Re: observability and randomness

Posted by gepr on Jun 29, 2020; 9:32pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/observability-and-randomness-tp7597412p7597495.html

I feel like you've asked me to prove a negative with your Eliza-like "Can you tell me more about ...?" 8^D But because I have no choice but to be the dork that I am, I also have no choice about whether to have the conversation. [sigh]

Maybe it was influenced by this article:

Rationalization is rational
Cushman 2020
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/rationalization-is-rational/2A13B99ED09BD802C0924D3681FEC55B

Or not. I read like 10 things at a time, abandon some, follow through on others, etc. This one was printed out sitting next to the toilet. In any case, it states the point well with this paragraph: "In sum, rationalization approximates a form of rational inference and thus can be understood as a variety of IRL at Marr’s computational level – its function is to extract useful information from observed actions. This does not imply, however, that rationalization always involves Bayesian inference at a mechanistic level. In some cases, it may, but in other cases relatively simple cognitive processes, akin to those identified by Heider and Festinger, may approximate the rational inferences described above."

Even allowing the idea that *some* mechanisms we might say look like "free will" might be fully low-order Markovian, there are (likely) *some* other mechanisms that would not fit that bill. This wouldn't be important if I thought that set of other mechanisms was *small* in comparison to the "rational" mechanisms. But because I think people who prioritize for thought/beliefs/desires and such ... interiority, I guess, are delusional, my intuition is that those other mechanisms are more prevalent than the "rational" ones. To be as clear as possible, I think rationality is very rare, if it exists at all. And that argues against (low order) Markovity.

And on that note, I'd LOVE it if someone knew of a thorough criticism of this result:

THE EFFECT OF SEVERITY OF INITIATION ON LIKING FOR A GROUP
Aaronson & Mills 1959
http://faculty.uncfsu.edu/tvancantfort/Syllabi/Gresearch/Readings/A_Aronson.pdf

I debated changing the subject to indicate a tangent from observability. But I would lump an [un]willingness to give up *sunk costs* (e.g. severity of initiation/hazing) as a kind of truncation error. So, it may still be on topic.

On 6/24/20 8:55 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
> Could you tell me more about the lack of relation between river deltas and
> the proposed mechanism? I remember you calling the theory LOUMFW, but I am
> not sure if it is an acronym or what.

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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