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Channel: July 2015 – Otium
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Epistemology Sequence, Part 4: Updating Ontologies Based On Values

What’s a good ontology? Well, the obvious question is, good relative to what? Relative to your values, of course. In the last post I talked about how, given an ontology for describing the world, you...

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Epistemology Sequence, Part 5: Extension and Universality

One of the properties that you’d like a learning agent to have is that, if your old concepts work well, learning a new concept should extend your knowledge but not invalidate your old knowledge....

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Aesthetics are moral judgments

I often hear people say things like “It’s ridiculous to judge that someone’s a bad person because of his musical taste!” People assume it’s obvious that aesthetic judgments have no moral weight. For...

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We could regrow livers

There are currently 16,000 Americans on the waiting list for a liver transplant, but there are only enough livers for 6000 transplants a year.  Every year, more than 1500 people die waiting for a liver...

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Forbearance

I don’t agree entirely with this post by Patri Friedman, but I think it’s pointing at something important.  Patri is disturbed by the politicization of previously non-political organizations — people...

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