Learning Common Sense: tricks and false consensus?

updated 061418

AI still lacks what most 10-year-olds possess: ordinary common sense. -- Paul Allen, quoted in C Gohd "It’s Really Hard to Give AI “Common Sense” [1]

...once (AI) becomes very large, and it has thousands of units per layer and maybe hundreds of layers, then it becomes quite un-understandable. - T Jaakkola, MIT [2]

AI is useless until it learns how to explain itself. -- L James Towards Data Science[2]

"It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree." -- Baudelaire [3]

"Playing" with Deception. Many of the games adults play with even very young children work at getting them to recognize that sometimes what they see, hear, feel or remember can be misleading. Even one-year olds can be introduced to "peek-a-boo" in which they learn that the immediate disappearance brought about by covering one's eyes does not, by itself, make what they have just seen, go away.

Two-year olds can be surprised and entertained with a game called, "I caught your nose," where the adult or older, less naive child, uses curled forefinger and middle finger of one hand to gently clasp the younger's nose, moves the hand away while sliding the thumb in between the two fingers and says "I caught your nose."

I have seen such games played hundreds of times. The naive child's initial reaction is usually one of surprise -- although sometimes one of dismay or even shock -- but, as the "nose-holding" hand opens up empty and the adult says, "feel you face" the child, relieved, will smile or even laugh and invite: "Do it again."

But playing with deception most likely only works under two (among many possible other) conditions. These are that

1. the children are more or less "normal," i.e. healthy, awake, and undistracted by such things as a wet diaper or hunger and

2. the experiences of the learners bring them to develop a sense of probability concerning what they perceive in contrast to other options that might occur.

If, for example, a person playing peek-a-boo hides or, say, dons a mask, while the child is covering its eyes, the experience will likely not teach much about what is likely to happen under which circumstances. Nor will it happen if the child is developmentally too under- or overdeveloped to benefit from the interaction.[4]

Deception games in educational contexts are usually a kind of training in "normality," e.g. merely covering the eyes does not change what's "really there." Or, if something's where it should be, say, you nose on your face, then it can't also be somewhere else. This is training in what we call "common sense."

However, a sense of "normality" is different from "common sense." As children grow, they might get training in a more sophisticated, less "common," form of "common sense." For older children we might use a poem such as

As I was going to St. Ives,
I met a man with seven wives.
Every wife had seven sacks.
Every sack had seven cats.
Every cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks and wives,
How many were going to St. Ives?

One or more students hurry to do the arithmetic and come up with 2401. We "correct" them by saying that the answer is "one", because I, alone, was going to St. Ives. The teaching point is usually to get them to read more carefully.

But a more insightful student might point out that the poem does not originally indicate, "I alone was going to St. Ives." It's possible, therefore, had I already had (unmentioned) co-travelers, that at least 2402 were going to St. Ives. The original teaching point -- Read Carefully! -- fails, but is (hopefully) compensated for by the discussion of the possible assumptions and what they let us infer.

Even relatively sophisticated adults can be fooled by clever illusionists who appear to make coins disappear and, then, pull them from a spectator's ear. Trained scientists have been known to insist that they have seen individuals bend spoons without touching them. Illusionist's confederates are "seen" to get cut in half and survive the sawblade's mutilation. And elephants can disappear in a puff of smoke!

In such circumstance, however, the victims of the illusion either

1. are not able to carefully examine the surroundings of the events, for e.g. being seated in an audience; or,

2. are generally ignorant of techniques of illusion, e.g. coin-palming, or attention-distraction,

which, though employed in their present circumstances, are rare in day-to-day experience.

Of greater concern to us, perhaps, should be the abundant presence of illusionists of political and commercial enterprise armed with well-established research on psychological biases and manipulation techniques. Educational institutions have yet to catch up with, much less keep abreast of, these clever people.

Both schooling and experience, in general, work toward refining "common sense" even to the point of supplanting it with something else. But a socially important, very problematic conception of these processes is the common myth that some substantial residues of the original "common sense" remain as a substrate, so to speak, of newer learnings. The myth holds it that the residues remain not merely as individual inclinations and skills, but as widely shared, if only latent, tools all can rely on.[5]

Consider the following conversation between an employer (E) and a prospective job-holder (P):

E: P, I've brought you in, P, to ask you to run our Department of X.

P: But E, as a Y manager, I haven't had any experience really working with X!"

E: Yeah; but, you've been successful with Y. And your heart's in the right place. I feel we'll get along just fine. So when it comes to working with X, just rely on your common sense!"[6]

Whether or not we find such a conversation problematic might well depend on the kind of organization E and P will be involved in. If it is, say, a small but expanding family-owned-and-run retail operation, that is one thing. However, if it is a middle-sized medical-surgical establishment, or a large kitchen-facilities factory, other concerns arise.

As Joan Woodward [8] has long argued, there are important and complex relations between organizational structure, staff social relations, and productivity.[9]

What is Common? What Makes Sense? A typical definition of common sense from The Cambridge English Dictionary gives us:[10]

The basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way.
Examples: Windsurfing is perfectly safe as long as you have/use some common sense.

Note how many terms presume anterior "definition": basic level, practical, knowledge, judgment, reasonable, perfectly, safe. But what level is "basic?" What kind of information is "knowledge?" Who does "we all?" refer to? What is "reasonable;" what is "safe?"

Our natural languages use terms that are often vague and ambiguous, highly dependent on situation. Many of our linguistic choices are based on our belief that others can understand and trust us even though we vacillate in choice of words -- not meaning "literally" what we say -- to color our speech with our own values, moods and intentions.[11] We make them functionally precise ("clear" enough) by adjusting them, ad hoc, to the contexts we use them in and in relying (perhaps, wrongly) on our assumptions of normality.

Consider the following example of an all-too typical conversation,

Harry: Snow again! It's May! I've lived here all my life and never before seen so much snow!
Jack: Uh-huh. It shows how global warming is just a fraud!"
Harry: What makes you think so?"
Jack: It's obvious to anyone who has any common sense." More snow, less warmth!

A critical claim here is "More snow, less warmth!" This is common sense to millions of people, in the U.S. at least. We may say they are mistaken, but the falsity of their premise does not necessarily affect the logic of their argument. The argument may be based on a "confusion" between the notions of "climate," a characterization of weather events over extended periods of time and with large areas of occurrence; and, "weather," states of the atmosphere, e.g. phenomena of temperature change, precipitation, etc. considered from restricted perspectives which are more likely to be experienced by individuals or smaller populations. Breadth of perspective is independent, one would think, of commonality.

When was the last time a poll was taken to ascertain which individuals living under which conditions share common agreement on the assumptions underlying the definitions of the Cambridge English Dictionary? [12]

Depending upon where they are located and how informed they are, they may well be exercising their "common sense" even though it brings them to false conclusions. Recall only how phlogiston once provided a scientifically acceptable theory of combustion. Recall, also, that despite the efforts of Lister and Pasteur, many educated people rejected bacterial action as a cause of infection.

Every linguistic transaction is a wager which may not gain "high predictive probability" by being written down in "black and white" or entered as code into a computer program. Just as arguments can be valid without being sound, so can valid arguments yield falsehoods though they rest on common sense.

To continue with similar considerations, go to The Indeterminacy of Consensus: masking ambiguity and vagueness in decision.

-- Cordially, EGR


Footnotes and References

[1] quoted in Chelsea Gohd (Futurism, 3/11/ 2018) It’s Really Hard to Give AI “Common Sense

[2] Knight, W (MIT Technology Review, 4/11/18) The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI
See also James, L Towards Data Science (2018) AI is useless until it learns how to explain itself.

[3] Baudelaire, C Intimate Journals XCIX
See also G Clabaugh & E Rozycki (1999) The Nature of Consensus

[4]"Developmentally appropriate" is one of those educational concepts that is both theoretically dense and vague as well as hard to specify a non-circular definition for. See Redden & Frederick below.[7]

[5] See Rozycki, E (2014) Common Sense, or Merely Common Hubris?

[6] See Rozycki, E (2017) Hard Practical Questions? Handle Them or Dodge Them! Here's How

[7] Redden, JP & Frederick, S (2011) Unpacking Unpacking: Greater Detail Can Reduce Perceived Likelihood Journal Of Experimental Psychology

[8] Joan Woodward, Industrial Organization. Theory and Practice. Reprint. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966)

[9] See, also Productivity, Politics and Hypocrisy in American Public Education.

[10]The Cambridge English Dictionary on 'common sense'

[11] See Rozycki, E (2016) Three Human Dimensions of Conceptualization

[12] See Rozycki, E (2016) All Definition Ultimately Rests on Stipulation, i.e. Communal Agreement.

All Definition Ultimately Rests on Stipulation, i.e. Communal Agreement.

edited 052020

Fools bite one another but wise men agree together.-- Proverb
Agree, for the Law is costly.-- Proverb
The limits of your language are the limits of your world. -- L. Wittgenstein [1]

Stipulative vs Reportive? A distinction has long been noted between what we call “truth” and what we designate as “knowledge.” And so, many venerable thinkers have speculated, we can imagine that as our knowledge expands, so will it – “in the limit” as mathematicians say – eventually comprise truth. (Given that the universe doesn’t collapse into a black hole, or explode into some multidimensional supernova or something equally distracting.)

One common distinction among definitions as been that some are stipulative, i.e. generally restricted to narrow uses in restricted circumstances. Stipulative definitions purportedly stand in contrast to “reportive or “semantic” or “real” definitions, i.e. ones that get at the truth of things. (See Types of Definition)

So it is that a confusion arises between authoritative (for some purposes) sources and “truth-tellers,” founts of veracity, as it were. Dictionaries, technical manuals, and the like, become Holy Books. Why then do they (and Holy Books, too) “suffer” revision? (See "What Does That Word Really Mean?" -- The Misleading Dictionary Ritual)

Stipulative Legal Use vs Other Usage Let’s look at the notion of stipulation as it is used in legal contexts:

An agreement between attorneys that concerns business before a court and is designed to simplify or shorten litigation and save costs. During the course of a civil lawsuit, criminal proceeding, or any other type of litigation, the opposing attorneys may come to an agreement about certain facts and issues. Such an agreement is called a stipulation. -- West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. S.v. "stipulation." (My italics to emphasize variables to be used in following paragraphs.)

Now, let’s see how we might transform such a definition of stipulation into a kind of framework for generalization distinguishing semantically necessary structural constants from variables that allow for generalization into wider contexts.

By substituting for the specific legal terms we derive

An agreement between (interested parties) that concerns (action) (in a given venue) and is designed to simplify or shorten (procedures) and save costs. During the course of (an undertaking) the (representatives of different perspectives) may come to an agreement about certain facts and issues. Such an agreement is called a stipulation.

There are six variables: interested parties, action, in a given venue, procedures, undertaking, representatives of different perspectives.

If we substitute other terms for the variables, which may designate either individuals or sets of variables, e.g. groups, professions, activity-types, etc, that themselves may be “unpacked,” we can generate broader, more inclusive, clearly stipulated definitions.

For example, substituting, in order: oncologists, use of chemotherapy, in children, patient discomfort, in hospital stays, attending physicians,
we get

An agreement between Oncologists that concerns use of chemotherapy in children and is designed to simplify or shorten patient discomfort and save costs. During the course of in hospital stays, the attending physicians may come to an agreement about certain facts and issues. Such an agreement is called a stipulation.

If we substitute: Nixon and Brezhnev, activating military forces, around the world, tensions, in times of confrontation, diplomatic services; we get

An agreement between Nixon and Brezhnev that concerns activating military force around the world and is designed to simplify or shorten tensions and save costs. During the course of in times of confrontation, the diplomatic services may come to an agreement about certain facts and issues. Such an agreement is called a stipulation.

(An important note: Just because all knowledge may rest on stipulation, does not mean that any stipulation whatsoever is knowledge. Many may be falsehoods, if not just nonsense.)

Why Does Universal Stipulativity Matter? So what if all definition ultimately rests on stipulation?

The simplest response is quite plausible. Definitions are, so to speak, the building blocks of communally accessible knowledge. Stipulations are human decisions. They are often -- if not always -- constrained by non-epistemological considerations, the primary ones being monetary, time and opportunity costs. For example, dictionaries are finite, even such volumes as the Oxford English Dictionaries. One cannot define every word demanding that all terms in definiens be defined along with those of the definienda. People have to agree when enough is enough just to get the work published. (See The Fractalization of Social Enterprise)

We normally rely on our inculcated linguistic and cultural norms of communication and affiliation to provide often pre-conscious stipulations which limit the pursuit into infinity of ever more recondite items of possible knowledge.

To pursue these issues, see Searching for “Reality"? Stipulate A Turtle!
Cordially
--- EGR

FOOTNOTE

[1] This adage is often translated as "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." In any case, the semantic structure of the German verb, bedeuten, is substantially different from that of be , (is or are). This is at best the weakest of translational connotation of identity between forms of bedeuten and forms of be.

Consider this clip from the online English-German dictionary, dict.cc at https://www.dict.cc/?s=bedeuten

Artificial Intelligence Weirdness. Need categorizing relate to visual cues?

... humanity shouldn’t assume our machines think as we do. Neural nets sometimes think differently. And we don’t really know how or why. -- David Berreby[1]

New Memories Never Formed. I have a neighbor in my retirement community[2] who had a stroke three years ago that seems to have impaired her ability to retain recent memories. I have conversed with her on several occasions. On each new occasion we meet she asks me, “Who are you? Have you been here long?”

When I bring an old (pre-stroke) friend of hers with me to visit her, see recognizes the friend immediately and then asks him or her, “Who is this person you brought with you?” And so it continues, although I do not dress or look different so far as any others in my community are concerned.

Read Some Plato! So what’s new? No recall, no recognition. No recognition, no identification! Even Plato knew that! And wrote about it, too. Read up!

Not so fast! That’s a quick response, but an inaccurate one. It’s only part of the story, because recognition needn’t depend on recall. An example: however hard you looked, you can’t recognize (in 2015) the 46th President of the United States. Why? Because he or she hadn’t been elected and sworn in , even though he or she, as a person, existed then. There was not even a likely candidate for the position down the road to guess about.

But once someone is sworn in on January 20th, 2025 as POTUS, you will, little doubt, -- barring a brain stroke -- recognize him or her as such, whether or not you have seen him or her in person. [3]. Such recognition requires neither memory (the first time) nor visible presence -- eg. a TV picture will do.

Weirdly Inhuman Artificial Intelligence. David Berreby in his article "Artificial Intelligence is Already Weirdly Inhuman gives some surprising examples of how neural-net computers consistently "miscategorize" visual input data. Two almost identical (to humans) pictures of a dog are classified as a dog and a giraffe. Two relatively random patterns of speckles, discernably quite different to humans, are categorized as a starfish and a cheetah. Berreby comments that no one has yet an explanation to offer for these results.

It is important to understand that not even the neural network computers jump directly from light-input-patterns to category-outputs. The “visual” inputs are processed through various algorithms which, depending upon certain conditions, yield categorical outputs. As the examples of the dog, giraffe, starfish and cheetah show, there appears to be something going on in either the inputs, or the algorithmic processing that does not “replicate (?)” or “parallel(?)” the human processes. (We can’t even assume there are some well-defined isometrical relations[3B] between the human and the computer processes: thus the bracketed question-marks. -- my comment, not Berreby’s.)

Let's check some possible ways of dealing with this “weirdness.” Are the computer visual-inputs sensitive to light frequencies that human eyes are not? Are there internal interference phenomena that are different in humans than in computers? Clearly there are algorithms (actually, heuristics) that humans learn to use for identification that might not yet be available to computers, especially those that depend upon conditions of social interaction or on multisensory input coordination. (This is difficult stuff. I really don’t begrudge AI researchers the personification of their apparatus, i.e. as thinking, seeing, etc., if it keeps up their enthusiasm.)

Some Human Identification Algorithms. For many, many English categories of objects that are visually discernibly different, we have hosts of subcategories. These subcategories enable us to practically recognize two objects as “the same,” i. e. “time-pieces, ” which have quite different appearance and functioning parts, e.g. a sundial, an hour-glass, and IPad. Meta-categories such as “purpose” or “typical use” and the like help us to sort-out discernably different time pieces into practical categories.

It’s important to note that “recognition” is not a unique process. We use the term to indicate both

a. our experience of visual -- more generally, sensory -- familiarity based on previous experience, i.e. recall; and,

b. an act of participation in a social practice of equal treatment, i.e. acknowledgement: this thing shall be treated, under certain circumstances, as a “time piece.”
(See Two Senses of 'Recognize'.)

It is important to understand that categorization for adult humans, except for the most basic uses, e.g. learning to identify paradigmatic examples, is not based substantially on recall, but on processes that establish recognition-equivalence.[4].

This requires one or more meta-sets of algorithms (or heuristics) that are called into play to work on items pre-processed by lower level algorithms.

The following categories, which could be used as algorithm names, are meta-set indicators: aging, larval, decrepitating, disguised, worn-out, broken, in-process, unintentional, illegal, shrunken, decayed, inebriated, etc. Paradigm objects subjected to the algorithmic meta-set processes, may be identified as recognition-equivalent to the paradigm members despite substantial deviation in appearance. [5].

Addendum 8/15/16: for an interesting new article see AI's Language Problem MIT Technology Review 8/9/16

Cordially
--- EGR


-----------------------------------------------
FOOTNOTES

[1] Berreby, D Nautilus 8/8/2015 Artificial Intelligence is Already Weirdly Inhuman

Many AI enthusiasts use the verb, “think,” somewhat over-enthusiastically -- perhaps for promotional purposes. But is this only a stretched metaphor? Why is it important to stretch it? Do computers “think” in any way recognizably as do humans, or animals? For some discussion on this issue see "Thinking" Like Computers Do

[2] See Foulkeways at Gwynedd

[3] see Part 3: Recognition and Knowing

[3B] see Isomorphism: Program, Structure, and Process -- a catalog

[4] See Recognition-Equivalence

[5] See Dimensions of Individuation. Such dimensions can be used to identify the algorithms applicable to the superset of individuals under consideration. So, for example, when considering a professional football team, we might ask How can we tell the half-backs from the full-backs? Or, How can we identify individual contract-holders?

Affirmative Action: Who Deserves Special Consideration? by Gary K. Clabaugh

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Affirmative action is intended to compensate for past and/or present bias, maltreatment or exploitation. Typically, however, this remedy is misapplied because policy makers fail to recognize numerous classes of victims.

What kinds of people are clear-cut victims of bias, but never included in affirmative action plans? Here is a sample:

The Physically Unattractive. Social psychology researchers have repeatedly documented the physical-attractiveness stereotype. Namely, the tendency to think that physically attractive people possess a greater number of positive traits such as: confidence, strength, assertiveness, candor, warmth, honesty, kindness, friendliness, sensitivity, poise and sociability.
Logically, then, physically unattractive people must be stereotyped as: more insecure, weaker, less assertive, more deceptive, meaner, more introverted, less sensitive, less poised and less sociable. Does that seem like a bias to you?

The Obese. Obesity is another, often overlooked, physical characteristic associated with discrimination and unfair treatment. Social psychological research on attitudes toward overweight people has shown they are often perceived as lazy, unintelligent, slovenly, and unattractive. Moreover, several studies have demonstrated that such negative attitudes toward obese individuals may contribute to discrimination in the work place. Why are the obese not included in affirmative action plans — particularly if obesity is less an achieved characteristic than an acquired one?

Short Statured Males. Height, particularly in men, is another physical attribute associated with negative stereotypes and discrimination. Short men are often judged inferior to tall men in several personal attributes. People tend to judge taller men as more socially attractive, higher in professional status, more masculine, more athletically inclined, and more physically attractive than short men. Moreover, short men experience discrimination in the workplace. For example, short job applicants are not hired as often as taller applicants, short men earn less on average than taller employees and short political candidates lose elections more often than taller candidates.
Looks like a significant handicap to me. Why aren’t they entitled to affirmative action?

Some Other Factors. The various groups who experience discrimination are extensive. For instance, people with red hair color are stereotyped as "clownish" and "weird" And negative stereotyping is also based on language and dialect. For example an African-American dialect or a Southern accent both trigger negative stereotypes accompanied by discrimination.

Negative stereotyping and discrimination victimize numerous classes of people. But what does all this have to do with affirmative action? The answer is, "everything." To avoid violating their own cardinal principle, affirmative action advocates must be prepared to apply compensatory measures to everyone victimized by prejudice? But this is not now the case. Currently, some people profit from affirmative action only because their particular group has sufficient muscle to be so qualified. Other groups are similarly disadvantaged, but their plight is completely ignored.

How About This? Here is an interesting way to put all of this together. Whom do you think would most likely land a well-paying executive position?
• An intelligent, well qualified, handsome, slim, tall African American male with cultivated speech, or
• An equally intelligent, well-qualified, but unattractive, obese, short Caucasian male with red hair and a thick Southern accent?

O.K., now which one of them is legally entitled to affirmative action?

Conclusion. The fact is there are many classes of people who are unfairly stereotyped and discriminated against. But it is practically impossible to grant them all compensatory treatment. What is more, since individuals differ, often very significantly, within groups, we risk injustice whenever, whether for good or ill, we shoe horn them into groups.

Admittedly, some individuals do deserve special consideration. Those who are physically and/or mentally handicapped are the clearest example. The limiting effects of things like brain trauma, cerebral palsy, blindness, and the like, can be so dramatic that it is perfectly reasonable to grant victims extraordinary considerations. Even here, though, individual differences matter.

I recall one of my college students who was severely disabled by cerebral palsy. This was before the Americans With Disabilities Act so he was not guaranteed any special accommodations. He was unable to print, much less write, so he asked to tape-record our classes. He also requested oral exams. I agreed. Nevertheless, I still required him to do all of the work at the same level of mastery as his classmates. To lower learning standards solely he was physically handicapped was unfair to them and to him.

He turned out to be one of my best students ever. He went on to law school and ultimately became my lawyer and friend. The individual differences that distinguished him, cerebral palsy notwithstanding, were that he was smart, hard working and courageous.

When all is said and done, there is only one fair, if far more complicated, course of action. Reject labels and rely on individual differences. This is far fairer than cramming people into carelessly considered categories then granting some special consideration while entirely overlooking others who merit the same special treatment.

For the original article, complete with references, see What's Fair? Equity in Educational Practice..

-- GKC

P.S. See also "Fair Share or Fair Play?"

Cause & Effect: essential belief, misapprehension, moral hazard?

updated 071322

The brain is a construction of the brain. -- Nietzsche

There Must Be a Better Way! (The proctological principle?) I was waiting in a doctor’s office to arrange an examination, when a nurse answered a phone call. The irate voice on the other end of the line resounded throughout the small room: “I’m getting a colonoscopic exam tomorrow and I’m told I have to flush my system out by drinking a gallon of some insipid water concoction over the next twenty-four hours.” “That’s correct,” replied the nurse. “That’s absolutely ridiculous!” retorted the caller. “In this day and age there must be a better way to do it!” “No, sir. There is not,” responded the nurse.

A stream of expletives gushed from the telephone receiver. I thought to suggest to the nurse that she advise the patient to use a plumber’s snake instead of the prescribed water solution. But I kept my silence.

Practically Necessary Beliefs. Our way of life depends on a certain system of beliefs handed down through the centuries, although substantially modified in the process. Our notions of self-control, insanity, responsibility, criminality, and justice rest ultimately on the belief that some events relate to one another as cause and effect.

Daily we debate about who has done what; or, who can do what -- pretending all along that these “practical” questions have little to do with what “ivory-tower types” would call “philosophy.” In the debate we presume our investigations rest on a firm foundation: not merely the “belief,” but the “reality” of cause and effect. The operative train of thought here seems to ride on the Proctological Principle: if we (think we) need it, it must, in this day and age, be “a reality.”

Are Cause and Effect Illusions? Bertrand Russell recounts in his memoirs how, as a young man, he woke up in his bed one morning and came to a frightening understanding as to what David Hume meant by his theory of causation. All we ever observe, Hume had written, are correlations; regular sequences of event. Cause is our interpretation, our belief, more commonly, an assumption that normally observed regularities of precedence and propinquity will continue into the future.

Russell feared to step out of his bed onto the floor. It might, if Hume were right, suddenly open up beneath him, since there was nothing more than assumption to guarantee the persistence of its support. Thus, he would fall into an abyss of … nothingness (?).

(Russell’s reasoning here is somewhat inconsistent: If he could not trust that the floor, though sound and normal, would continue to support him, how could he come to any conclusion about what might happen next? Maybe he might float over the abyss!)

Being ultimately a pragmatist, as we all tend to be, Russell got past this fear and out of his bed and on with his life. Possibly he came to the realization that his bed, too, -- or the foundation of his house, or England in its entirety -- could just as likely open up to swallow him as he imagined the floor might.

Ultimately, perhaps, Russell, being a philosopher, might have come to concede (he did so, later) that there is more involved in identifying cause-and-effect relations than what our perceptions give us. Even today we warn our students, friends, associates, and acquaintances, perhaps, -- often futilely -- that mere “correlation” neither indicates nor denies “cause.” Little matter; if they are gamblers, day-traders, newspaper columnists, or political incumbents, they tend to ignore us.

Cause = Perceptions + Assumptions. Russell’s, and our, ability to act in this world rests heavily on structures of trust in generally unproven (and purely empirically unprovable) regularities of persistence. We construct edifices of trust with bricks of hope and desire cemented together with no more than the mortar of our assumptions. (See Varieties of Explanation & Cause.)

Immanuel Kant, some decades after Hume, presented a counter to Hume’s apparent empirical skepticism by denying that the human mind could go beyond experience, even such experience as augmented with scientific apparatus, to settle questions such as the “nature” of causation or objectivity. Our knowledge, Kant says, such as it is, is limited to phenomena.

Phenomena are constructed within the framework of human categories of understanding, which constitute the structure of the human mind, although interacting in someway with entities -- or entity -- of the extra-phenomenal world. Number, unity or plenty, says Kant, is a category of human understanding; not necessarily to be expected to parallel extra-phenomenal “reality.” (Check out the notion of quantum entanglement to appreciate how Kant's distinctions still retain relevance; although, he seems not to have considered how developing technologies and theories might interact to substantially expand human experience.)

It is amazing how many people in so many walks of life just hate this kind of theory: the theory that in culling out the true from the false, the wishful or delusional from the real, we ultimately invoke items of belief that themselves can only be judged, ad infinitum, by invoking other items of belief. (See Getting Down to Facts: can we avoid making assumptions?)

Is there a Bedrock of Knowledge? So what if claims of knowledge are always risky, resting on a potentially infinite chain of assumptions? Why the panic? Or more likely, the dismissive disdain? (Much more polite, if more condescending.)

I suppose it’s frightening. What? No absolute bedrock of The Known upon which to build our temples of Value, Prestige, Justice and Faith? Must everything be at risk? Can we, no matter how high our IQ or repute, how vast our wealth or influence, never be free from the risk of mistake?

Excepting formal linguistically constructed systems, i.e. knowledge by definition or stipulation, never, it would seem.

But does it really matter whether we occasionally stumble through life, rather than exhibiting perfection in all our decisions? Apparently to some people it does. Many who would reject the idea that knowledge may be essentially tentative are not inclined to even bother to present counter-argument or -evidence. Their basic concern, one might suspect, is more to preserve their incumbency in privileged positions; or, their right to importune others less empowered, i.e. to be in a condition of permanent moral hazard.

For references and to examine these issues further, See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?

See also Varieties of Explanation. & Cause

Cordially
--- EGR

**Consider the similarities also in

Isaiah 45:7 (KJV) "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things."

And, also, the conversation between Faust and Mephistopheles (1335-1337 and 1345-1358 Original German edition, my translation -- EGR) wherein Faust's question as to who Mephisto is is answered "I am a part of that power that always pursues Evil yet always yields Good."

Faust counters, "How can you be a part of something when you present yourself to me as a whole?", Mephisto replies,"... Although (you) a human, from that a tiny world of fools, may consider yourself a whole, I am a part of a part that once was Everything, the Darkness that gave birth to Light."

Mistyping People: placement test error and worse

revised 1/17/19

No placement test -- a test which places subjects in a category -- is 100% accurate. It will generate a number of "false positives," persons who don’t meet the specs, but nonetheless test positive. False positives will be practically indistinguishable from true positives.

Can we trust such tests? For example, suppose a student has been test-identified as a drug user, how likely is it that that student is truly a user? Or, if a placement test indicates that a student is ready for instruction at a third grade, is that student really ready to begin at that starting point? Do tests purporting to show that students have learned beginning calculus actually let some through who really need to learn more? (See Identifying the "At Risk" Student. What is the Concern? )

Our normal admission processes to many schools are "standardized" and haphazard -- particularly in public schools. Entrance criteria are usually nothing more than checking the child’s age and appearance of "normality" -- and, in many a private school, parent ability to pay the tuition.

This process will allow in quite a few "false positives;" that is, students who at the point of admission appear no less capable -- they walk, they talk, they can fog a mirror -- than the students who possess the skills to succeed at that level. And, semester after semester, a cascade of incompetence commences.

Progressing upward from grade to grade in this manner likely generates the flood of inept "false positives" which now fills our colleges -- as suggested by the epidemic dimensions of cheating and plagiarism throughout high school and well beyond.

To examine these issues further, see Classification Error in Evaluation Practice: 
the impact of the "false positive" on educational practice and policy

Cordially,
-- EGR