3 ms·

Eh, it's a heuristic. When you put time and effort in, you can usually do better. Superforcasters can beat "nothing ever happens", and even regular people can i

by Vecr 2y ago

Eh, it's a heuristic. When you put time and effort in, you can usually do better. Superforcasters can beat "nothing ever happens", and even regular people can in particular areas, but if you don't know about a subject it's a good starting point. Similar to the "efficient market hypothesis". It's clearly false, but good luck walking into a randomly selected part of the market and reliably being able to beat it.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
I have no clue what this babble has to do with the concept of a "purpose" or a "telos" or an "end".
- Vecr 2y ago
  I don't think it's babble, they're reasonably good heuristics if you have little information or time. What part is confusing? The point of "POSIWID" is that you can look at e.g. a government office that's never denied a request and make a first guess that its purpose is to rubber-stamp documents.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    That just seems like an incoherent understanding of "purpose", which seems most reasonably based off "intent" and can only be measured by claims of intent. The heuristic you're referring to seems to be figuring out whether a system does what it's intended to, which seems to be an entirely different issue. Why overload an already useful word with seemingly contradictory semantics? Granted, it seems like a very useful concept, just an abominably-named one.
    - Vecr 2y ago
      What's your position on intentionality[0]? I don't put stock into anything too fancy there. Being simple about things in general, you can define a physical or mathematical system that uses optimization of some sort to drive the world toward certain states over others. Questions regarding if the system's conscious or "cares about anything" don't really matter. Accepting that, you can say any system that drives towards states "intends" to do so. Unless a system is not functioning well, is weak, or is adversarial opposed, in general what it does should be more or less what it "intends". This isn't iron-hard, but as a first guess, that gets you "the purpose of a system is what it does". [0]: e.g. I don't know if your definition of "telos" requires anything in that direction. If you've got definitions you can link them from the SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) or similar. Maybe too far into the weeds to be useful from a cybernetics perspective though. More theological.
      - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
        It's still useful to communicate with people who don't desire to or do not tend to think in systems. You can define things any such way you'd like, of course, especially if communication is not your desire.

by Vecr 2y ago

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

I have no clue what this babble has to do with the concept of a "purpose" or a "telos" or an "end".

Vecr 2y ago
I don't think it's babble, they're reasonably good heuristics if you have little information or time. What part is confusing? The point of "POSIWID" is that you can look at e.g. a government office that's never denied a request and make a first guess that its purpose is to rubber-stamp documents.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  That just seems like an incoherent understanding of "purpose", which seems most reasonably based off "intent" and can only be measured by claims of intent. The heuristic you're referring to seems to be figuring out whether a system does what it's intended to, which seems to be an entirely different issue. Why overload an already useful word with seemingly contradictory semantics? Granted, it seems like a very useful concept, just an abominably-named one.
  - Vecr 2y ago
    What's your position on intentionality[0]? I don't put stock into anything too fancy there. Being simple about things in general, you can define a physical or mathematical system that uses optimization of some sort to drive the world toward certain states over others. Questions regarding if the system's conscious or "cares about anything" don't really matter. Accepting that, you can say any system that drives towards states "intends" to do so. Unless a system is not functioning well, is weak, or is adversarial opposed, in general what it does should be more or less what it "intends". This isn't iron-hard, but as a first guess, that gets you "the purpose of a system is what it does". [0]: e.g. I don't know if your definition of "telos" requires anything in that direction. If you've got definitions you can link them from the SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) or similar. Maybe too far into the weeds to be useful from a cybernetics perspective though. More theological.
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      It's still useful to communicate with people who don't desire to or do not tend to think in systems. You can define things any such way you'd like, of course, especially if communication is not your desire.