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But calling a theory ‘good’ sounds like an endorsement. Deutsch also writes (BoI chapter 10) that a “superb” theory is “exceedingly hard to vary”. Ultimately we’d have to ask him, but for now, given the strength and positivity of those terms, I think it’s fair to conclude that he means ‘hard to vary’ as an endorsement.
Even if we allow creative user input, eg a score for the quality of an explanation, we run into all kinds of open questions, such as what upper and lower limits to use for the score, and unexpected behavior, such as criticisms pushing an explanation’s score beyond those limits.
As I write in my article:
… Popper did formalize/specify much of his epistemology, such as the notions of empirical content and degrees of falsifiability. So why couldn’t Deutsch formalize the steps for finding the quality of a given explanation?
Deutsch’s yardstick applies to computational tasks. It’s not meant for other things. It’s not clear to me that the criterion of democracy is a computational task.
Yes, many ideas fail Deutsch’s yardstick. But so what? That doesn’t make things better.
@dirk-meulenbelt suggested in a space (at 21:30) that a bunch of epistemology is underspecified. There are many epistemological concepts (like criterion of democracy, falsifiability, etc.) that we don’t know enough about to express in code.
The ancient Greeks might have found the Persephone myth extremely hard to vary, eg due to cultural constraints. They wouldn’t have agreed that one could just swap out Persephone for someone else.
But then the ease with which a criticism could be varied might have no effect on its parent. So why even bother having a notion of ‘easiness to vary’ at that point?
Even so, if a criticism gets score -10, that will push the parent theory’s score above 0.
But calling a theory ‘good’ sounds like an endorsement. Deutsch also writes (BoI chapter 10) that a “superb” theory is “exceedingly hard to vary”. Ultimately we’d have to ask him, but for now I think it’s fair to conclude that he means ‘hard to vary’ as an endorsement.
@lola-trimble suggested during a space that a theory is hard to vary if it’s not easy to vary. So the maximum score would be 0, not +1,000 or whatever. In which case ‘hard to vary’ isn’t an endorsement.
Deutsch’s stance in my own words:
The distinguishing characteristic between rationality and irrationality is that rationality is the search for good explanations. All progress comes from the search for good explanations. So the distinction between good vs bad explanations is epistemologically fundamental.
A good explanation is hard to vary “while still accounting for what it purports to account for.” (BoI chapter 1 glossary.) A bad explanation is easy to vary.
For example, the Persephone myth as an explanation of the seasons is easy to change without impacting its ability to explain the seasons. You could arbitrarily replace Persephone and other characters and the explanation would still ‘work’. The axis-tilt explanation of the earth, on the other hand, is hard to change without breaking it. You can’t just replace the axis with something else, say.
The quality of a theory is a matter of degrees. The harder it is to change a theory, the better that theory is. When deciding which explanation to adopt, we should “choose between [explanations] according to how good they are…: how hard to vary.” (BoI chapter 9; see similar remark in chapter 8.)
Deutsch should instead name some examples the reader would find easier to disagree with, and then walk them through why some explanations are harder to vary than others.
2) Skepticism is too different from fallibilism to consider it a continuation.
I don’t think so, for two reasons. 1) Skepticism came long before Popper’s fallibilism.
No, see #3706. I’m open to user input (within reason). That covers creative parts. The non-creative parts can be automated by definition.
Deutsch should instead name some examples the reader would easier to disagree with, and then walk them through why some explanations are harder to vary than others.
A heuristic or heuristic technique (problem solving, mental shortcut, rule of thumb) is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless "good enough" as an approximation or attribute substitution.
None of this means a heuristic couldn’t be programmed. On the contrary, heuristics sound easier to program than full-fledged, ‘proper’ algorithms.
I’d be happy to see some pseudo-code that uses workarounds/heuristics. That’d be a fine starting point.
Maybe Deutsch just means hard to vary as a heuristic, not as a full-fledged decision-making algorithm.
Deutsch should instead name some examples the reader would easier to disagree with, and then walk them through why some explanations are harder to vary than others.
Persephone vs axis tilt is low-hanging fruit. The reader finds it easy to disagree with the Persephone myth and easy to agree with the axis tilt, from cultural background alone. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything to hard to vary.
Deutsch leaves open whether ‘difficulty to vary’ is a relative scale or an absolute one.
Do I need at least two explanations to know whether one is harder to vary than the other? Or can I tell, with only a single explanation, how hard it is to vary on its own?
Choosing between explanations “according to how good they are” is vague. If I have three explanations, A, B, and C, and A is better than B is better than C, does that mean I adopt only A and reject both B and C? I assume so, but I don’t think Deutsch ever says anywhere.
The quoted statement is also compatible with adopting A with strong conviction, B with medium conviction (as a backup or something), and only slightly adopting C (if it’s still good, just not as good as the others) or rejecting C slightly (if it’s a little bad) or rejecting it very strongly (if it’s really bad).