[ExI] Free will was: Everett worlds

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 6:43 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> I am not a linguist, but of course there is a problem defining abstractions such as love.  You look up love and get affection, caring, and so on -synonyms.  That's why in psych we use operational definitions:  words, such as IQ, are defined in terms of the operations used to measure them - an IQ test.  The way out of the circularity is to establish correlations between the IQ score and meaningful other things such as school grades, among many others.
>
> So, gimme an example of love.  Is 'making love' an example of love?  How about getting married?  Gimme one.
>
> bill w

I think less abstract everyday words are often very hard to define.
Think of 'chair' or 'shoe.' They're not very abstract like 'love' or
'democracy.' Do you have ready definitions of those? I'm sure anyone
can come up with a working definition and make it better, but the
initiation work would be hard. Imagine a child who uses these words
correctly by your lights and asking them to define them -- in a
standard dictionary way or in the oft preferred species-genus fashion.
They'd probably have a hard time, no?

Regards,

Dan
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http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Ust/e/B00J6HPX8M/