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A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

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Re: A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

#101

Post by scotty79 »

paulsutter wrote: post #99

“Justified true belief”? All our knowledge is subjective by definition. We don’t even know whether we’re living in a simulation. Personally I doubt that we’re living in a simulation. But the fact that we could be, demonstrates that we don’t have objective knowledge. No cows needed in the field explain it Philosophy might better be called “the history of flawed thinking”

Also specific example with a cow is silly. Belief there is a cow in the field is not really justified. It just seems justified to the observer that can't tell difference between model and a real cow.

Re: A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

#102

Post by voidpointer »

Somehow, the examples all sound more like a quality and/or testing issue. The workflow seems prone to people rebasing to a buggy state and at that point, in a non-trivial system, all bets are basically off. Basically I need to be able to have a "JTB" about a pull request having undergone enough review and testing before being merged on the master that it doesn't introduce such glaring regressions as cited in the examples. If that cannot be ensured, I'm setting myself up for one goose chase after the other...

Re: A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

#103

Post by jeffreyrogers »

bunderbunder wrote: post #94
jeffreyrogers wrote: post #88

I haven't read the original paper, so maybe the example is better, but it seems the cow example fails the justified condition. The knowledge is justified if it derives from the evidence, but once we know the evidence is faulty it can no longer be used for justification by definition. It seems by extension that any justified true belief can become unjustified by the addition of new information that invalidates the jus…

What you're saying is more or less exactly what the paper was getting at. It's hard to say based on a short Internet comment, but it sounds like the spot where your disagreement comes from is that you're understanding the word "justified" in a slightly different way from how epistemologists were using it. For example, one of the responses to Gettier's paper was to suggest that maybe the definition of "justified" shou…

Thanks, I think you're right about how I was understanding the word "justified". I like bringing up philosophical disagreements on HN since it often gets responses like yours :)

Re: A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

#104

Post by burlesona »

bunderbunder wrote: post #85

> A philosopher might say that these aren’t bona fide Gettier cases. True gettiers are rare. But it’s still a useful idea... At least as presented, I see the idea being used to do more harm than good. Take the first example, with the form not autofocusing. We're already not in a Gettier case, because the author didn't have JTB. The belief that he caused the bug obviously wasn't true. But it wasn't justified, either.…

You make a good point, but I think the framing of “justified true belief” may still be useful for the reason you illustrated. It gives a developer a nice way to sanity check their instinct. Instead of “I’m sure my code broke this,” asking “is this belief justified” may help them pause and consider “well I did rebase so I can’t really be sure, I need to eliminate what’s in the diff first.”

Re: A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

#105

Post by coldtea »

gjm11 wrote: post #72
coldtea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if they're difficult to derive on one's own? You believe X has cancer because he has the symptoms and you can see an offending black spot on their X-ray. The lab results say the black spot was just a cyst but X indeed has cancer in the same organ.

That sounds to me like (1) not a clear example of a Gettier case and (2) something that would, in fact, be rare. #1 because one of the reasons for your believing X has cancer is that "he has the symptoms", which (if I'm understanding your example correctly) is in fact a consequence of the cancer he actually has; so, at least to some extent, your belief is causally connected to the true thing you believe in just the w…

In the general case it's "I believe X based on signs that would imply X correctly, and I happen to be correct that X holds, but I misread the signs I used to come to the conclusion".

I don't think this is rare -- including in the version of my example.

The only reason there's arguing that it's not a "clear cut case" is that I mentioned seeing "symptoms". Ignore the symptoms I mentioned, as they are a red herring, e.g. seeing the mark could cause the belief alone.

Other than that, it's a belief (1), that's justified (2), and true (3) -- while being accidentally justified.

Consider the case of a policeman that things someone is dangerous because they think they seen a gun on them. So they shoot first, and lo and behold, the suspect did have a gun on them -- but what the policeman seen was just a cellphone or something bulky under their jacket.

Or the spouse that thinks their spouse is having an affair because they see a hickey. Their spouse indeed has an affair (and even has a hickey on the other side of the neck), but what their spouse saw was just some small bruise caused by something else.

Or, to stick with the theme, figuring domestic abuse, and the victim suffers that indeed, but your guess is based on a bruise they had from an actual fall.

Re: A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

#106

Post by [deleted] »

scotty79 wrote: post #101
paulsutter wrote: post #99

“Justified true belief”? All our knowledge is subjective by definition. We don’t even know whether we’re living in a simulation. Personally I doubt that we’re living in a simulation. But the fact that we could be, demonstrates that we don’t have objective knowledge. No cows needed in the field explain it Philosophy might better be called “the history of flawed thinking”

Also specific example with a cow is silly. Belief there is a cow in the field is not really justified. It just seems justified to the observer that can't tell difference between model and a real cow.

[deleted]

Re: A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

#108

Post by lamacase »

paulsutter wrote: post #99

“Justified true belief”? All our knowledge is subjective by definition. We don’t even know whether we’re living in a simulation. Personally I doubt that we’re living in a simulation. But the fact that we could be, demonstrates that we don’t have objective knowledge. No cows needed in the field explain it Philosophy might better be called “the history of flawed thinking”

By what definition? The "notion" of "justified true belief" WAS the definition of knowledge prior to these complications. Just saying "everything is subjective" is more tedious than making meaningful distinctions, in my subjective opinion

Re: A three-page paper that shook philosophy, with lessons for software engineers

#110

Post by gnode »

paulsutter wrote: post #99

“Justified true belief”? All our knowledge is subjective by definition. We don’t even know whether we’re living in a simulation. Personally I doubt that we’re living in a simulation. But the fact that we could be, demonstrates that we don’t have objective knowledge. No cows needed in the field explain it Philosophy might better be called “the history of flawed thinking”

> We don’t even know whether we’re living in a simulation.

I think it's actually worse than this. This scenario suggests that our minds are capable of infallible reasoning yet we may not be able to trust our observations. Really, I don't think we can even trust our own mind, and therefore JTB is undefinable.

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