17-02-2005 05:02									#151
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: Please clarify what you're asking. What sort of second order beliefs have chimps been attributed. I haven't read up on this stuff for a while, but the last I heard the chimp language experiments were inconclusive.

Language? Possibly we're thinking of different concepts of "intensionality".

It's been demonstrated that chimps handle things like "I know that she thinks that I think". Frex, a chimp may move a banana from one box to another out of sight of her handler, and then act to encourage the handler to continue believe the banana is in the first box. Most animals would not grasp that the movement is out of the handler's knowledge.

	17-02-2005 05:02									#152
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger Secondly, I would put sociology in the same category as economics. Namely voodoo. A scientific theory must be able to be falsified. How do you do that with sociology?

That's very simple. You take a theory that claims "if A, then strong probability that B". You test it empirically through a long elaborated method (obviously a theory that is measurable in a poll is easiest to empirically observe and generalize). You notice that the relationship between A and B is weaker than expected, unsignificant, or even opposite to expected. And voilą, it's falsified!

In my uni paper, my empirical findings fly completely in the face of one of my hypotheses, which is being harshly falsified. Oh well, as long as it proves I can do a scientific paper and get my degree :shrug:

	17-02-2005 05:08									#153
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quote: Originally posted by chegitz guevara quote: Originally posted by Last Conformist That's not a legitimate complaint against a scientifc theory. Actually, it is. Any theory of humanity that fails to deal adequately with one of the most self-evident aspects of human existence is seriously flawed, at best.

Any theory of physics that contradicts one of the most self-evident aspects of mechanics is seriously flawed, at best, such as relativity

Intuition can be wrong.

	17-02-2005 05:09									#154
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quote: Originally posted by Kidicious It's just like the economists who do the same thing. I noticed that the biologists are the ones claiming that sociology is a science too. No coincidence.

You think biology isn't science?

	17-02-2005 05:10									#155
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quote: We are never really going to know whether a woman can been great business people until a woman founds a business and makes it into a a huge winner, like Microsoft, or perhaps takes a failing business and turns it into a big successs. The prejudices against women will persist until they are dramatically proven false by events.

Historically, has a women ever tried to take over the world, or conquer most of "the known land", etc... Would a woman want to do this?

	17-02-2005 05:10									#156
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quote: Originally posted by Spiffor In my uni paper, my empirical findings fly completely in the face of one of my hypotheses, which is being harshly falsified. Oh well, as long as it proves I can do a scientific paper and get my degree :shrug:

Reminds me. What hilarious conclusions have you been able to draw about civvers?

	17-02-2005 05:11									#157
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: Are you suggesting that chimps do not hold beliefs? Perhaps, but bugs don't.

Depends on what you mean. Consciously no, but in a purely informational and computational sense they do. Robots can (and almost always do) hold beliefs about reality, in the sense that they are programmed to store in memory a representation of its knowledge of the world.

	17-02-2005 05:27									#158
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quote: Originally posted by Last Conformist Reminds me. What hilarious conclusions have you been able to draw about civvers?

I have still some Germans to poll, so my conclusions will come after that

Anyways, if you want some descriptions:
The youngest respondent is 12, the oldest 66. Mean age is 29.

Demogamers are significantly younger than non-demogamers (surprise )

41% of the respondents on English-speaking forums are Americans.

Only 14% of the respondents agreed with the statement "Sometimes politics and government seem so complicated that a person like me cannot really understand what is going on."

57% think they'll make a good leader

So far, 79 replies, all coming from active Civ players.

	17-02-2005 05:38									#159
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Only 57%?

	17-02-2005 05:42									#160
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The neutrals make an extra 20%. If I had allowed no neutral answer, I think things would have looked differently

And don't forget, we are talking about civvers, and worse forum civvers. It's on these forums that I discovered what "Asperger" means

	17-02-2005 05:56									#161
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quote: "I know that she thinks that I think".

I'm not sure if that is enough. A human being can have beliefs about their own beliefs - not through the medium of another person - that is what I was talking about. Heck, even a dog can do what that chimp did.

	17-02-2005 06:02									#162
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quote: Depends on what you mean. Consciously no, but in a purely informational and computational sense they do. Robots can (and almost always do) hold beliefs about reality, in the sense that they are programmed to store in memory a representation of its knowledge of the world.

A lot more than that. Human beliefs have normative status. In other words, you can go wrong.

A mechanical process goes wrong in a different way (although malfunctioning brains can obviously go wrong, that is not the norm).

The normativity is something that machines cannot seem to replicate, yet.

	17-02-2005 07:31									#163
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: "I know that she thinks that I think". I'm not sure if that is enough. A human being can have beliefs about their own beliefs - not through the medium of another person - that is what I was talking about. Heck, even a dog can do what that chimp did.

Well, there'd be some practical problems in testing whether a chimp can entertain beliefs about its own beliefs. But assuming that they can't, it's not obvious this means that there is some huge difference in kind between human and non-human cognition.

(Are you sure about the dog?)