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Value isn’t in the object itself. It’s in the owner’s mind. If the owner doesn’t consent to the replacement, the value may well be lower.
For example, imagine somebody replacing your teddy bear from childhood with the ‘same’ one but new.
Not to be a stickler but I think you mean ‘inexplicit’.
Implicit = not said directly but implied. Can still accompany explicit speech though.
Inexplicit = not expressed in words or symbols.
At least that’s how I use the terms.
I think you misunderstand both my own argument and the meaning of ambiguity.
You’re saying that, to hold a true idea in the sense of absolute truth in my head, I’d have to have perfect definitions, which require infinite amounts of information, and having all that information is impossible. Right?
While you obviously know what those words mean, you do not have absolute, 100% defined boundaries of what they refer to and what they don't.
I think it’s enough to know what the words mean for the idea to be true. We don’t have to have “100% defined boundaries”.
Truth means correspondence with the facts (Tarski). Not infinite precision.
I think a ‘trick’ cynics use (not maliciously, still I like to call it a trick) is to set an unrealistically high standard for truth. And then, when no idea ends up being able to meet that standard, they say the idea can’t be true.
You probably missed this in The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gTvuzxY-SXg
Rational Decision-Making
Expanding on #2112…
If an idea, as written, has no pending criticisms, it’s rational to adopt it and irrational to reject it. What reason could you have to reject it? If it has no pending criticisms, then either 1) no reasons to reject it (ie, criticisms) have been suggested or 2) all suggested reasons have been addressed already.
If an idea, as written, does have pending criticisms, it’s irrational to adopt it and rational to reject it – by reference to those criticisms. What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt it anyway?
Or, simplified:
It is rational to adopt only those ideas which, as written, don’t have pending criticisms, and to reject ideas that do.
Follow me on Instagram for more fitness tips: https://www.instagram.com/lets.recomp/
‘Are all our ideas false? 🤔’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrQ9lrYGObc
If it introduces falsehood only fallibly, then it might fail sometimes, and the target idea would still be true after all. So no, it would need some infallible way – ie, a criterion of truth.
If it introduces falsehood only fallibly, then it might fail sometimes, and the target idea would still be true after all. So no, it would need some infallible way – ie, a criterion of turth.
Couldn’t the mechanism introduce falsehood by other means? For example by introducing contradictions. Then it wouldn’t need a criterion of truth.
In this related article, I write:
If we could not speak the truth, our minds would have to have some subconscious mechanism that evaluates our ideas and detects and rejects true ones, or modifies them a bit to introduce errors, before we become aware of them. Otherwise, we could still utter the truth, if only “by chance”, as Xenophanes says. Such a mechanism would itself depend on a criterion of truth. So the epistemological cynics, though inspired by Popper’s fallibilism, and even though they would call themselves ‘fallibilists’, are not actually fallibilists. Whether they realize it or not, they rely on the existence of a criterion of truth and (simultaneously, ironically) reject the possibility that some of our knowledge is true.
… for absolute truth, the boundaries of meaning of your terms must be completely determined.
You seem to be using ‘absolute truth’ differently than others. Wikipedia:
Absolute truth is a statement that is true at all times and in all places. It is something that is always true no matter what the circumstances. It is a fact that cannot be changed. For example, there are no round squares.
This is what I think Popper had in mind. Also that absolute truth leaves no room for deviation (which I think is the reason it’s “true at all times and in all places”). Nothing related to definitions or meanings. Popper wasn’t very interested in definitions.
Hi Rob, welcome to Veritula. It’s nice to meet another software engineer. Be sure to read ‘How Does Veritula Work?’ and ‘How Do Bounties Work?’ to make the most of V.
Re: definitions, you raise an argument others have made before, namely that language has some unavoidable ambiguity or incomplete information, which necessarily introduces error. I already addressed that argument in the article linked in the discussion header:
I don’t know if I agree that natural language is always ambiguous, but even if so, I don’t see how that implies error. We can make ambiguous but true statements. ‘I’m currently located in a hemisphere’ is ambiguous as to which hemisphere, but it’s still true. We could be silly and ask, on which planet? This one. Earth. We all know what we’re talking about.
Therefore, I disagree that we need perfect definitions or infinite precision to find absolutely true ideas. (But correct me if I’m wrong to think you’re making the same argument.)
I suggest you read the article in full, otherwise you may inadvertently make more arguments that have been addressed: https://libertythroughreason.com/fallibilism-vs-cynicism/
There’s also https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/don-t-take-fallibilism-too-far.
Our ideas can be 100% true in the sense of absolute truth. It’s possible to come up with true ideas. There’s no criterion of truth to tell that they’re true, but they can still be true.
Knut, you’ve won the bounty. You need to integrate with Stripe to get paid.
I agree this feature should be optional and toggleable but that doesn’t address its (potential) shortcomings. It just kinda hides them.
I’m saying it’s not clear to be how deeply nested comments would be shown.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you dislike having to scroll up and down in a discussion. You see empty space on the right and you think it should be filled. Hence your suggestion to put top-level ideas next to each other rather than on top of each other.
But then where do comments on each top-level idea go? Do they still go underneath? Nesting needs indentation. So that means deep nesting gets lots of indentation. So there’ll still be plenty of empty space.
Those are the kinds of things we’d need to figure out to have a mature design proposal ready for implementation.
Nice work on #4856. Sounds like you’re one of the few who get DD’s stance re creativity.
I don’t think you’re in the Veritula Telegram channel yet. Email me if you want to be: dh@dennishackethal.com
"Complexity" in the sense of growth behavior with input size?
Yes.
I can see how an "implementation" of one algorithm in practice can accidentally change it to another algorithm.
Not sure why you put that in scare quotes. You might be right in the CS sense where ‘algorithm’ refers to an abstract procedure whereas ‘implementation’ is concrete code realizing that algorithm. (Though as a disclaimer, I don’t have a CS degree. My experience with programming is fully on-the-job.)
My point is more that two different implementations that compute the same function can have different big O. In that case, they’re usually considered different algorithms, even if the high-level goal is the same.
Regardless, the structure of the program is by far the most important factor determining performance characteristics. If you were saying that complexity is independent of implementation only insofar as the implementation truly implements the same algorithm, then I agree. So I’m not sure whether I should mark this as a counter-criticism. For now I won’t, pending new evidence.
The given algorithm has a complexity, independent of [the implementation]
No, the complexity depends on the implementation.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but that’s how standing bounties work already.
When you fund a standing bounty, you set the number of criticisms you’re willing to pay for, and the amount for each.
If that’s something you want to do for your current bounty, you still can, before current funding runs out.
See also “How Do Bounties Work?”
Universal explainers
In the context of how AGI may work – which seems to be what Tyler is mostly interested in – the concept of a universal explainer might not get us very far. Creativity is the more fundamental concept, I think.
A person is a universal explainer, yes, but he could also use his creativity to come up with reasons not to create explanations.
https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/explain-irrational-minds