What’s the difference, conceptually, between these three noticings, if any?
"I’m only enjoying that wine because of what it signals" "I’m only enjoying that food because I know it’s organic" "I’m only enjoying that movie scene because I know what happened before it" It might be helpful for me to figure out whether I’m "actually" enjoying the wine, or if it’s a sort of a crony belief: disentangling those is useful to make better decisions for myself, in say, deciding to go to a wine-tasting if status-boost among those people isn’t relevant to me. Perhaps similarly, I’m better off knowing if my knowledge of whether this food item is organic is interfering with my taste experience. But then in the movie example, no one would dispute the knowledge is relevant to the experience! Going back to our earlier ones, maybe just the knowledge there *was *relevant, and "genuinely" making it a better experience? Maybe my degree of liking a food item is a function of both "knowledge of organic origin" *and *"chemical interactions with tongue receptors" just like my degree of liking of a movie is a function of both "contextual buildup from the narrative" *and *"the currently unfolding scene"? Some questions to think about:
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Do some of these point legitimately or illegitimately at self-deception?
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Are some of these a confusion of levels and others less so?
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Are some of these instances of working wishful thinking?
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Are some of these better seen as actions rather than rationalizations? Other examples to meditate on simultaneously, with helpful variance in their sense of how solved each feels:
"I only upvoted that because of who wrote it" "I only care about my son because of how it makes me feel" "I only had a moving experience because of the alcohol and hormones in my bloodstream" "I only moved my hand because I moved my fingers" "I’m only exhibiting courage because I’ve convinced myself I’ll scare away my opponent" "I only look pretty because of my cosmetics/surgery" PS. I do think we’ve learnt that there are more ways words can be wrong than just being disguised queries. In any case, the "real question" I’m trying to ask is: what are some criteria for determining when it is appropriate to decouple, even if only internally? Are there cases where you might overcorrect for fallacies of compression? Is there possibly a compact set of criteria that we could workshop? I have an inkling there might. Note: this question has been expanded and heavily reworded from a previous version, making some of the comments less comprehensible. Apologies.
Can you clarify how you’re using the "you’re only" part of those questions? Do you mean:
"Y is the only significant cause or reason for X"
"Y is literally the only factor leading you to X"
"Y is a contributing factor for X, which you seem to be unaware of"
"Y is a "tipping point" factor, without which you would not be doing X"
"Y is the "tipping point" factor, the one least likely to be true / most malleable, without which you would not be doing X"
"Y is a a necessary factor, without it you wouldn’t do X no matter what else was contributing (but it is not sufficient in and of itself)"
"Y is a sufficient factor for X, regardless of any other considerations (but counterfactually you might X even if Y was false) In common usage, Alex telling Beth "You’re only X because of Y" implies two things:
Alex thinks Y ought not to be a contributing factor towards X (or, sometimes, replace "contributing" with "controlling," "significant," or "sufficient")
Alex thinks Beth is doing wrong by allowing Y to [influence] X Commonly accepted defenses to "You’re only marrying Earnest for his money!":
Not Y—"I’m not marrying Earnest"
Not X—"Earnest has no money"
Not Y → X—"I didn’t know Earnest had any money"
But also Z—"We’re in love, and I’m not getting any younger, and he’s hot, and our families get along, and, yes, he’s rich, but that’s a relatively small part of his appeal."
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I think I might have made a mistake in putting in too many of these at once. The whole point is to figure out which forms of accusations are useful feedback (for whatever), and which ones are not, by putting them very close to questions we think we’ve dissolved. Take three of these, for example. I think it might be helpful to figure out whether I’m "actually" enjoying the wine, or if it’s a sort of a crony belief. Disentangling those is useful to make better decisions for myself, in say, deciding to go to a wine-tasting if status-boost with those people wouldn’t help. Perhaps similarly, I’m better off knowing if my knowledge of whether this food item is organic is interfering with my taste experience. But then in the movie example, no one would dispute the knowledge is relevant to the experience! Going back to our earlier ones, maybe just the knowledge there *was *relevant, and "genuinely" making it a better experience? Maybe my degree of liking is a function of both "knowledge of organic origin" *and *"chemical interactions with tongue receptors" just like my degree of liking of a movie is a function of both "contextual buildup from the narrative" *and *"the currently unfolding scene"? How about when you apply this to "you only upvoted that because of who wrote it"? Maybe that’s a little closer home.
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Whether something is useful feedback depends on goals. Feedback is either useful for achieving a given goal or isn’t. You didn’t list any goals and thus it’s meaningless to speak with of those are useful feedback. We might engage in mind reading and make up plausible goals that the person who’s the target of the accusations might have and discuss whether or not the feedback is useful for the goals that we imagine, but mind reading is generally problematic.
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It seemed to me that avoiding fallacies of compression was always a useful thing (independent of your goal, so long as you have the time for computation), even if negligibly. Yet these questions seem to be a bit of a counterexample in mind, namely that I have to be careful when what looks like decoupling might be decontextualizing. Importantly, I can’t seem to figure out a sharp line between the two. The examples were a useful meditation for me, so I shared them. Maybe I should rename the title to reflect this? (I’m quite confused by my failure of conveying the point of the meditation, might try redoing the whole post.)
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In Where to Draw the Boundaries, Zack points out (emphasis mine):
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You draw boundaries towards questions. I can ask many questions about wine: "Do I enjoy drinking wine?", "Do I get good value for money when I seek enjoyment by paying money for wine?", "Is the wine inherently enjoyful?" and a bunch of others. Answering those questions is about drawing boundaries the same way as answering "Is a dolphin a fish?" is about drawing boundaries. Your list doesn’t have any questions like that and thus there aren’t any boundaries to be drawn.
As far as the question of "What is a dolphin?" goes at Wikidata at the moment is our answer "A dolphin organisms known by a particular common name" because the word dolphin does not refer to a single species of animals or a taxon in the taxonomic tree. Speaking of dolphins when you reject categorizations that are not taxonomic accurate makes little sense in the first place.
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I have plenty of comments at Zack post you link and I don’t agree with it. As Thomas Khun argued, the fact that chemists and physicists disagree about whether helium is a molecule is no problem. Both communities have reasons to carve out the joints differently. Different paradigms have valid reasons to draw lines differently.
I think your analysis of "you’re only X because of Y" is missing the "you are doing it wrong" implicit accusation in the statement. Basically, the implied meaning, I think, is that while there are acceptable reasons to X, you are lacking any of them, but instead your reason for X is Y, which is not one of the acceptable reasons. Which is why your Z is a defense—claiming to have reasons in the acceptable set. And another defense might be to respond entirely to the implied accusation and explain why Y should be an OK reason to X. "You’re only enjoying that movie scene because you know what happened before it"—"Yeah, and what’s wrong with that?"
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Yes, this is the interpretation. If I’m doing X wrong (in some way)*, *it’s helpful for me to notice it. But then I notice I’m confused about when decoupling context is the "correct" thing to do, as exemplified in the post. Rationalists tend to take great pride in decoupling and seeing through narratives (myself included), but I sense there might be some times when you "shouldn’t", and they seem strangely caught up with embeddedness in a way.