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Deutsch says to choose between explanations “according to how good they are” – note the plural.

What if I can only come up with one explanation? Can I just go with that one? What if it’s bad but still the best I could do? He leaves such questions open.

Deutsch contradicts his yardstick for understanding a computational task. He says that you haven’t understood a computational task if you can’t program it. His method of decision-making based on finding good explanations is a computational task. He can’t program it, so he hasn’t understood it.

Isn't every theory infinitely underspecified ?

This stance is presumably a version of the epistemological cynicism I identify here.

Deutsch leaves open how we find out how hard to vary an explanation is. We need more details. In some cases it’s obvious, but we need a general description for less-obvious cases.

Thanks for asking good questions.

Is it accurate to view reason more as a process than a static state?

Yes.

Where the process might be summed up by
1. Being open to criticism
2. Truth-seeking (commitment to getting ideas to jibe)

Yes. Aka ‘common-preference finding’ aka ‘fun’.

Some of the virtues that @benjamin-davies has put together are part of it, too.

Superseded by #3671.

Maybe I don’t understand the question, but I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all criterion to use for that scenario. It depends on the content of the ideas and how they conflict exactly.

All I can say without more info is that we can try to criticize ideas and adopt the ones with no pending criticisms. That’s true for any kind of idea – explicit, inexplicit, conscious, unconscious, executable, etc. See #2281.

Yeah. I mean finding unanimous consent between different kinds of ideas generally, not just between ideas about rationality. See also #3049 and #2281.

[A]ny system only ever has input, output, and functions that determine how that output is generated. What else is there?

Minds don’t necessarily output anything. Also, they don’t just run existing functions, they create new ones.

Don't you think our particular perspective (which is filtered through the body as sense perception) affects our conceptual system and ways we understand ideas?

Parochially. Culture has more impact.

Why would an AGI use spacial metaphors like understand, arrive, close to understand ideas?

Because it would be a product of our culture and speak English.

But to formulate a general theory for agents, the term ‘people’ is too strong when speaking of what’s relevant for a bacterium…

Yes. This tells you that people aren’t just agents. They are agents in the sense that they exist in some environment they can interact with and move around in. But they’re so much more than that.

It’s a bit like saying humans are mammals. They are, but that’s not their distinguishing characteristic, so we can’t study mammals to learn about people.

I wouldn’t bother with cog sci or any ‘agentic’ notion of people. Focus on Popperian epistemology instead. It’s the only promising route we have.

…a bacterium … also has problems that shape its actions, what it finds relevant, etc…

A bacterium has ‘problems’ in some sense but it cannot create new knowledge to solve them. It may be more accurate to say that its genes have problems.

[T]he framework emerged out of biology trying to make a theory of organisms in general…

That doesn’t mean static memes couldn’t have co-opted the framework to undermine man and his mind.

The only real change I seem to have is in every conscious moment.

I don’t know what it means to ‘have change’, but note that even unconscious ideas evolve in our minds all the time. So those change as well, if that’s what you mean.

Whatever creativity is, most of human experience is already pre-given moment to moment, not willed by the person.

I think what really happens is this: when we’re young, we guess theories about how to experience the world, and then we correct errors in those theories and practice them to the point they become completely automated. Much of this happens in childhood. As adults, we don’t remember doing it. So then experience seems ‘given’.

I’m not sure I understand how this idea is a criticism of #3510. They sound compatible. A broken price mechanism, if bad enough, causes the division you speak of.

It seems more plausible to me that this …

Unclear what “this” refers to.

If we view addiction as entrenchment of ideas (in the broad sense), why can't you have conflict between implicit and explicit preferences, which are both short-term preferences? Something in your body is addicted to a substance, but you could simultaneously, consciously, not want to take the substance because you don't like how it feels.

After reading some more about Deutsch's and your definition of reason. Is it accurate to view reason more as a process than a static state? Where the process might be summed up by
1. Being open to criticism
2. Truth-seeking (commitment to getting ideas to jibe)

Even a non-living system, can build up constraints at an aggregate which have downwards causation. After a Crystal is formed the lattice constrains which vibrational modes are possible for individual atoms. In other words being part of a larger strucutre (which follows other rules) has downard causation on "parts" following fundamental rules. There might be other emergent structures that expose other fundamental rules not encompassed by the known fundamental rules.

If strong emergence exist, there can "emerge" other things that have downward causation.

The purpose of speaking of an embodied agent is to generalize cognition.

It’s possible that the actual purpose of such language is more sinister than that, having to do with static memes: to continue the age-old mystical tradition of portraying man as a pathetic, helpless being at the mercy of a universe he cannot understand or control.

But I’m purely speculating here and would have to think more about it. So I’m not marking this as a criticism (yet).

Again, to me, that’s how programmers think about their video-game characters, and how researchers think about lab rats in mazes. I would avoid talking about people as ‘agents’ and instead treat them as human beings.

To understand what’s relevant to a person, you need to understand their problem situation.

Why would an AGI use spacial metaphors like understand, arrive, close to understand ideas? Don't you think our particular perspective (which is filtered through the body as sense perception) affects our conceptual system and ways we understand ideas?