Hard to Vary or Hardly Usable?
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My critique of David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity as a programmer. In short, his ‘hard to vary’ criterion at the core of his epistemology is fatally underspecified and impossible to apply.
Deutsch says that one should adopt explanations based on how hard they are to change without impacting their ability to explain what they claim to explain. The hardest-to-change explanation is the best and should be adopted. But he doesn’t say how to figure out which is hardest to change.
A decision-making method is a computational task. He says you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. He can’t program the steps for finding out how ‘hard to vary’ an explanation is, if only because those steps are underspecified. There are too many open questions.
So by his own yardstick, he hasn’t understood his epistemology.
You will find that and many more criticisms here: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/hard-to-vary-or-hardly-usable
Dirk replies that the bounty doesn’t ask for essentialist definitions. It instead asks for clarity around how to actually use HTV:
Rejecting essentialism doesn't grant your ideas immunity from clarification. Being vague is not something to be proud of.
By your standard, I could invent any bullshit property of explanations, call it "glorpiness" and when you ask what it means, reply that definitions miss the point.
Brett replies, among other things: “Calling it ‘bullshit’ doesn’t win the argument. People have been doing that kind of thing with Popper, falsification and conjectural knowledge since the 1930s.”
Dirk replies that he “called "glorpiness" bullshit, not HTV” nor Popper. Brett completely missed the point of Dirk’s argument.
Brett’s response basically ignores existing criticisms and sounds like he’s lecturing people who haven’t read Deutsch or Popper. He’s forgotten that I’ve already corrected him on several misattributions of his to Popper and his misinterpretation of BoI re preference formation.
Brett says “Denying that good explanations of the physical world are hard to vary leaves us with *no better explanation* of what has driven progress in science, history and reason broadly.”
By saying HTV is central to progress, Brett contradicts his previous claim (#5355) that HTV is just a feature of explanations.
I reply that the actual explanation is that people who make progress participate in a tradition of criticism. They’re critical of ideas and try to address all (or almost all) known criticisms. That process may lead to ideas having the feature Brett calls hard to vary, but it’s strictly an effect of that critical activity, not its means.
I had previously linked Brett to my blog post containing that explanation. He liked that reply at the time so he’s definitely seen it, but he’s still ignoring it.
Brett replies saying “‘Hard To Vary’ is not vague. It is a real and useful solution to a philosophical problem. All actual scientific theories are hard to vary.”
He says it isn’t vague but then never gets specific about how to tell how hard to vary an explanation is or how to compare explanations this way. Instead, he mistakenly claims that isn’t the purpose of BoI, contrary to the evidence presented to him.
I think that was the intention behind it, but its effect has been the opposite, to an extent. Hand-wavy referrals to explanations being HTV and rationality being synonymous with creativity, without explaining in detail how these things work, turn them into a black box that may as well work magically to give us the answers we want.
Being rational requires a criterion of rationality that is clear and precise enough so you know when you stray from it. HTV isn’t.
Dirk replies to a bunch more points Brett has made. I won’t get into them, at least not for now. Brett’s previous arguments have too many pending criticisms, and he ignores them, so tracking additional points won’t help. Brett isn’t in truth-seeking mode, he’s in defend-Deutsch mode. If I see Brett addressing any pending criticisms on X after all, I’ll update V accordingly.