Targ's notes on the problem

This site is unfinished and may change at any time; for instance, sections may be merged or split. I'm writing it out of order, so parts may refer to "previous" parts yet unwwritten. See "about" for more.

For each section I am also including (or, will include) a list of external links I find relevant. These should not be construed as endorsements, or at least, certainly not as unqualified ones.

• Taking things literally
• Relevant external links
• Neeeerds!
• Nerd mythology
• The vacuity of common sense
• Beware the common-sense goggles
• And now, an argument for common sense
• Not taking things literally: Inferences of principle
• Yes, we need to take things literally
• Mark your gaps!
• Arguing well and arguing badly
• Relevant external links
• (Honestly I think this section has probably been pretty well-covered elsewhere so I'm not sure I'm going to bother filling most of this out.)
• Concepts need to be refined iteratively
• Eccentric categories
• Object-level extremism is not a problem!
• The motte and the bailey (again)
• The ancient enemy
• Relevant external links
• Corruption: One system on top of another
• September yet continues
• The crocodiles
• Human decision-making and the notion of "agency"
• Relevant external links
• The agent abstraction and how it fails
• Affordances
• How do people actually make decisions?
• People are noisy!
• Several ways of making agency work
• Timescale matters
• False assumptions of homogeneity
• Relevant external links
• The illusion of homogeneity
• Everyone is talking about this
• The walled garden
• Don't heat the outdoors!
• Is this a problem of exploration or exploitation?
• Structuring the rules
• Relevant external links
• The linguistic analogy
• The city with one law
• What is an acceptable risk to others?
• Knowledge engineering exists. The law exists.
• You don't need to say everything at once

Terminology

About