Hard to Vary or Hardly Usable?
Showing only ideas leading to #5447 and its comments.
See full discussion·See most recent related ideasLog in or sign up to participate in this discussion.
With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.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 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.