to engineers it is. how the hell are they going to make a living otherwise? something being a problem of any type is just an opinion anyway... :D
The world is not an engineering problem
71–76 of 76 posts
Re: The world is not an engineering problem
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I see it, rationality doesn't choose your values for you, the same way mathematical reasoning doesn't choose your axioms for you. It's not a fixed tool in a sense that we're still discovering its various methods, but it is a tool that should not depend on cultural context - because what works to achieve your goal or correctly predict consequences doesn't change even as your goal might. Or, in other words, the…
Isn't rationality the principle of GIGO, though? Let's say I have a garbage idea, but my methods for acheiving it are rationally constructed - isn't this even a little problematic? Surely me must judge not only the means (and ignore any aspect of the goal) but to look and examine whether the goal is a good too. But if your claim is that rationality is independent of culture (which, as I've already noted, is rubbish,…
> Isn't rationality the principle of GIGO, though? Let's say I have a garbage idea, but my methods for acheiving it are rationally constructed - isn't this even a little problematic? Surely me must judge not only the means (and ignore any aspect of the goal) but to look and examine whether the goal is a good too.
That's what I was trying to say in my previous comment. Even if you execute rational reasoning perfectly, if you start with garbage input, you end up with garbage output. If you intrinsically value something horrible, e.g. murdering kittens, rationality isn't going to tell you to not do it; on the contrary, it'll suggest the most effective means of doing that.
> But if your claim is that rationality is independent of culture (which, as I've already noted, is rubbish, since the idea of what is rational and irrational changes with cultural zeitgeist, unless you have some claim to objective rationality which I don't)
I meant it in the same way in which 2+2=4 or F=ma are independent of culture. Of course the work of discovering rational reasoning was happening over long time, with important contributions in Ancient Greece and earlier. But we've only recently managed to get some good formal tools applicable to real-life problems of reasoning, namely probability theory.
> then we can't use a static methods of rationality to judge the goodness of a particular goal, which is obviously context-dependent. So if not rationality, then what? I suggest critical thinking in place.
What do you suggest this "critical thinking" is made of? As for judging the goodness of a particular goal - you can decompose that into parts that can be judged rationally on their effectiveness (and consistency), and parts that have to be judged morally.
Re: The world is not an engineering problem
#73This word soup reads like it was generated by the Postmodernism Paper Generator [1]. What am I supposed to take away from this? Is there a TL;DR version? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism_Generator
"The world is not an engineering problem." Pretty clear if you ask me.
What if we invented some gene therapy that could make everyone instantly and painlessly racially ambiguous? All looking like Simpsons characters or something. We could just poof and everyone would be the same! It would go so far towards eliminating racism and prejudice, which is unarguably a good goal. Some questions, though:
1. Would this really enrich human experience? Would it be "right"? 2. If someone didn't want the treatment would it be right to force them to accept it, even though it might end racism? 3. Would this actually end prejudice? 4. Could this technology ever exist?
The authors answers would be: "Nope", "Definitely not", "Almost certainly no", and "If it couldn't or we have no plans to make it, why even discuss it?" Now think about it like this:
1. Will Facebook having "better algorithms" end fake news? 2. Will Google and Apple adding fancy new apps end smartphone addiction? 3. Will cute little notes from Discord in their app end our huge lack of participation in democracy?
The author would say no to all of them, and he's right.
Re: The world is not an engineering problem
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think this essay is anti-intellectual at all. I think it is an exploration of the longstanding philosophical problem of trying to rationally design a world for irrational beings. The excerpt from Dillow on consequentialism brings to mind an idea from James Scott: that elites control policy discussions by limiting the accepted terms of the argument to legible, rationalizable factors - generally economic and te…
Thanks for the succinct account of irrational impulses, and for the James Scott ref. Can you recommend any particular book of his? My local library appears to have _Against the Grain_ on hand.
Against the Grain is great. I'm drawing upon Seeing Like A State and The Art of Not Being Governed.
Re: The world is not an engineering problem
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The way I think about it is that logic is a wonderful tool for ensuring your beliefs are consistent and helping you implement them effectively, but it's incapable of determining what those views should be. Put another way, you can only have a logical argument with someone who already agrees with your beliefs.
> Put another way, you can only have a logical argument with someone who already agrees with your beliefs. Technically true, but that's an easy (and all too frequently used) way to dismiss other people's arguments and keep believing whatever you want. It's very unlikely that any real-world policy question is a question about your fundamental value. You most likely don't value marijuana intrinsically. The future of a…
I agree with you that it shouldn't be used to dismiss arguments, but I do think most contentious policy issues boil down to to fundamental values.
Re: The world is not an engineering problem
#76This word soup reads like it was generated by the Postmodernism Paper Generator [1]. What am I supposed to take away from this? Is there a TL;DR version? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism_Generator
"The world is not an engineering problem." Pretty clear if you ask me. What if we invented some gene therapy that could make everyone instantly and painlessly racially ambiguous? All looking like Simpsons characters or something. We could just poof and everyone would be the same! It would go so far towards eliminating racism and prejudice, which is unarguably a good goal. Some questions, though: 1. Would this really…
Hasn't this line of questioning been well-examined, though? It seems like the author is just re-inventing Greek mythology. Does anyone actually believe that the world is an engineering problem? It seems like the author is committing several rhetorical fallacies just to seem intellectual and bait people.