 2017 3:56 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Fivehundred’s comment on: Can any­one re­fute these ar­gu­ments that we live on the in­te­rior of a hol­low Earth?

  Sure. His arguments look pretty easy to refute using some basic physics and some Google searches. Let me know if you find any other argument of his that you find particularly compelling and I’ll take a crack at it.

• Stabilizer 22 Jul 2017 17:21 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Elo’s comment on: How long has civil­i­sa­tion been go­ing?

  You might want to correct: “And we forget so easily that 50 lifetimes ago we were nothing.”

• Stabilizer 22 Jul 2017 7:42 UTC

  6 points

  on: How long has civil­i­sa­tion been go­ing?

  Umm… ¹²⁰⁰⁰⁄₂₅ is 480. Not 48. All the other numbers in the discrete human lifetimes section should be multiplied by ten. Not as impressive as you might’ve thought. Still, kinda impressive I suppose.

• Stabilizer 22 Jul 2017 5:04 UTC

  6 points

  on: Can any­one re­fute these ar­gu­ments that we live on the in­te­rior of a hol­low Earth?

  I don’t have time to refute each of arguments, because there’re too many. But consider number 5 in your list. He describes a laser experiment that he claims cannot be accounted for on the current picture of the Earth. But if you think it through, it is perfectly well accounted for.

  Here’s the version of the experiment performed by the two Polish guys on a lake. They place two stakes 2km apart. The stakes have lasers attached to them at 30 cm height from the surface of the water. They measure the height above the surface of the point at which the laser beams meet and find it to be 39-40cm above the surface of the water.

  Wild Heretic claims, on the basis of this diagram, that on the convex Earth theory (i.e., the widely accepted theory) one should expect the height from the water at the point where the lasers meet to be smaller that the height at which the lasers are mounted. But Wild Heretic’s diagram misrepresents the state of affairs. Here is a better representation I drew and associated calculations that I did, which show that the convex Earth theory correctly predicts that the laser beams would meet approximately 38cm above the surface, which is very close to the observed 39-40cm.

  EDIT: As dogiv points out below, I mis-interpreted the experiment. So the argument above is not a refutation of the experiment as described.

• Stabilizer 21 Jul 2017 19:55 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: The dark arts: Ex­am­ples from the Har­ris-Adams conversation

  A general point: I fear Adams attributes positions and beliefs and intentions to Trump which, from Trump’s actions and public statements, are not justifiably attributable to Trump.

• Stabilizer 21 Jul 2017 19:43 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: WalterL’s comment on: The dark arts: Ex­am­ples from the Har­ris-Adams conversation

  I don’t necessarily disagree with all Dark Arts practitioners. By a Dark Arts practitioner, I just mean someone who uses rhetorical techniques to win debate points, without particular regard for the truth. What they’re defending may or may not be true.

  In the case of Scott Adams, in my view, most of what he is defending is false. But that’s a different debate. In this post, I just wanted to highlight the techniques he uses. I try not take a particular position with respect to his claims; I probably don’t succeed.

  I’m neither a moral relativist nor an epistemological relativist. I suspect you probably reject epistemological relativism—i.e., you probably believe there are statements (e.g., 2+2=4) that are unambiguously true or false.

  Not being a moral relativist does not mean I believe there is a giant stone block with the One True Morality on it. Indeed, the existence of such a stone block is a poor account of the nature of morality for the reasons highlighted by Socrates in the Euthyphro. The nature of morality is a contentious issue, and I won’t pretend to be an expert. But having heard several arguments, I think moral relativism is untenable, mainly because it’s an unlivable thesis. Sometimes you just need to say something is straightforwardly wrong: e.g., if you torture an innocent person for hours to alleviate your boredom. Here is an argument I’m convinced by.

• Stabilizer 20 Jul 2017 23:55 UTC

  0 points

  on: Sam Har­ris and Scott Adams de­bate Trump: a model ra­tio­nal­ist disagreement

  I wanted to comment here, but the comment became so long that I decided to make it a separate article.

• Stabilizer 21 Feb 2017 23:53 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: der’s comment on: The Semiotic Fallacy

  If they appeal to unforeseen connections in the future, then at least one could plausibly reason consequentially for or against it. E.g., you could ask whether the results they discover will remain undiscovered if they don’t discover it? Or you could try to calculate what the probability is that a given paper has deep connections down the road by looking at the historical record; calculate the value of these connections; and then ask if the expected utility is really significantly increased by funding more work?

  A semiotic-type fallacy occurs when they simply say that we do mathematics because it symbolizes human actualization.

  (Sometimes they might say they do mathematics because it is intrinsically worthwhile. That is true. But then the relevant question is whether it is worth funding using public money.)

• Stabilizer 21 Feb 2017 7:47 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: username2’s comment on: The Semiotic Fallacy

  You’re right. Making the decision to put down the rebellion might indeed be the right one. My goal is not to say what the correct decision is, but instead to point out that making the decision purely on the semiotics of the situation is fallacious.

  In other words, it is at least plausible that the cost of putting down the rebellion is more than the benefit of increased respect in international diplomacy. The right way to make the judgement is to weigh these costs against the benefits. But often, people and institutions and countries make decisions based purely on the symbolic meaning of their actions without explicitly accounting for whether these symbolic acts have consequential backing.

• Stabilizer 11 Feb 2017 19:59 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: satt’s comment on: The Maze of Mo­ral Relativism

  I agree that any disagreement might come down to what we mean by moral claims.

  I don’t know Boghossian’s own particular commitments, but baseline moral realism is a fairly weak claim without any metaphysics of where these facts come from. I quote from the Stanford Encyclopedia:

  Moral realism is not a particular substantive moral view nor does it carry a distinctive metaphysical commitment over and above the commitment that comes with thinking moral claims can be true or false and some are true.

  A simple interpretation that I can think of: when you say that you prefer that people do X, typically, you also prefer that other people prefer that people do X. This, you could take as sufficient to say “People ought to do X”. (This has the flavor the Kantian categorical imperative. Essentially, I’m proposing a sufficient condition for something to be a moral claim, namely, that it be desired to be universalized. But I don’t want to claim that this a necessary condition.)

  At any rate, whether the above definition stands or falls, you can see that it doesn’t have any metaphysical commitment to some free-floating, human-independent (to be be distinguished from mind-independent) facts embedded in the fabric of the universe. Hopefully, there are other ways of parsing moral claims in such ways so that the metaphysics isn’t too demanding.

• Stabilizer 10 Feb 2017 18:01 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: BiasedBayes’s comment on: The Maze of Mo­ral Relativism

  Right. Unfortunately, we don’t really have any other means of obtaining moral knowledge other than via argument, intuition, and experience. Perhaps your point is that we should emphasize intuition less and argument+experience more.

• Stabilizer 8 Feb 2017 0:20 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: satt’s comment on: The Maze of Mo­ral Relativism

  Actually, I don’t know if you and Boghossian really disagree here. I think Boghossian is trying to argue that your normative preferences arise from your opinions about what the moral facts are. So I think he’d say:

  IEPB: “People ought to do X” is your preference because you are assuming “People ought to do X” is a moral fact. It’s a different issue whether your assumption is true or false, or justified or unjustified, but the assumption is being made nevertheless.

  For example, when you exhort IEPB to not make mediocre philosophy arguments, and say that that’s your preference, it’s because you are assuming that the claim, “philosophy professors ought not to make mediocre philosophy arguments”, is in fact, true.

• Stabilizer 6 Feb 2017 19:55 UTC

  3 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Jan­uary—March 2017

  True listening requires giving up the prerogative of your own mental model. You have to allow them to set the rules of engagement, no matter how bizarre, so that they let their guard down and realize you are not a threat, because you have no intention of blaming them for anything. The way they set these rules will reveal their assumptions and constraints, which thoughts and actions are open to them. If you can tell an authentic story that speaks to these assumptions, you can break through, because stories speak to emotions expressed in the body, which fortunately refuses to go along with even our most well-reasoned rationalizations.

  The price of such effective action is we have to be willing to give up the petty payoffs we cherish in our arguments with each other: not only the blaming but the cynicism, the martyrdom, the self-righteous indignation, the outrage, the winning, the making others lose, the being right, the making others wrong.

  And after all that, you may still fail to convince them to your point of view. Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?

  • Tiago Forte, The Throughput of Learning

• Stabilizer 4 Feb 2017 22:01 UTC

  2 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Jan­uary—March 2017

  The intuitive standard for rational decision-making is carefully considering all available options and taking the best one. At first glance, computers look like the paragons of this approach, grinding their way through complex computations for as long as it takes to get perfect answers. But as we’ve seen, that is an outdated picture of what computers do: it’s a luxury afforded by an easy problem. In the hard cases, the best algorithms are all about doing what makes the most sense in the least amount of time, which by no means involves giving careful consideration to every factor and pursuing every computation to the end. Life is just too complicated for that.

  In almost every domain we’ve considered, we have seen how the more real-world factors we include—whether it’s having incomplete information when interviewing job applicants, dealing with a changing world when trying to resolve the explore/​exploit dilemma, or having certain tasks depend on others when we’re trying to get things done—the more likely we are to end up in a situation where finding the perfect solution takes unreasonably long. And indeed, people are almost always confronting what computer science regards as the hard cases. Up against such hard cases, effective algorithms make assumptions, show a bias toward simpler solutions, trade off the costs of error against the costs of delay, and take chances.

  These aren’t the concessions we make when we can’t be rational. They’re what being rational means.

  • Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths, Algorithms to Live By

• Stabilizer 3 Feb 2017 20:42 UTC

  0 points

  on: Why is the sur­pris­ingly pop­u­lar an­swer cor­rect?

  If the question, “Which interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct?” is posed to physicists, my guess is that the surprisingly popular opinion would be: the Everett interpretation, which in my opinion – and I consider myself a mild expert in the foundations of QM – is the correct one.