3 ms·

Funnily enough, this is what our "collective consciousness" is useful for. Humans act a lot like an ant colony, except individuals have much more autonomy. So,

by bserge 6y ago

Funnily enough, this is what our "collective consciousness" is useful for. Humans act a lot like an ant colony, except individuals have much more autonomy. So, you ask, say, 1000 people what the root cause is. The result will be decided either by majority or the most plausible argumentation. Say 700 people agree the jaywalker was at fault. That will become "reality" for the group, which will then likely spread throughout the hive. The main lesson will be "don't jaywalk at night", the secondary one likely "don't wear black clothing at night" and probably a third one "beware of drunk drivers". Sorry if that sounds weird, I'm also trying to wrap my head around what human intelligence is and how it can be applied to AI (Approximate Intelligence :)).

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
Examples like this are how I realized that almost everything is subjective. Things we think are objective are usually subjective things that we decided to agree on.
- bserge 6y ago
  Yeah, I'd say that's true of most things that are too complicated to be understood by a single individual. In the end, it's all about the collective. It needs a consensus to move forward, and that doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough. The whole human civilization works mostly on subjective conclusions, sometimes a minority brings up enough facts/proof to change the established consensus, but often we just pile layers upon layers on top of things that are not objectively true or not completely true. But they're good enough, and we're very adaptable.
- kempbellt 6y ago
  Ironically, I would argue that just about everything that happens is an objective event, but any and every interpretation/understanding of causality is itself, subjective. In the hypothetical scenario the objective reality is: A pedestrian and a car collided. Other factors come into play, which all have potential influence on the causality of this objective reality, and said factors are frequently subjectively asserted as more relevant to causality than others. Strong assertions to causality may include: Driver was drunk, pedestrian was jaywalking, pedestrian was wearing dark clothing, driver was speeding, driver was texting, driver and pedestrian had a prior altercation, driver was tired, etc Weaker assertions to causality may include: It was a Tuesday, someone sneezed 3 miles away, a butterfly flapped its wings, pedestrian knocked over salt during dinner earlier, etc Causality is hard... We're getting better at it, but superstitions are a thing that exist, even if they are a bit odd.
godelski 6y ago
The problem with this is that there isn't a "root" cause. But there are atomic causes. If you do a component analysis you'll find that some components contribute more than others, but we humans LOVE to pin things down to singular causes. This even gets more difficult because some people are talking about the primary cause and just naturally shortening to "the cause" and other people that don't recognize there are multiple causes and actually mean "_the_ cause". This is one of the fun limitations of language and how we're bad at encoding.

by bserge 6y ago

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

Examples like this are how I realized that almost everything is subjective. Things we think are objective are usually subjective things that we decided to agree on.

bserge 6y ago
Yeah, I'd say that's true of most things that are too complicated to be understood by a single individual. In the end, it's all about the collective. It needs a consensus to move forward, and that doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough. The whole human civilization works mostly on subjective conclusions, sometimes a minority brings up enough facts/proof to change the established consensus, but often we just pile layers upon layers on top of things that are not objectively true or not completely true. But they're good enough, and we're very adaptable.
kempbellt 6y ago
Ironically, I would argue that just about everything that happens is an objective event, but any and every interpretation/understanding of causality is itself, subjective. In the hypothetical scenario the objective reality is: A pedestrian and a car collided. Other factors come into play, which all have potential influence on the causality of this objective reality, and said factors are frequently subjectively asserted as more relevant to causality than others. Strong assertions to causality may include: Driver was drunk, pedestrian was jaywalking, pedestrian was wearing dark clothing, driver was speeding, driver was texting, driver and pedestrian had a prior altercation, driver was tired, etc Weaker assertions to causality may include: It was a Tuesday, someone sneezed 3 miles away, a butterfly flapped its wings, pedestrian knocked over salt during dinner earlier, etc Causality is hard... We're getting better at it, but superstitions are a thing that exist, even if they are a bit odd.

godelski 6y ago

The problem with this is that there isn't a "root" cause. But there are atomic causes. If you do a component analysis you'll find that some components contribute more than others, but we humans LOVE to pin things down to singular causes. This even gets more difficult because some people are talking about the primary cause and just naturally shortening to "the cause" and other people that don't recognize there are multiple causes and actually mean "_the_ cause". This is one of the fun limitations of language and how we're bad at encoding.