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A Human's Guide to Words

Aug 24, 2017

by Eliezer Yudkowsky

This sequence discusses the basic relationship between cognition and concept formation.

The Parable of the Dagger
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99
The Parable of Hemlock
37
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18
Words as Hidden Inferences
48
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22
Extensions and Intensions
35
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24
Similarity Clusters
27
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4
Typicality and Asymmetrical Similarity
25
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68
The Cluster Structure of Thingspace
53
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24
Disguised Queries
80
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105
Neural Categories
30
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12
How An Algorithm Feels From Inside
108
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79
Disputing Definitions
53
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45
Feel the Meaning
30
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10
The Argument from Common Usage
33
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22
Empty Labels
19
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7
Taboo Your Words
87
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129
Replace the Symbol with the Substance
37
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15
Fallacies of Compression
41
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26
Categorizing Has Consequences
37
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13
Sneaking in Connotations
42
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22
Arguing "By Definition"
53
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39
Where to Draw the Boundary?
40
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48
Entropy, and Short Codes
49
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27
Mutual Information, and Density in Thingspace
23
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27
Superexponential Conceptspace, and Simple Words
32
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16
Conditional Independence, and Naive Bayes
34
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16
Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles
25
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70
Variable Question Fallacies
24
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34
37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong
93
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11y9 min readShow Highlight
78

Interlude

An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes's Theorem
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16y25 min readShow Highlight
0