X-Git-Url: http://unremediatedgender.space/source?p=Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=content%2F2018%2Fblegg-mode.md;h=a043874accecc8c6c36e8d35d2ff3403aab25fd0;hp=8cd6b4944f070f5644d81e9a97b06a268b2b39b2;hb=21731ba6f1191f1e8f920c44299c4b345f4fa528;hpb=ffe2f893a512d2263b5b2e081990cbb3b7084acd diff --git a/content/2018/blegg-mode.md b/content/2018/blegg-mode.md index 8cd6b49..a043874 100644 --- a/content/2018/blegg-mode.md +++ b/content/2018/blegg-mode.md @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ Title: Blegg Mode Date: 2018-02-01 13:45 Category: commentary -Tags: deniably allegorical, epistemology +Tags: categorization, deniably allegorical, epistemology As part of a series—ah, Sequence—of [posts explaining the hidden Bayesian structure of language](https://www.lesserwrong.com/sequences/SGB7Y5WERh4skwtnb), Eliezer Yudkowsky [discusses](http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/) [a parable](http://lesswrong.com/lw/nn/neural_categories/) [about](http://lesswrong.com/lw/no/how_an_algorithm_feels_from_inside/) factory workers faced with the task of sorting objects which very strongly tend to _either_ be blue, egg-shaped, furry, flexible, opaque, luminescent, and vanadium-cored (categorized by the workers as "bleggs"), _or_ red, cube-shaped, smooth, hard, translucent, non-luminescent, and palladium-cored (categorized by the workers as "rubes"). @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ You make a startling discovery—this object was originally a smooth, hard red c "Wow," she says, "someone sure has gone to a lot of trouble to make these rubes look like bleggs!" -"Hold on," you say, "I'm not sure we should be disrespecting that effort by calling them _rubes_. [The categories were made for man, not man for the categories](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/): there's no rule of sorting saying that we should call them rubes, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that we should call them bleggs. And at a glance, they _look_ like bleggs—I mean, like the more-typical bleggs." +"Hold on," you say, "I'm not sure we should be disrespecting that effort by calling them _rubes_. [The categories were made for man, not man for the categories](http://web.archive.org/web/20200610230130/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/): there's no rule of sorting saying that we should call them rubes, and there are plenty of rules of human decency saying that we should call them bleggs. And at a glance, they _look_ like bleggs—I mean, like the more-typical bleggs." Susan rolls her eyes at you, but apparently doesn't care enough to argue about it, so the two of you agree to call the modified hard objects _adapted bleggs_ and get back to work.