[ExI] new term

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Mon Apr 10 12:07:49 UTC 2023


I object to the word 'semantics' being used just to refer to your choice of
words.  There is no 'just' to it.  It is about the meaning of written or
oral language to go with grammar, syntax and so on.  Nothing could be more
important.   bill w

On Sun, Apr 9, 2023 at 6:25 PM efc--- via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Sun, 9 Apr 2023, Gadersd via extropy-chat wrote:
>
> > I used to describe myself with labels but I eventually realized that my
> definitions of many labels doesn’t agree with the definitions others use
> and that definitions shift over time. The result is that many people end up
> arguing semantics rather than the actual content of their beliefs.
> >
>
> Makes 100% sense. I have a friend who is a "social" libertarian and I'm
> more "classic" and a way to understanding and empathy for us is to talk
> scenarios and content and not labels, and also talk about the reasons for
> the opinion.
>
> I think Habermas has some technique or method to facilitate this. But
> reading newspapers today and listening to politicians, I think Habermas
> method might just be the whisper of a dream. ;)
>
> > This reminds me of the old trend in artificial intelligence of using
> symbol based methods. This paradigm eventually fell out of favor when
> machine learning became popular. The reason is that symbols often don’t
> actually reflect the underlying reality they represent, often they are just
> arbitrary labels. By focusing on raw computation, machine learning has a
> much greater ability to model actual reality and achieves much better
> results in practice than symbol based methods. Technically, it is all
> symbols deep down: 1s and 0s. However, machine learning computes at a much
> lower level than symbol based methods, sort of like the difference between
> computing the digits 3.14… of pi vs using just the symbol π.
> >
>
> I also tend to think in terms of computer science and how systems work,
> and I am frequently reminded as well of the similarity of things. But I
> guess we have at some level "encoded" or "rediscovered" our basic
> natures in our wonderful computers, so it is probably just very natural.
> ;)
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