I'm some combination of another '+1 would read this post' and 'oh god I wasted so much time trying to understand what LW meant by that 3 years ago and never want to think about it again, but would still read this post' :)
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Replying to @drossbucket @utotranslucence and
Our intermittent emails about it have been very helpful or very unhelpful depending partly on whether I ever finish it
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Replying to @Meaningness @drossbucket and
Current framing: the representation/reality relationship is the CENTRAL and unsolvable problem for rationalism. Maps are highly atypical representations: the relationship is much simpler than most.
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Replying to @Meaningness @drossbucket and
LW uses “map” instead of “representation” in order make it seem like the relationship is straightforward *in general*. That hides the central problem on which the whole story founders.
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Replying to @Meaningness @drossbucket and
I think this is semi-deliberate: they found that thinking in terms of “maps” instead of “representations” clarified their thinking considerably, so they went with it. Indeed, it does make the story much more precise & tractable, at the cost of making it much more wrong.
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Replying to @Meaningness @drossbucket and
The essay undermines this by pointing out the even literal maps don’t work anything like the way LW uses the word. There’s tons of nebulosity in there, not just uncertainty or imprecision. (But less nebulosity than with most representations)
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Replying to @Meaningness @drossbucket and
Maybe this idea about “entanglement” and “mutual information” could focus the criticism a bit? This seems to underpin Yudkowsky’s general conception of representation.pic.twitter.com/i0uqS3McCh
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Replying to @JakeOrthwein @drossbucket and
I don’t think he has a coherent theory. He’s got a swirl of bits of theory-stuff he picked up from reading cogsci unsystematically, and hasn’t realized they are mutually contradictory and can’t be assembled into a workable overall account.
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Replying to @Meaningness @JakeOrthwein and
The point (of my piece) is not to criticize EY, who I don’t consider significant, but the map/territory metaphor, which is much more widespread than LWism. This bit isn’t about maps, so it’s not relevant to this particular essay.
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Replying to @Meaningness @JakeOrthwein and
Mutual information is *also* unworkable as a general theory of representation, but it’s a different one that would need a different critique.
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Representationalists reliably do a Gish Gallop whenever you point out that the theory of representation they are using doesn’t work, and seamlessly switch to a different one. There’s elebenty nine of them, and it’s well understood how each fails, but need 1000 pages for all
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