Good heavens. Have philosophers never read about how Bayes nets work? Uncertain observations are technology at this point; you send up a non-extreme lambda message. (And this doesn't even violate probability theorems qua theorems, as so many approximations understandably do.)
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And I say this to illustrate a larger dichotomy: naive toolboxers see a problem and think they've discovered a context in which to not use that tool. Sophisticated thinkers who have Lawful thinking as an option are much more likely to wonder if the generalization still holds.
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Replying to @ESYudkowsky @ArtirKel
“Naive Toolboxer” seems analogous to Straw Vulcan here.
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Replying to @Meaningness @ArtirKel
Absolutely. Sophisticated thinkers can conceive of both context-dependent recipes and universal generalizations. They are ready to adapt tools as required, and expect to repair laws without compromising them. But Straw Vulcans exist in real life, and so do naive toolboxers.
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Replying to @ESYudkowsky @ArtirKel
Okay… we agree that it is possible to fail to apply rational methods when they would be useful, and some people may make that mistake often.
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Replying to @Meaningness @ArtirKel
That's still Toolbox thinking! There are perspectives on life besides whether some recipe would be useful at a given moment!
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Replying to @ESYudkowsky @ArtirKel
Yes, you are right. Let me amend the previous tweet to “framework” from “method.” This may be revealing, as you are arguing. 1/2
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I do understand the object-level distinction between mathematical frameworks and specific methods. However, at the meta-rational level, frameworks are themselves just methods, because they are not universally applicable. 2/3
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So the object-level distinction between frameworks and methods is not as salient for me as it is for you. 3/3
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I still don’t understand what “Law” means here.
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