6 ms·

If you believe the world to be deterministic, I think you have to remove a lot of terms from your language, such as 'learning', 'illusion', 'rationalizing', 'pu

by wsy 9y ago

If you believe the world to be deterministic, I think you have to remove a lot of terms from your language, such as 'learning', 'illusion', 'rationalizing', 'purpose', and 'social'. It is hard for me to understand what a 'rationalizing system' could even mean in a deterministic world. Would there be an experimental outcome that could prove your hypothesis about it wrong?

iamnothere 9y ago
It's true. These words are useful shorthand for common behaviors, and I have nothing better to offer that won't be encumbered with a non-deterministic history. Frankly I'm a bit of a hypocrite. Here I am jumping on the word "choice" because of its metaphysical implications, but then I'm turning around and using other words that are just as muddy. Discussing this stuff is a real challenge because of the hidden implications buried in most of our language. > Would there be an experimental outcome that could prove your hypothesis about it wrong? Good question. The answer is that I haven't given it enough thought yet. I suspect that it may not be possible to prove or disprove the hypothesis in live humans because our brains are simply too complicated, with an enormous number of feedback loops. How do you test a subject from a known state when it is impossible to recreate a specific state? But then, how do you prove that we're not living in a simulation? When the door is open for metaphysical interpretations, then all we have is intuition and conjecture. It is possible that we're all made of fairy dust, but there's no way to prove or disprove that.
- Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
  > Discussing this stuff is a real challenge because of the hidden implications buried in most of our language. This fact alone says a lot. This is a very big and deep profound thing. The language is an innate ability of humans to optimize and find tools (words) that work in the reality that we live in. We don't just make up words for no reason, and we don't make up overcomplicated words that do not fit the reality that we live in. We strive for choosing the perfectly fitted, perfectly abstract, perfectly functional words that correlate to how life works. If there is ever a better word for something, than some old word - the population will quickly start using the new word. The human society in general uses the words that work well. That fit the reality well. So then, if there are so many words with those implications in your (common!) language, the one that you have chosen to use, the one that other people have chosen to use, is it really possible that all of those words are simply illusions with nothing behind them? Isn't it more logical that those words exist because there is something underlying them in the actual reality that we live in? Maybe the fact that those words seem so "unclean" to you is that the representation of reality that you are trying to argue for simply lacks many chunks of what's actually going on? Because in many people's reality those words are not "unclean". They are the most clean ones, they are very good tools that work really well. If you disagree with that - it would say that you basically don't trust your language, your ability to speak and think. It would mean that you don't trust your ability to find words (as tools), and by extension, to find good logical intellectual structures (of which words are an example of) that fit the reality. If you say those words don't fit the reality, that would mean that you don't trust that your way of finding words and logical structures applies to reality. That's a big problem then, right? You would need some other way first to even construct your language, before you can ever hope to use it to communicate to other in truthful and meaningful way?
  - wsy 9y ago
    Our language and our knowledge about the world are both moving targets. For example, people rarely use the word 'sin' nowadays to scold others for unaccepted behavior. But 200 years ago, 'sin' was a generally accepted concept, as real as 'addiction' is today. In addition, great thinkers often struggled to express their innovative thoughts, and invented new terminology for that purpose. This new terminology then became part of our language over time, in lock-step with the new ideas expressed by it. So I think inferring reality structure from from language structure is a fallacy.
    - iamnothere 9y ago
      Completely agree. It's worth reading older literature to see this effect first-hand! To add to your point, language frames reality through its structure, and meaningful concepts that are "missing" from a language may be missing from conversations in that language. For instance, the Pirahã language has no concept of numbers or time! English itself is missing some nice features, such as efficient agglutinative words (backpfeifengesicht) and emotional context added to words (perrazo vs perro). I don't know if any language does these concepts well: * Relative positioning in greater than three dimensions * Quick and clear way to indicate that a point being made applies universally versus being limited to the current context under discussion (and vice-versa). You could do this with a separate statement but it would get tiring very quickly. * Clear and efficient expression of degree of certitude. For instance, being able to convey how much evidence you have for an argument, or being able to express a statement as purely speculative, without having to explicitly append that as a separate statement. * An elegant way to "tag" a statement as metaphor, or even as being an intentional oversimplification for the purpose of brevity. We may solve some of these gaps over time. After all, the internet brought us "/s", which I both despise and grudgingly accept as necessary. In terms of this discussion, perhaps what we're missing is a suffix that indicates whether or not we're using a word in a slightly different way than is traditionally intended. I see this all the time, especially in philosophy, and it can be incredibly frustrating for the reader. It's an issue in politics as well, but good luck solving that one.
- wsy 9y ago
  > It is possible that we're all made of fairy dust, but there's no way to prove or disprove that. That is very true, and modern science therefore decided rightfully that these questions should be outside of scientific enquiry. The issue I have with "hypercompetent rationalizing system, whose purpose is to hide our true intentions in order to help us better operate in a social world" is that it sounds like a scientific conjecture (my brain associates it with evolution theory), and at the same time you admit that it is pretty similar to the fairy dust hypothesis. I agree that stating your arguments somehow forces you to use what is in our current language, leading to unwanted implications. Still, it would be good to either rephrase your hypothesis so that it becomes testable, or mark it clearly as metaphysical speculation.
  - iamnothere 9y ago
    Thanks for the conversation, and for the reminder. You're right about rephrasing my hypothesis! I need to spend some time reducing it into testable chunks.

by wsy 9y ago

iamnothere 9y ago

It's true. These words are useful shorthand for common behaviors, and I have nothing better to offer that won't be encumbered with a non-deterministic history. Frankly I'm a bit of a hypocrite. Here I am jumping on the word "choice" because of its metaphysical implications, but then I'm turning around and using other words that are just as muddy. Discussing this stuff is a real challenge because of the hidden implications buried in most of our language. > Would there be an experimental outcome that could prove your hypothesis about it wrong? Good question. The answer is that I haven't given it enough thought yet. I suspect that it may not be possible to prove or disprove the hypothesis in live humans because our brains are simply too complicated, with an enormous number of feedback loops. How do you test a subject from a known state when it is impossible to recreate a specific state? But then, how do you prove that we're not living in a simulation? When the door is open for metaphysical interpretations, then all we have is intuition and conjecture. It is possible that we're all made of fairy dust, but there's no way to prove or disprove that.

Erlich_Bachman 9y ago
> Discussing this stuff is a real challenge because of the hidden implications buried in most of our language. This fact alone says a lot. This is a very big and deep profound thing. The language is an innate ability of humans to optimize and find tools (words) that work in the reality that we live in. We don't just make up words for no reason, and we don't make up overcomplicated words that do not fit the reality that we live in. We strive for choosing the perfectly fitted, perfectly abstract, perfectly functional words that correlate to how life works. If there is ever a better word for something, than some old word - the population will quickly start using the new word. The human society in general uses the words that work well. That fit the reality well. So then, if there are so many words with those implications in your (common!) language, the one that you have chosen to use, the one that other people have chosen to use, is it really possible that all of those words are simply illusions with nothing behind them? Isn't it more logical that those words exist because there is something underlying them in the actual reality that we live in? Maybe the fact that those words seem so "unclean" to you is that the representation of reality that you are trying to argue for simply lacks many chunks of what's actually going on? Because in many people's reality those words are not "unclean". They are the most clean ones, they are very good tools that work really well. If you disagree with that - it would say that you basically don't trust your language, your ability to speak and think. It would mean that you don't trust your ability to find words (as tools), and by extension, to find good logical intellectual structures (of which words are an example of) that fit the reality. If you say those words don't fit the reality, that would mean that you don't trust that your way of finding words and logical structures applies to reality. That's a big problem then, right? You would need some other way first to even construct your language, before you can ever hope to use it to communicate to other in truthful and meaningful way?
- wsy 9y ago
  Our language and our knowledge about the world are both moving targets. For example, people rarely use the word 'sin' nowadays to scold others for unaccepted behavior. But 200 years ago, 'sin' was a generally accepted concept, as real as 'addiction' is today. In addition, great thinkers often struggled to express their innovative thoughts, and invented new terminology for that purpose. This new terminology then became part of our language over time, in lock-step with the new ideas expressed by it. So I think inferring reality structure from from language structure is a fallacy.
  - iamnothere 9y ago
    Completely agree. It's worth reading older literature to see this effect first-hand! To add to your point, language frames reality through its structure, and meaningful concepts that are "missing" from a language may be missing from conversations in that language. For instance, the Pirahã language has no concept of numbers or time! English itself is missing some nice features, such as efficient agglutinative words (backpfeifengesicht) and emotional context added to words (perrazo vs perro). I don't know if any language does these concepts well: * Relative positioning in greater than three dimensions * Quick and clear way to indicate that a point being made applies universally versus being limited to the current context under discussion (and vice-versa). You could do this with a separate statement but it would get tiring very quickly. * Clear and efficient expression of degree of certitude. For instance, being able to convey how much evidence you have for an argument, or being able to express a statement as purely speculative, without having to explicitly append that as a separate statement. * An elegant way to "tag" a statement as metaphor, or even as being an intentional oversimplification for the purpose of brevity. We may solve some of these gaps over time. After all, the internet brought us "/s", which I both despise and grudgingly accept as necessary. In terms of this discussion, perhaps what we're missing is a suffix that indicates whether or not we're using a word in a slightly different way than is traditionally intended. I see this all the time, especially in philosophy, and it can be incredibly frustrating for the reader. It's an issue in politics as well, but good luck solving that one.
wsy 9y ago
> It is possible that we're all made of fairy dust, but there's no way to prove or disprove that. That is very true, and modern science therefore decided rightfully that these questions should be outside of scientific enquiry. The issue I have with "hypercompetent rationalizing system, whose purpose is to hide our true intentions in order to help us better operate in a social world" is that it sounds like a scientific conjecture (my brain associates it with evolution theory), and at the same time you admit that it is pretty similar to the fairy dust hypothesis. I agree that stating your arguments somehow forces you to use what is in our current language, leading to unwanted implications. Still, it would be good to either rephrase your hypothesis so that it becomes testable, or mark it clearly as metaphysical speculation.
- iamnothere 9y ago
  Thanks for the conversation, and for the reminder. You're right about rephrasing my hypothesis! I need to spend some time reducing it into testable chunks.