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rbandrewsThere's a thread 60-odd messages deep on the Icehouse mailing list right now about Zendo, and what sorts of rules are invalid. And yes, someone's wrong on the internet, but they're wrong in such an interesting way that it's tweaking my current fascination with the human brain.
It seems like there are three groups in the argument:
- The old guard, of Ryan McGuire, Josh Kronengold, et al: they are right, and they're right both because they were taught the game by Kory and because their brains can internalize what the rules actually are.
- A few new people (to me, anyway) who are right, but who use fuzzy terminology and don't appear to have fully internalized the Zendo meta-rule ("is this rule a valid Zendo rule?")
- Most everyone else on the thread, who are all flat wrong.
So let's take three example rules:
- A koan has the Buddha nature iff it contains a color that was on the shirt I was wearing at the start of the game.
- A koan has the Buddha nature if it has [some unspecified but mechanical] relation to a word in the standard Scrabble dictionary
- A koan has the Buddha nature if a red pyramid casts a shadow on a blue pyramid
The old guard view the first two as an unquestionably valid rules. The second group (definitionally) agrees with them, because they think that referring to the shirt / dictionary in that way makes the shirt part of the rule, just as if the rule "imports" the shirt / dictionary into the rule. And the third group thinks that only rule three is valid because it only mentions pyramids.
I'm not trying to argue about which side is right. Obviously the first group, the old guard, is right, and anyone else right is only right by coincidence. What I want to say is, I believe that I can explain the exact cognitive failure that makes groups two and three think wrong.
Group three just plain isn't consistent. They are stuck in the idea of following the exact wording of the meta-rule: "A koan consists of only the pyramids and the horizontal surface they're sitting on". Okay, so the pyramids are in a certain arrangement, and that implies that certain shadows are cast, so there you go. Group three isn't right, they're not even wrong. They're the kind of people who should never ever be masters.
Group two is one level above that: they can understand the distinction between the koan ("just the pyramids and the table") and the rule ("any static thing that the master can refer to, we'll call part of the rule"). Because of this, they're able to mark rules correctly but they fail to really understand the meta-rule.
The old-guard seem to understand a concept that if they would just refer to it, might explain a lot of confusion: there's a fundamental divide between not only the koan and the rule, but between the rule and the representation of the rule. There are many rules which are identical but with different representations. Group three doesn't seem to even notice that there are identical rules, and group two doesn't see that any rule can be replaced by an identical sibling.
Which is why both groups keep getting hung up on how the rule is worded, and keep continuing their thread with group one: the canonical group three complaint is "you can't refer to the shirt, it's not a pyramid" and the canonical group two complaint is "the rule is invalid if you refer to the shirt but valid if you say 'contains a green or yellow piece'". Both miss the point: the rule is the same regardless, and if the rule is valid then all its representations are.
The trick about the first two rules is realizing that the actual rules don't mention a shirt or a dictionary at all. They are free variables that an outside observer ("Spock") wouldn't have access to, so if the observer were given the rules with those representations they wouldn't be able to mark them. But we could create closed representations of those rules ("a koan has the Buddha nature if it contains any green or yellow pieces") that don't refer to shirts, and Spock could easily mark them.
Anyway, what I find really interesting is that no one seems to have pointed this out yet. Group one has so totally internalized the Zendo meta-rule (the actual rule, not Kory's representation of it in the rulebook, which is what group three fixates on) that they don't even seem to realize that they're doing it. And group two's problem seems to be rooted in their inability to distinguish between a thing and its representation, which is a common cognitive failure mode.
It seems like there are three groups in the argument:
- The old guard, of Ryan McGuire, Josh Kronengold, et al: they are right, and they're right both because they were taught the game by Kory and because their brains can internalize what the rules actually are.
- A few new people (to me, anyway) who are right, but who use fuzzy terminology and don't appear to have fully internalized the Zendo meta-rule ("is this rule a valid Zendo rule?")
- Most everyone else on the thread, who are all flat wrong.
So let's take three example rules:
- A koan has the Buddha nature iff it contains a color that was on the shirt I was wearing at the start of the game.
- A koan has the Buddha nature if it has [some unspecified but mechanical] relation to a word in the standard Scrabble dictionary
- A koan has the Buddha nature if a red pyramid casts a shadow on a blue pyramid
The old guard view the first two as an unquestionably valid rules. The second group (definitionally) agrees with them, because they think that referring to the shirt / dictionary in that way makes the shirt part of the rule, just as if the rule "imports" the shirt / dictionary into the rule. And the third group thinks that only rule three is valid because it only mentions pyramids.
I'm not trying to argue about which side is right. Obviously the first group, the old guard, is right, and anyone else right is only right by coincidence. What I want to say is, I believe that I can explain the exact cognitive failure that makes groups two and three think wrong.
Group three just plain isn't consistent. They are stuck in the idea of following the exact wording of the meta-rule: "A koan consists of only the pyramids and the horizontal surface they're sitting on". Okay, so the pyramids are in a certain arrangement, and that implies that certain shadows are cast, so there you go. Group three isn't right, they're not even wrong. They're the kind of people who should never ever be masters.
Group two is one level above that: they can understand the distinction between the koan ("just the pyramids and the table") and the rule ("any static thing that the master can refer to, we'll call part of the rule"). Because of this, they're able to mark rules correctly but they fail to really understand the meta-rule.
The old-guard seem to understand a concept that if they would just refer to it, might explain a lot of confusion: there's a fundamental divide between not only the koan and the rule, but between the rule and the representation of the rule. There are many rules which are identical but with different representations. Group three doesn't seem to even notice that there are identical rules, and group two doesn't see that any rule can be replaced by an identical sibling.
Which is why both groups keep getting hung up on how the rule is worded, and keep continuing their thread with group one: the canonical group three complaint is "you can't refer to the shirt, it's not a pyramid" and the canonical group two complaint is "the rule is invalid if you refer to the shirt but valid if you say 'contains a green or yellow piece'". Both miss the point: the rule is the same regardless, and if the rule is valid then all its representations are.
The trick about the first two rules is realizing that the actual rules don't mention a shirt or a dictionary at all. They are free variables that an outside observer ("Spock") wouldn't have access to, so if the observer were given the rules with those representations they wouldn't be able to mark them. But we could create closed representations of those rules ("a koan has the Buddha nature if it contains any green or yellow pieces") that don't refer to shirts, and Spock could easily mark them.
Anyway, what I find really interesting is that no one seems to have pointed this out yet. Group one has so totally internalized the Zendo meta-rule (the actual rule, not Kory's representation of it in the rulebook, which is what group three fixates on) that they don't even seem to realize that they're doing it. And group two's problem seems to be rooted in their inability to distinguish between a thing and its representation, which is a common cognitive failure mode.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 03:36 pm (UTC)So basically Zendo is a platonic game, and all formulations of a rule are reflections of the true, ideal Rule? I can get behind that.
(You have to be careful to make sure that equivalent formulations are actually equivalent, though.)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 09:40 pm (UTC)wonder how that thread could possibly ever end?
The same way all threads end: someone gets tired of fighting and the other person declares victory.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-05 10:01 pm (UTC)If anyone doesn't feel like reading the article, I'll give you an exercise at home to recreate it. Put a piece of paper with "the other side's actual point" written on it in the middle of the floor. Dance around it for a few minutes while punching another piece of paper that says "coercion, threats, blackmail and deception are bad" then put this second one on top of the first, step on it so that a bit of a footprint hits the first and declare yourself the winner of the internet."
(from)