[foolrush]

Epistemology 101. Statistical pattern matching has no epistemological truth beyond a correspondence of linguistic statistics.

It is merely statistical probability, which hardly can be classified as an epistemological basis. If we pretend for a moment it is, the ontologies formed are most certainly peculiar, and we can expect ideologies that emerge out of the ontologies are problematic.

[williamcotton]

Beyesians accept an epistemological foundation of statistical priors updated by experience.

Predictive processing is well established in the neuroscience community.

Capital T Truth is really of very little interest to anyone outside of faith-based epistemology like religion.

[discreteevent]

Physicists are very interested in capital T Truth. They work with explanations not just statistical priors.

[dS0rrow]

This talk by Feynman is slightly related:

https://youtu.be/obCjODeoLVw

[foolrush]

The issue is that the definition of “statistics” is anchored in a magnitude of frequency of glyphs. The “information” is fabricated in this regard, pulled up out of the ether, and by decree christened as “meaning”.

Numbers carry no meaning, nor do the magnitudes arbitrarily assigned to meaning. The map is not the territory.

[naasking]

> The “information” is fabricated in this regard, pulled up out of the ether, and by decree christened as “meaning”.

No, not fabricated, but inferred from a structured corpus of information generated by other semantic processes (humans).

> Numbers carry no meaning, nor do the magnitudes arbitrarily assigned to meaning.

Prove it.

> The map is not the territory.

Except if the territory is information, in which case the map is literally the territory. Knowledge is information, is it not?

[stevenhuang]

Have you heard of information theory?

Numbers can mean anything. A multitude of numbers as voltage potentials and ion gradients sufficiently describe your brain.

Biology manifests this arrangement as a brain, without which this arrangement would also be similarly meaningless.

Your argument against deriving meaning from statistics completely ignores that the brain also works this way.

[dS0rrow]

> Have you heard of information theory?

> Your argument against deriving meaning from statistics completely ignores that the brain also works this way.

The brain is not predicting it's compressing.

[naasking]

> The brain is not predicting it's compressing

Compression requires prediction, therefore your brain requires prediction.

[dS0rrow]

Some form of prediction being used by the higher-level neurons doesn't make the brain a prediction engine.

[stevenhuang]

The current prevailing theory in neuroscience is in fact the brain is a prediction engine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding

[naasking]

> Epistemology 101. Statistical pattern matching has no epistemological truth beyond a correspondence of linguistic statistics. It is merely statistical

Your belief in epistemic truth is a statistical inference from your perception of apparently reliable causality. How do you ground this inductive inference?

Your attempt to appeal to epistemology 101 with a casual dismissal as "mere statistical probability" covers this deep, gaping maw. Bayesian inference reduces to classical logic when all probabilities are pinned to 0 and 1, but in what circumstances can we actually demonstrably infer absolute certainty? None that I can think of, except one's own existence.

[foolrush]

I did not lay claim to epistemic truth. I referenced epistemology. That is, there are a plurality of epistemologies, all of which have their own epistemic truth mechanics.

So I would agree with you, entirely!

I was merely pointing out that statistical correlation alone affords no epistemological basis.

[stevenhuang]

Statical pattern matching is how human brains work.