Lack of Critical Thinking

[Erin]

What problems exist with this analogy?

Say 2 people are studying WWII.

Person A - He started to really dig down and try to *actively create* an understanding of the ideas. He viewed many different perspectives and carefully examined the ideas. He criticized the sources with every good criticism he could think of and used his own judgment to come to conclusions that made sense to him.

Person B - He memorized statements from a book, which amounted to basically a long string of words. He did not try to create a deep understanding of the ideas, and could really only spit back the sentences that he had read.

Compare these 2 approaches. One is adding to his knowledge structure in an integrated way. The knowledge is multi-sided, complex, *non* fragile, and very amenable to additions/deletions/modifications. The other is memorizing isolated bits of info that isn't really connected to his other knowledge and isn't going to be much help in contexts other than maybe the slim context of taking a history test based on the one source he consulted.

Now take these 2 people and put them in the daily life problems we all encounter.

Person A - Just like above, his aim is to solve problems and create knowledge. He works hard to resolve any conflicts in his mind, including conflicts stemming from ideas he may not be fully conscious of. He tries to think ideas all the way through and tries to create a deep understanding of problems and solutions. He knows how very prevalent mistakes are. Consequently, the only way to approach this fact of reality is with independent, rational and critical thinking. He knows that this is the only way to create knowledge/fix mistakes/solve problems.

Person B - He routinely *does not create knowledge* (aka solve his problems or resolve his conflicts). He often ignores some of his preferences and just grits his teeth and pushes through life. Sometimes he does what his head says and other times what his intuition says. However, agreement amongst his ideas is rare. When part of him has a vague criticism of an idea and if it is kind of hard to think thru, he just acts on the idea anyways. Because of poor critical thinking, he not only doesn't solve problems well, but he also hasn't built up a good knowledge structure of what is really going to make him happy...what his genuine interests are, why he likes what he does, what are good preferences to have, why they are good, etc.

Person B2 (another example of person B) - He is a child who is forced to do activities he doesn't prefer. However, the knowledge his parents believe they can force him to get via these activities can't be had that way. Rather, it must start with a problem the child *he himself* is interested in.

Unfortunately, this continues to happen and happen with the child having to stuff his *genuine* preferences for what the parent feels is more worthy. With time the child starts to lose touch of what he *really* wants to do. Just like the guy above who remained chronically conflicted while ignoring preferences, this child has also missed out on so many opportunities to *resolve* conflicts and thinking critically to allow him to create knowledge about his *own* preferences (who he is, what he likes, why he likes it, what's good to like and why,... )

The main problem for person B is lack of critical thinking. Ignoring preferences (just like memorizing WWII ideas) means no critical thinking. Means *not* creating a rich, integrated structure of knowledge...whether involving WWII knowledge or knowledge of your preferences (including what you genuinely enjoy and also how to create moral preferences for your life).

Critical thinking is crucial for learning and creating knowledge. Missed opportunities after missed opportunities to engage in critical thinking makes for a bad thinker.

If you are a bad thinker, you will not correct as many mistakes and life will hurt a lot more. And you'll be stuck with fragile knowledge that amounts to isolated disconnected bits that won't be very helpful to you.

Erin

[Elliot Temple]

On Dec 19, 2012, at 9:06 PM, Erin <erin...@aol.com> wrote:

> What problems exist with this analogy?
>
>
>
> Say 2 people are studying WWII.
>
> Person A - He started to really dig down and try to *actively create* an understanding of the ideas. He viewed many different perspectives and carefully examined the ideas. He criticized the sources with every good criticism he could think of and used his own judgment to come to conclusions that made sense to him.

Another important thing is to recognize places where different sources contradict each other and even sometimes explicitly argue against each other. When there are such conflicts, one should read the arguments for both sides and try to think of more and then make a judgment of some kind (whether it's taking a side or saying he's not sure or whatever).

>
> Person B - He memorized statements from a book, which amounted to basically a long string of words. He did not try to create a deep understanding of the ideas, and could really only spit back the sentences that he had read.
>
> Compare these 2 approaches. One is adding to his knowledge structure

why put the word "structure" there? if you deleted it, what meaning would be lost?

> in an integrated way. The knowledge is multi-sided, complex, *non* fragile, and very amenable to additions/deletions/modifications. The other is memorizing isolated bits of info that isn't really connected to his other knowledge and isn't going to be much help in contexts other than maybe the slim context of taking a history test based on the one source he consulted.

yup. Feynman talks about this, e.g. his experiences teaching physics in Brazil and about kids learning bird names.

> Now take these 2 people and put them in the daily life problems we all encounter.
>
> Person A - Just like above, his aim is to solve problems and create knowledge. He works hard to resolve any conflicts in his mind, including conflicts stemming from ideas he may not be fully conscious of. He tries to think ideas all the way through and tries to create a deep understanding of problems and solutions. He knows how very prevalent mistakes are. Consequently, the only way to approach this fact of reality is with independent, rational and critical thinking. He knows that this is the only way to create knowledge/fix mistakes/solve problems.
>
> Person B - He routinely *does not create knowledge* (aka solve his problems or resolve his conflicts). He often ignores some of his preferences and just grits his teeth and pushes through life. Sometimes he does what his head says and other times what his intuition says. However, agreement amongst his ideas is rare.

It's not rare. What you mean to say is something like: it's rare that he goes through a whole day without running into a (meaningful, substantive) conflict between his "head" and "gut" (certain memes).

> When part of him has a vague criticism of an idea and if it is kind of hard to think thru, he just acts on the idea anyways. Because of poor critical thinking, he not only doesn't solve problems well, but he also hasn't built up a good knowledge structure

again why "structure"?

> of what is really going to make him happy...what his genuine interests are, why he likes what he does, what are good preferences to have, why they are good, etc.
>
> Person B2 (another example of person B) - He is a child who is forced to do activities he doesn't prefer. However, the knowledge his parents believe they can force him to get via these activities can't be had that way. Rather, it must start with a problem the child *he himself* is interested in.
>
> Unfortunately, this continues to happen and happen with the child having to stuff

"stuff" here is slang and would be better written more clearly.

> his *genuine* preferences for what the parent feels is more worthy. With time the child starts to lose touch of what he *really* wants to do. Just like the guy above who remained chronically conflicted while ignoring preferences, this child has also missed out on so many opportunities to *resolve* conflicts and thinking critically to allow him to create knowledge about his *own* preferences (who he is, what he likes, why he likes it, what's good to like and why,... )

what often ends up happening if there's motivating punishments is child gets interested in the problem of not getting punished anymore and acts accordingly. solving this problem is quite different than solving problems like "i want to understand WWII".

> The main problem for person B is lack of critical thinking. Ignoring preferences (just like memorizing WWII ideas) means no critical thinking. Means *not* creating a rich, integrated structure of knowledge...whether involving WWII knowledge or knowledge of your preferences (including what you genuinely enjoy and also how to create moral preferences for your life).
>
> Critical thinking is crucial for learning and creating knowledge. Missed opportunities after missed opportunities to engage in critical thinking makes for a bad thinker.
>
> If you are a bad thinker, you will not correct as many mistakes and life will hurt a lot more. And you'll be stuck with fragile knowledge that amounts to isolated disconnected bits that won't be very helpful to you.

yes but people often *also* lack knowledge about understanding whether their life sucks, what their problems are, what they are missing out on, etc... often they are very attached to a false story of their life in which they don't have huge problems. so interesting them in something better can be tough.

-- Elliot Temple
http://curi.us/

[Erin Minter]

> On Jan 27, 2014, at 5:55 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>> On Dec 19, 2012, at 9:06 PM, Erin <erin...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>> What problems exist with this analogy?
>>
>>
>> Say 2 people are studying WWII.
>>
>> Person A - He started to really dig down and try to *actively create* an understanding of the ideas. He viewed many different perspectives and carefully examined the ideas. He criticized the sources with every good criticism he could think of and used his own judgment to come to conclusions that made sense to him.
>
> Another important thing is to recognize places where different sources contradict each other and even sometimes explicitly argue against each other. When there are such conflicts, one should read the arguments for both sides and try to think of more and then make a judgment of some kind (whether it's taking a side or saying he's not sure or whatever).
>
>>
>> Person B - He memorized statements from a book, which amounted to basically a long string of words. He did not try to create a deep understanding of the ideas, and could really only spit back the sentences that he had read.
>>
>> Compare these 2 approaches. One is adding to his knowledge structure
>
> why put the word "structure" there? if you deleted it, what meaning would be lost?

I used the word "structure" because I was thinking in terms of the organization or design of the knowledge. When I think of the word "knowledge" by itself, I think of mainly the content rather than the design or organization of the content.

But now after rereading this post and also this page:
http://fallibleideas.com/knowledge-structure

I wonder if I am confusing having a deep understanding of an area with that necessarily equating to having a better design or structure. I was thinking of a good knowledge structure as having lots of connections to other ideas rather than containing isolated bits of knowledge.

But maybe that's not the right way to think of it? Rather, a better way to think of knowledge structure is how easily you can modify the knowledge or apply it to other areas.

From this example, I think person A would have more knowledge in the area of WWII due to their deep understanding. And while it possible their knowledge structure is better, it doesn't necessarily follow from having a deeper understanding.

Thoughts?

>> in an integrated way. The knowledge is multi-sided, complex, *non* fragile, and very amenable to additions/deletions/modifications. The other is memorizing isolated bits of info that isn't really connected to his other knowledge and isn't going to be much help in contexts other than maybe the slim context of taking a history test based on the one source he consulted.
>
> yup. Feynman talks about this, e.g. his experiences teaching physics in Brazil and about kids learning bird names.
>
>
>> Now take these 2 people and put them in the daily life problems we all encounter.
>>
>> Person A - Just like above, his aim is to solve problems and create knowledge. He works hard to resolve any conflicts in his mind, including conflicts stemming from ideas he may not be fully conscious of. He tries to think ideas all the way through and tries to create a deep understanding of problems and solutions. He knows how very prevalent mistakes are. Consequently, the only way to approach this fact of reality is with independent, rational and critical thinking. He knows that this is the only way to create knowledge/fix mistakes/solve problems.
>>
>> Person B - He routinely *does not create knowledge* (aka solve his problems or resolve his conflicts). He often ignores some of his preferences and just grits his teeth and pushes through life. Sometimes he does what his head says and other times what his intuition says. However, agreement amongst his ideas is rare.
>
> It's not rare. What you mean to say is something like: it's rare that he goes through a whole day without running into a (meaningful, substantive) conflict between his "head" and "gut" (certain memes).

Yes, that's better.

>> When part of him has a vague criticism of an idea and if it is kind of hard to think thru, he just acts on the idea anyways. Because of poor critical thinking, he not only doesn't solve problems well, but he also hasn't built up a good knowledge structure
>
> again why "structure"?

Yeah, the word "structure" here doesn't add anything because I am mainly talking about the content of the knowledge.

>> of what is really going to make him happy...what his genuine interests are, why he likes what he does, what are good preferences to have, why they are good, etc.
>>
>> Person B2 (another example of person B) - He is a child who is forced to do activities he doesn't prefer. However, the knowledge his parents believe they can force him to get via these activities can't be had that way. Rather, it must start with a problem the child *he himself* is interested in.
>>
>> Unfortunately, this continues to happen and happen with the child having to stuff
>
> "stuff" here is slang and would be better written more clearly.

"Stuff" refers a coercive act against your ideas. So when there is a conflict of ideas (btwn parent and child), a child is forced to act against their best idea about how to proceed in that problem situation. It is non-truth seeking (irrational). This coercive process can be done from one person to another (parent to child, eg) or it can happen when you coerce yourself.

>> his *genuine* preferences for what the parent feels is more worthy. With time the child starts to lose touch of what he *really* wants to do. Just like the guy above who remained chronically conflicted while ignoring preferences, this child has also missed out on so many opportunities to *resolve* conflicts and thinking critically to allow him to create knowledge about his *own* preferences (who he is, what he likes, why he likes it, what's good to like and why,... )
>
> what often ends up happening if there's motivating punishments is child gets interested in the problem of not getting punished anymore and acts accordingly. solving this problem is quite different than solving problems like "i want to understand WWII".

Yes, so the child spends much of his creativity and energy solving problems such as how to get approval, avoid punishments, not get caught, tolerate tedious and boring school work, fight with his parents, etc :(

>> The main problem for person B is lack of critical thinking. Ignoring preferences (just like memorizing WWII ideas) means no critical thinking. Means *not* creating a rich, integrated structure of knowledge...whether involving WWII knowledge or knowledge of your preferences (including what you genuinely enjoy and also how to create moral preferences for your life).
>>
>> Critical thinking is crucial for learning and creating knowledge. Missed opportunities after missed opportunities to engage in critical thinking makes for a bad thinker.
>>
>> If you are a bad thinker, you will not correct as many mistakes and life will hurt a lot more. And you'll be stuck with fragile knowledge that amounts to isolated disconnected bits that won't be very helpful to you.
>
> yes but people often *also* lack knowledge about understanding whether their life sucks, what their problems are, what they are missing out on, etc... often they are very attached to a false story of their life in which they don't have huge problems. so interesting them in something better can be tough.

This is related to why some people hate greatness. They don't think it's possible to do much better in their lives so they stay attached to their false stories. If they believed that it were possible, then it would mean that it was their responsibility that their life was full of suffering.

Erin

[Elliot Temple]

On Jan 28, 2014, at 8:18 PM, Erin Minter <erin...@aol.com> wrote:

>
>> On Jan 27, 2014, at 5:55 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>> On Dec 19, 2012, at 9:06 PM, Erin <erin...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> What problems exist with this analogy?
>>>
>>>
>>> Say 2 people are studying WWII.
>>>
>>> Person A - He started to really dig down and try to *actively create* an understanding of the ideas. He viewed many different perspectives and carefully examined the ideas. He criticized the sources with every good criticism he could think of and used his own judgment to come to conclusions that made sense to him.
>>
>> Another important thing is to recognize places where different sources contradict each other and even sometimes explicitly argue against each other. When there are such conflicts, one should read the arguments for both sides and try to think of more and then make a judgment of some kind (whether it's taking a side or saying he's not sure or whatever).
>>
>>>
>>> Person B - He memorized statements from a book, which amounted to basically a long string of words. He did not try to create a deep understanding of the ideas, and could really only spit back the sentences that he had read.
>>>
>>> Compare these 2 approaches. One is adding to his knowledge structure
>>
>> why put the word "structure" there? if you deleted it, what meaning would be lost?
>
> I used the word "structure" because I was thinking in terms of the organization or design of the knowledge. When I think of the word "knowledge" by itself, I think of mainly the content rather than the design or organization of the content.

In both cases I think he's adding content about WWII, and fitting into an existing structure he's used for multiple topics.

>
> But now after rereading this post and also this page:
> http://fallibleideas.com/knowledge-structure
>
> I wonder if I am confusing having a deep understanding of an area with that necessarily equating to having a better design or structure.

"Necessarily" is too strong there, but it's related.

Here's a problem: knowledge structure isn't normally improved by adding to it. It'd normally be improved by restructuring which would involve both additions and deletions. (This will be familiar to any programmers reading. When they want to improve the design of code they restructure it with both additions and deletions, and, when they're done, it's fairly common for the better structured design to be shorter.)

And improving structure is usually done as a separate task than adding new content like about WWII.

> I was thinking of a good knowledge structure as having lots of connections to other ideas rather than containing isolated bits of knowledge.
>
> But maybe that's not the right way to think of it? Rather, a better way to think of knowledge structure is how easily you can modify the knowledge or apply it to other areas.

What is a good structure is actually contextual: it depends on what problem(s) it's meant to solve. Lots of connections, or easy to change, is often a sign of good structure but not necessarily.

(Also BTW your points, linked with "But maybe that's not the right way to think of it" are actually related. If knowledge is structured so that it can easily be applied to other areas then, in general, the person will create the connections to other areas. And if not, not.)

> From this example, I think person A would have more knowledge in the area of WWII due to their deep understanding.

yes, lots more WWII content will be understood with the better approaches.

> And while it possible their knowledge structure is better, it doesn't necessarily follow from having a deeper understanding.

well their knowledge is structured better when they use rational processes instead of memorization. but adding well-structured knowledge is not "adding to his knowledge structure". i think he's adding content and using the same structure he already had before he started learning about WWII.

>>> The main problem for person B is lack of critical thinking. Ignoring preferences (just like memorizing WWII ideas) means no critical thinking. Means *not* creating a rich, integrated structure of knowledge...whether involving WWII knowledge or knowledge of your preferences (including what you genuinely enjoy and also how to create moral preferences for your life).
>>>
>>> Critical thinking is crucial for learning and creating knowledge. Missed opportunities after missed opportunities to engage in critical thinking makes for a bad thinker.
>>>
>>> If you are a bad thinker, you will not correct as many mistakes and life will hurt a lot more. And you'll be stuck with fragile knowledge that amounts to isolated disconnected bits that won't be very helpful to you.
>>
>> yes but people often *also* lack knowledge about understanding whether their life sucks, what their problems are, what they are missing out on, etc... often they are very attached to a false story of their life in which they don't have huge problems. so interesting them in something better can be tough.
>
> This is related to why some people hate greatness. They don't think it's possible to do much better in their lives so they stay attached to their false stories. If they believed that it were possible, then it would mean that it was their responsibility that their life was full of suffering.

right, they often like stories about how great men don't spend enough time with their kids so they are actually giving up important stuff for their supposed "greatness". or stories about how the rich people probably cheated their way to the top. unless the guy inherited his fortune which isn't so offensive since they can claim the inherited money wasn't earned by greatness (often, but not always, true).

-- Elliot Temple
http://fallibleideas.com/

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

On Jan 28, 2014, at 8:18 PM, Erin Minter <erin...@aol.com> wrote:

>> On Jan 27, 2014, at 5:55 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>> On Dec 19, 2012, at 9:06 PM, Erin <erin...@aol.com> wrote:
>>> Person B - He memorized statements from a book, which amounted to basically a long string of words. He did not try to create a deep understanding of the ideas, and could really only spit back the sentences that he had read.
>>>
>>> Compare these 2 approaches. One is adding to his knowledge structure
>>
>> why put the word "structure" there? if you deleted it, what meaning would be lost?
>
> I used the word "structure" because I was thinking in terms of the organization or design of the knowledge. When I think of the word "knowledge" by itself, I think of mainly the content rather than the design or organization of the content.
>
> But now after rereading this post and also this page:
> http://fallibleideas.com/knowledge-structure
>
> I wonder if I am confusing having a deep understanding of an area with that necessarily equating to having a better design or structure. I was thinking of a good knowledge structure as having lots of connections to other ideas rather than containing isolated bits of knowledge.
>
> But maybe that's not the right way to think of it? Rather, a better way to think of knowledge structure is how easily you can modify the knowledge or apply it to other areas.

It's good to be able to apply knowledge to other areas. One thing that helps with that is understanding how arbitrary exceptions weaken ideas, and giving importance to stronger ideas without arbitrary exceptions (which I think correspond to ideas with lots of reach).

It's good to be able to improve knowledge. What ways of organizing ideas lend themselves to that?

In programming, there is the Don't Repeat Yourself ("DRY") principle, which is to store each piece of information (for some meaning of "piece") in only one place in the program. A benefit of doing this is that it's easier to change the information than it would be if it was redundantly stored in many places, because then you'd have to change it in each of those places. I'm not sure if DRY is right for knowledge in a mind, though.

[Elliot Temple]

I think DRY is good in most cases in minds, for similar reasons to why it's good in programming. Why wouldn't it be?

-- Elliot Temple
http://elliottemple.com/

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

For all I know, knowledge in a mind is represented very differently from the way it is represented in the computer programs we know how to write today, so different organizational principles might apply.

[Alan Forrester]

On 31 January 2014 09:46, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum

<petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 30, 2014, at 2:36 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 30, 2014, at 1:35 AM, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In programming, there is the Don't Repeat Yourself ("DRY") principle, which is to store each piece of information (for some meaning of "piece") in only one place in the program. A benefit of doing this is that it's easier to change the information than it would be if it was redundantly stored in many places, because then you'd have to change it in each of those places. I'm not sure if DRY is right for knowledge in a mind, though.
>>
>> I think DRY is good in most cases in minds, for similar reasons to why it's good in programming. Why wouldn't it be?
>
> For all I know, knowledge in a mind is represented very differently from the way it is represented in the computer programs we know how to write today, so different organizational principles might apply.

That's just a statement that DRY might in principle be flawed, which
is true of absolutely any idea.

The way you stated DRY "stored in only one place" makes it sound wrong
because you might need backups of a piece of information.

My understanding is that DRY actually means each piece of information
should have only one representation in the program:

http://www.artima.com/intv/dryP.html

So it is possible for a program to conform to DRY even if a particular
piece of data is stored in more than copy so that if one of them is
damaged another will be available.

Another possible criticism is that a single protein might be
represented by more than one codon, which looks like more than one
representation. Something similar might be true for minds: there could
be more than one physical instantiation of some idea.

In the DNA case this is irrelevant as long as the program in the DNA
doesn't refer to the specific codons. It could just refer to some
property of the codons that is shared by all of the codons
representing that protein and not by other codons. Then that
particular property is the representation of the protein in the
program, not the codon.

Likewise a piece of information in the mind could be instantiated in
more than one way physically. But that doesn't matter as long as the
minds program only looks at some feature shared by all of the
different instantiations.

Alan

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

On Jan 31, 2014, at 2:59 AM, Alan Forrester <alanmichae...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 31 January 2014 09:46, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
> <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Jan 30, 2014, at 2:36 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 30, 2014, at 1:35 AM, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In programming, there is the Don't Repeat Yourself ("DRY") principle, which is to store each piece of information (for some meaning of "piece") in only one place in the program. A benefit of doing this is that it's easier to change the information than it would be if it was redundantly stored in many places, because then you'd have to change it in each of those places. I'm not sure if DRY is right for knowledge in a mind, though.
>>>
>>> I think DRY is good in most cases in minds, for similar reasons to why it's good in programming. Why wouldn't it be?
>>
>> For all I know, knowledge in a mind is represented very differently from the way it is represented in the computer programs we know how to write today, so different organizational principles might apply.
>
> That's just a statement that DRY might in principle be flawed, which
> is true of absolutely any idea.

We don't know anything about how to program a mind, so how is what I said just a statement that DRY might be flawed?

Even if DRY doesn't apply to minds, why does that make DRY flawed for computer programs?

> The way you stated DRY "stored in only one place" makes it sound wrong
> because you might need backups of a piece of information.
>
> My understanding is that DRY actually means each piece of information
> should have only one representation in the program:
>
> http://www.artima.com/intv/dryP.html

I think the idea of DRY expressed in that article is that each piece of knowledge should have only one *authoritative* representation. So even though it might be duplicated, if you change it in the authoritative place, all the other locations are updated automatically.

> So it is possible for a program to conform to DRY even if a particular
> piece of data is stored in more than copy so that if one of them is
> damaged another will be available.

Yes.

> Another possible criticism is that a single protein might be
> represented by more than one codon, which looks like more than one
> representation. Something similar might be true for minds: there could
> be more than one physical instantiation of some idea.

I don't know much about proteins and codons, though I get that they are a kind of knowledge. Can you explain how they are similar to minds?

> ]

[Alan Forrester]

On 31 January 2014 11:06, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum

<petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 31, 2014, at 2:59 AM, Alan Forrester <alanmichae...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 31 January 2014 09:46, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
>> <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Jan 30, 2014, at 2:36 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Jan 30, 2014, at 1:35 AM, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In programming, there is the Don't Repeat Yourself ("DRY") principle, which is to store each piece of information (for some meaning of "piece") in only one place in the program. A benefit of doing this is that it's easier to change the information than it would be if it was redundantly stored in many places, because then you'd have to change it in each of those places. I'm not sure if DRY is right for knowledge in a mind, though.
>>>>
>>>> I think DRY is good in most cases in minds, for similar reasons to why it's good in programming. Why wouldn't it be?
>>>
>>> For all I know, knowledge in a mind is represented very differently from the way it is represented in the computer programs we know how to write today, so different organizational principles might apply.
>>
>> That's just a statement that DRY might in principle be flawed, which
>> is true of absolutely any idea.
>
> We don't know anything about how to program a mind, so how is what I said just a statement that DRY might be flawed?
>
> Even if DRY doesn't apply to minds, why does that make DRY flawed for computer programs?

The mind is a computation. It's a piece of information that takes
other pieces of information as input (e.g. - information from your
eyes or whatever) and produces information as output (e.g. - ideas,
instructions to move limbs).

>> The way you stated DRY "stored in only one place" makes it sound wrong
>> because you might need backups of a piece of information.
>>
>> My understanding is that DRY actually means each piece of information
>> should have only one representation in the program:
>>
>> http://www.artima.com/intv/dryP.html
>
> I think the idea of DRY expressed in that article is that each piece of knowledge should have only one *authoritative* representation. So even though it might be duplicated, if you change it in the authoritative place, all the other locations are updated automatically.
>
>> So it is possible for a program to conform to DRY even if a particular
>> piece of data is stored in more than copy so that if one of them is
>> damaged another will be available.
>
> Yes.
>
>> Another possible criticism is that a single protein might be
>> represented by more than one codon, which looks like more than one
>> representation. Something similar might be true for minds: there could
>> be more than one physical instantiation of some idea.
>
> I don't know much about proteins and codons, though I get that they are a kind of knowledge. Can you explain how they are similar to minds?

Correction: each codon represents an amino acid, not a protein, which
is composed of a sequence of such acids.

DNA and the surrounding machinery is in large part an information
storage and processing mechanism - a computer. It also produces
physical stuff like protein. But the important thing is that the amino
acids are arranged in a protein that does something useful.

You should read FoR, or BoI or the Selfish Gene, or Godel, Escher,
Bach or all of them.

Alan

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

On Jan 31, 2014, at 3:14 AM, Alan Forrester <alanmichae...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 31 January 2014 11:06, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
> <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Jan 31, 2014, at 2:59 AM, Alan Forrester <alanmichae...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 31 January 2014 09:46, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum
>>> <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Jan 30, 2014, at 2:36 AM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Jan 30, 2014, at 1:35 AM, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum <petrogradp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> In programming, there is the Don't Repeat Yourself ("DRY") principle, which is to store each piece of information (for some meaning of "piece") in only one place in the program. A benefit of doing this is that it's easier to change the information than it would be if it was redundantly stored in many places, because then you'd have to change it in each of those places. I'm not sure if DRY is right for knowledge in a mind, though.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think DRY is good in most cases in minds, for similar reasons to why it's good in programming. Why wouldn't it be?
>>>>
>>>> For all I know, knowledge in a mind is represented very differently from the way it is represented in the computer programs we know how to write today, so different organizational principles might apply.
>>>
>>> That's just a statement that DRY might in principle be flawed, which
>>> is true of absolutely any idea.
>>
>> We don't know anything about how to program a mind, so how is what I said just a statement that DRY might be flawed?
>>
>> Even if DRY doesn't apply to minds, why does that make DRY flawed for computer programs?
>
> The mind is a computation.

And man is a mineral? It's technically true that a mind is a kind of computation, but it's a very rich kind of computation that we don't know how to write a program for yet.

> It's a piece of information that takes
> other pieces of information as input (e.g. - information from your
> eyes or whatever) and produces information as output (e.g. - ideas,
> instructions to move limbs).

This description is true as far as it goes, but it leaves out the key attribute that makes minds special - their ability to create knowledge about anything.

As I understand it, the following is an instance of the form of your argument: Both rocks and minds "run on atoms", therefore any theory about atoms should automatically apply to minds. But the behavior of atoms can be explained without reference to morality, while the behavior of minds cannot, so this argument is wrong.

What am I missing?

[Alan Forrester]

On 31 January 2014 11:21, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum

What you're missing is that there is no reason why I should have to
justify the idea that DRY would apply to minds since justification is
impossible. You have produced no specific criticisms of that idea. In
the absence of a specific criticism we might as well use the idea that
DRY does apply.

Alan

[Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum]

I'm criticizing your idea for being arbitrary. You wouldn't say, "Knowledge in DNA is represented in helixes and that works very well; minds have knowledge, therefore minds should represent their ideas in helixes.". So you must have some explanation about how the knowledge in computer programs and the knowledge in minds is similar in a way that makes DRY apply to both. What is this explanation?