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This is definitely a waste of time but my point is that you don't need to have a changing (dynamic) fitness landscape for monotonicity to be insufficient in the
by theoh 12y ago
This is definitely a waste of time but my point is that you don't need to have a changing (dynamic) fitness landscape for monotonicity to be insufficient in the long term - you could get stuck at a local maximum _even_ in a static world.
The second point is that drawing a line between the "world" and your beliefs about it is a pretty dopey dualistic way of thinking. But hey, Graham doesn't care that there might be real knowledge and valid experience of these matters in the accumulated history of philosophy or psychology, he just shoots from the hip with some flaky positivistic analogy with computation... Ridiculous.
- ncallaway 12y agoThis assumes you can only hold beliefs that are adjacent to your current beliefs (i.e. the graph of your beliefs over time must be continuous). I disagree with that assumption. You can explore ideas that you don't hold, and these can be quite varied from your current beliefs. Once you find an idea that you put more confidence into that your current beliefs, then that idea becomes your belief. The local optimum from high-climbing doesn't constrain you in a world where your beliefs can teleport from one hill to another.