Quoting Bloggingheads: Afterthought

Due to a technical mishap,

Quoting InJapan: If only "technical mishap" was the only problem with this diavlog....

I had to do a full stop at the 10 minute (1.4x) mark... when Will is questioning whether the we (the US?) will be out of economic recession by 2012. It is not that such things are unknown... it is the timescale Will is putting on this. Given from when the NBER now dates the beginning of recession, does Will realize what he is saying by extending it to 2012? It shouldn't be a throw-away line.

Before the full stop at the recession comments, I was highly tempted to stop at the Bush bashing. I realize that it has been a mark of tribal inclusion to somehow demonstrate how one is more intelligent than GWB, in certain circles, but for my tastes it is just lame. That Will would also imply that GWB somehow greatly expanded executive power (compared to other Presidents???) and then pine for the moral purity of the ideal presidency (as if there ever were one) by projecting that hope onto Obama (as if he'll be really that much different than his 43 predecessors)... all becomes too much.

From now on, unless one of

I realize that it has been a mark of tribal inclusion to somehow demonstrate how one is more intelligent than GWB, in certain circles, but for my tastes it is just lame.

Quoting uncle ebeneezer: This clip makes me feel like there should be a Dungeons & Dragons game going between Will and Eleizer.

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/173...8:47&out=29:04

All jokes aside. Fantastic diavlog. Shout out to my fellow non-believers!!!

Quoting AemJeff: I laughed out loud at Eliezer's bon mot. It was a great diavlog - I hope BH keeps finding reasons to bring Eliezer back. (And Will is always great.)

Quoting ginger baker: ...
To smuggle in libertarian drivel? why, of course...And yet, Will, you have no "biases?"
...

Quoting nikkibong: you know me so well, will!

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/173...8:22&out=28:35

Quoting Tara Davis: Even setting aside his rigidity, his goal for rational purity is Sisyphus-like. Modern neuroscience argues against him. Nobody "overcomes bias" all the time. We're not thinking machines, we are feeling machines who have developed very advanced skills at cognitively rationalizing the conclusions our feelings lead us towards. Anybody who insists they have completely (or even mostly) escaped this fact of human nature is living in denial.

Quoting ginger baker: "Rationality" Will? If you mean good 'ol Aristotelian common-sense (which is more important these days than myopic passe "rational-choice" economic policy) than Obama should clearly be, thank the lawdee above, more level-headed, prudential, & indeed smart....compared to whats been going on the last 8 years. But are you seriously trying to form the debate solely on the plane of "reason?" To smuggle in libertarian drivel? why, of course...And yet, Will, you have no "biases?" Anglo-American-Austrian-neoliberal-"operating rationally"- thinking is free of ideology, free of hopes, expectations, presumptions, circumstance? You're a political philosopher, Will, but you really need to get on the Continent...start with something easy, say...Sandel's critique of Rawls, a debate that took place back in the 80's....... You have to broaden your vision to truly see how and why people would ever "creep over" to your view....

Quoting bjkeefe: I agree. Still, the way he'd like (us) to live is admirable, and even if it's an unattainable goal, it at least serves as a good direction in which to aim.

Being a feeling machine myself, I kept thinking during this diavlog that I don't think I or we would be happy being completely rational. It seems limiting and boring. But I'd like to be a little more rational myself, and I'd like to see this in others, too.

Quoting Francoamerican: Right on! This whole discussion of "rationality", and its relation to (conventional) morality, was very provincial (=anglo-saxon libertarian drivel, seasoned with the latest in cognitive science). It was also, as a consequence, historically uninformed and ludicrously out of touch with other schools of thought. You would think, to listen to these two speakers, that "rational choice theory," a derivative of utilitarianism and economics, were the last word on rationality and morality---as if no one before the late 20th century had even thought about these subjects. They might want to read Rawls' lectures on modern moral philosophy (from Hume), before reading Sandel's critique of Rawls, but in any case they need to acquaint themselves with the history of moral philosophy if they want to talk about rationality, or reason, or morality.

The identification of rationality with "non-conformity" and irrationality with "conformity" (or mysticism, laziness, schmuckiness) belongs to one of the more sophormoric tropes of libertarianism (traceable no doubt to that eminently hoakey American charlatan, Ayn Rand)

Quoting AemJeff: How do you conclude, based on the limited context of this conversation, what the scope of either of the participants acquaintance with the history of moral philosophy is? I'm not sure how your last graf relates to anything actually said during this exchange. (And wouldn't Rand be a hokey Russian charlatan?)

Quoting Francoamerican: 1. Because I am familiar with rational choice theory and neither participant showed any evidence of thinking that reason could be anything other than choosing according to utilitarian criteria.

2. On the contrary, both speakers constantly stressed that rational choice goes against convention. You will just have to listen to the dialogue again.

3. True, Rand was Russian, but she lived most of her life in the US.

The identification of rationality with "non-conformity" and irrationality with "conformity" (or mysticism, laziness, schmuckiness) belongs to one of the more sophormoric tropes of libertarianism

Quoting Francoamerican: Sorry, but I don't have time to give a course in moral philosophy (maybe you would like to chip in and send me a little cash....), but here are some points to bear in mind:

Rational choice theory is a version of utilitarianism, for which moral rationality consists in maximizing the "utility" (=happiness or pleasure) of the individual or the group or both (there is some dispute whether these are compatible--as well there should be!) This theory has been subject to continuous critique almost from the moment it was first fomulated by Helvétius/Bentham in the late 18th century (mainly because of the vagueness and subjectivity of the notion of happiness or pleasure that utilitarians invoke) It has even been criticized by its foremost proponents (Mill/Sidgwick), who found it necessary to supplement the pure utilitarianism of Bentham by injecting a little non-utilitarian "poetry" into it (through the notion of self-development and free "individuality"). Rawls himself tried to combine utilitarianism with a Kantianism---because the utilitarian conception of reason, or rationality, is flawed (see the previous two parenthetical remarks) or just too narrow and too unhistorical to be

Quoting AemJeff: In the specific realm of AI development, there's a need for a concrete definition of rationality. "Happiness" or "pleasure" as bases for a standard of utility are relatively meaningless, just as you say. But by substituting synthetic proxies for them (at the simplest level, just creating literal rules for what constitutes "utility") it becomes possible to at least conceive of a system that might achieve something like rationality. The farthest reaches of the debate about what constitutes rationality really aren't first order concerns here.

Quoting Francoamerican: I don't really see how one can talk of a manmade machine "achieving rationality," unless you mean a machine capable of setting ends for itself independent of (in defiance of?) its maker. Which is paradoxical to say the least: why would we want to create such a machine?

A manmade machine possessing "intelligence" or "rationality" is designed for some human end, purpose, or goal. That is precisely what human rationality means at the most basic level: setting goals or purposes and finding the most appropriate means to attain them.

Quoting pampl: Alright, I relistened to this diavlogue in a less cranky mood and have substantive criticism:

At around the half-hour mark they debate how to convince people 'rationally' justified morality is the best option, but they never actually answer that meta-ethical question for themselves.

Yudkowsky goes on to define rationality as being the mode of thinking you use when you value some end over how you think, but besides being tendentious that's blatantly false. Religiosity has been statistically shown to lead to increased happiness and lifespan over the strict materialism they're calling "rationality". Those are two pretty widely held goals, I think. There's also the obvious thought-experiment counterexamples: if you value becoming the Pope you are almost certainly better off thinking popishly than wilkinsonny, if you want to blend in your best bet is reasoning like the median person for your area.

My big problem here is that the idea of rationality they're working with is pre-post-modern (there's an ugly construct), Hume and on have already blown up the debate they're having and moved on. Trying to rig the deck in your favor by defining rationality as something

Quoting AemJeff: I just didn't hear these guys defining rationality as "something that leads to truth or God," although Eliezer may have skirted "best outcomes." I interpreted what he was saying there as "better outcomes than otherwise," which strikes me as an empirically justifiable claim.

I've said elsewhere that "happiness" is a pretty useless measure, mostly because of the difficulty in measuring it. Eliezer was pretty clear about not defining rationality in terms of simple, selfish concerns. To be sure, it's still a pretty vague notion. My own view is that rational empiricism proves itself - in the sense that it can be shown that the development of empiricism closely corresponds to a historically unprecedented, so far unbroken, period of exponential growth in our ability to know the world (as measured by our ability to affect it.) That definition is of course based on a paradox.

Quoting Francoamerican: I don't really see how one can talk of a manmade machine "achieving rationality," unless you mean a machine capable of setting ends for itself independent of (in defiance of?) its maker. Which is paradoxical to say the least: why would we want to create such a machine?

Quoting AemJeff: As an aside, Star Trek lore notwithstanding, I'm not sure emotions are a contradiction of that goal - assuming they don't rule, they're sort of a window into our limbic system. So, properly managed, they're another source of data - in some sense maybe a distinct sensory channel (or set of...)

Quoting Eliezer Yudkowsky: But I know, now, that there's nothing wrong with feeling strongly. Ever since I adopted the rule of "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be," I've also come to realize "That which the truth nourishes should thrive." When something good happens, I am happy, and there is no confusion in my mind about whether it is rational for me to be happy. When something terrible happens, I do not flee my sadness by searching for fake consolations and false silver linings. I visualize the past and future of humankind, the tens of billions of deaths over our history, the misery and fear, the search for answers, the trembling hands reaching upward out of so much blood, what we could become someday when we make the stars our cities, all that darkness and all that light - I know

Quoting pampl: Eliezer said truth a couple times specifically. The claim you give is empirically justifiable, but the empirical evidence refutes it. Regardless of what you think about happiness studies, or imagining situations where rationality isn't the best means to the end, lifespan is hard to argue with. IIRC the study just used cardiac death to mean end of life.

Yeah, proving rationality in general is circular, but that view in particular has another problem: the founding of major religions has had that same effect. When Islam spread through the Middle East and North Africa it created an empire of learning and enlightenment that lasted centuries and was responsible for preserving a lot of stuff from the classical period. Same thing for Protestantism, and maybe Confucianism if you count that as a religion. That's sort of beside the point, though, because the prosperity-bringing modern liberalism that's been practiced largely by religious people for centuries has nothing to do with Elizer's rationality.

Liberalism was about defining a rational public sphere to LIMIT the state to, leaving people free to pursue their conscience privately. To take that and try to use limits of the state

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: If you are asking this question, then perhaps you should acquaint yourself with the AI literature before you criticize it. (Since you've dropped nary a name from that literature in your posts, I assume that you're entirely ignorant of it .)

At any rate, if you will simply grant that, for whatever idiosyncratic reasons, Eliezer wants to build an AI, then it shouldn't be hard for you to see why the theories of Kant, Rawls, et al., are pretty useless to him, as AemJeff has pointed out. Most advocates of these theories would acknowledge proudly that their notions of value aren't mathematizable. Utility functions, as their name suggests, are just about the only respectable theory of value that deigns to be entirely mechanizable. Why should an AI theorist waste time referencing moral theories that don't even try to present themselves in a computer-implementable format?

Quoting Francoamerican: Sorry, but we live in a common world, where words like rationality, utility, bias, system of values, comformist, epistemic virtue are laden with meaning and belong to a philosophical tradition.

I have no interest in carrying on a discussion with autists.

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: If this is what you mean by "autist", then you have opted to ignore a substantial part of that philosophic tradition. Doing so will ultimately hamper your ability to understand how these words are used in this common world that we all share, "autists" included.

Quoting Francoamerican: Rational choice theory, which was in the background of this whole discussion, is a version of utilitarianism, dressed up in economics. Do you deny that?

Quoting Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
6.1 The Argument from the Maximin Criterion (TJ Sections 26-28)

Describing the parties' choice as

Quoting Francoamerican: And what is this substantial part of the philosophical tradition that is eluding me? AI?

I confess I know little about it, but much of what I heard in this dialogue struck me as gibberish. If one is going to use all the traditional vocabulary of moral philosophy (see previous post), then I expect some respect for that tradition.

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: ...
I will mention, however, just as a general remark, that I often hear people heavily steeped in a particular philosophical tradition express indignation at how followers of some other tradition use philosophical words incorrectly. The problem is self-compounding because the follower of one school, on seeing how members of another school don't even seem to understand what their words mean, will decide that it's not worthwhile to read them. Hence the follower finds his sense of the meaning of these words diverging further and further from that of the other school, so that every time he hears its members speak, he feels yet more confirmed in his conviction that they are ignorant. All the while, however, the follower's reaction reveals only his ignorance of how the terminology is used in the other school.
...

Quoting AemJeff: I don't know how deep into the weeds we should take this, but my thesis is that the post-Enlightenment (really I mean post-Copernicus/Kepler/Galileo/Newton/Hume) explosion of knowledge is qualitatively different from those other periods of learning. What rationalism brings to the table that religion can't, I believe, is a means to separate observer from observed; to, as much as possible, dethrone simple authority as a standard of proof. I really think that the twentieth century lurch into post-classicism (Einstein/Bohr/Schroedinger/Wittgenstein/Gödel, let's say) would have been impossible in any other conceivable environment. The transformation from Aristotelian physics to Newtonian mechanics is an example of an event I just don't believe would have survived in those other situations.

As a quantitative measure - I don't have the means to prove this - I think the growth of knowledge before Copernicus could at best have been described as linear. I don't think there's any way to characterize the rate of growth since then as less than exponential (and increasing.)

Btw - I missed entirely hearing Eli say "truth" despite two passes though the diavlog. I'm still reluctant to believe he meant it literally.

Quoting pampl: I don't disagree much with your thoughts on history. I think you might be shortchanging prior boom times a little but I'm not well enough versed in history to make a good case for that or to be very sure of it at all. I just don't think the rationality you're talking about matches with Eliezer's- moving from the top-down institutionally dictated system of belief to one based on independent investigation and repeatability doesn't have the same kind of intrinsic hostility to religion and even vaguely resembles the reformation.

There were a couple times when he was explicitly talking about rationality giving access to truth that I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on, when he was talking in a mostly technical way about Bayesian reasoning being similar to how the eye operates. The two times I had a problem with (in the diavlogue, not including the extra mp3 conversation) were the times he didn't explicitly say "truth" but simply assumed it. One was at 27 minutes, when he starts talking about how irrational - or "supernaturalist" - thinking people aren't able to judge the benefits of

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: I will mention, however, just as a general remark, that I often hear people heavily steeped in a particular philosophical tradition express indignation at how followers of some other tradition use philosophical words incorrectly. The problem is self-compounding because the follower of one school, on seeing how members of another school don't even seem to understand what their words mean, will decide that it's not worthwhile to read them. Hence the follower finds his sense of the meaning of these words diverging further and further from that of the other school, so that every time he hears its members speak, he feels yet more confirmed in his conviction that they are ignorant. All the while, however, the follower's reaction reveals only his ignorance of how the terminology is used in the other school.

You say that Will and Eliezer seemed to you to be speaking "gibberish". That's a possibility. Like I said, I haven't listened to this diavlogue yet. However, having listened to these participants before, I don't think that the "gibberish" hypothesis is likely. I think that you should consider the possibility that they are speaking within a tradition with which you are inadequately familiar.

Quoting Francoamerican: The distinction between "science" and "moral philosophy," which you seem to think self-evident, is anything but. It would be if there were in fact a "science of man" with the same status as physics.

I wonder what a physicist, or a mathematician, would think of the scientific pretentions of a theory that defines "rationality" in such a way that it excludes just about everything grand that human beings have ever accomplished by their reason

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: I was just pointing to the oft-cited is-ought distinction. Whether or not you think that that distinction is valid, I'm not sure why it would rely on there existing a "science of man" as robust as physics.

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Who said anything about excluding everything grand that humans have accomplished? I can assure you that Will and Eliezer don't see themselves as doing thatAt any rate, I myself am a mathematician, so if you're wondering what we'd think, you can just ask me .

Quoting Francoamerican: If there ever were a science of man as robust as physics, the is/ought distinction would no longer matter.

I was referring to RCT, and its debased conception of rationality. As for mathematicians, I have always found them adorably eccentric.

Quoting AemJeff: Also I'm curious. What about the the set of assumptions they're using about rationality (which closely mirror mine) do you find particularly dissonant? To the limited extent that I understand Rawls, he was generally concerned with justice and issues of political organization rather than directly with epistemology.

You seem to have a political disagreement with these guys; but I don't see how the assumptions made here are either obviously false or inappropriate to the context.

Quoting AemJeff: Ultimately, however, my general objection to religion is that it enshrines appeal to authority as a standard of proof.

Quoting popcorn_karate: it seems to me, that quite the contrary, with the ideas of protestantism and Deism that many of our founding fathers practiced lead directly away from appeals to authority. The idea that every person has access to god (not just priests) empowers individuals to reject authority from the state or from religious authorities on the basis of their relationship to god.

Quoting Francoamerican: The mere fact that most of us are obliged to accept scientific truths on authority should caution us against being too presumptious in this regard.

Of course, you could say that in accepting the truths of scientific reason, even on authority, we are being rational in the practical sense of the word because that is how our civilization defines practical rationality.

Quoting Francoamerican: All I meant was that we shouldn't give ourselves credit for being rational in either sense just because we accept science as the ultimate authority for the truth. The mere fact that most of us are obliged to accept scientific truths on authority should caution us against being too presumptious in this regard.

Quoting Otto Kerner: This was a fine talk, but one nettle nettles me. I found the several instances of the term "reality-based community" fairly cringeworthy. It was not at all clear to me what the speakers meant by it. I gather that the usual meaning is something along the lines of simply "liberals on the internet", whose use of the term to describe themselves shows an impressive if displeasing degree of self-satisfaction. I don't know a great deal about either Wilkinson's or Yudkowsky's politics, but I figure I'd do at least Mr. Wilkinson the courtesy of assuming that he is not a smug internet liberal. More broadly, one might perhaps say that the "reality-based community" is anyone who has opposed Mr. Bush, except that this is clearly no kind of community at all -- it would have to include, for example, myself, Will Wilkinson, Gary North, Barack Obama, and Hugo Chavez. What a team! Lastly, I do think it would be a fair use of "reality-based community" to have it mean atheists, agnostics, etc. This seems to make it a pretty marginal group; I imagine that a fairly large number even of the internet liberals fail to qualify as reality-based in that case.

Quoting Tyrrell McAllister: I think that it is possible to accept scientific authority for rational reasons, and not just by defining "rational" in a way very specific to our own civilization. When I am considering whether to credit an authority, I try to think consciously, "Do I have a rational basis for believing that this person is evaluating the evidence in the way that I would if I had the time and talent to study it myself?"
.......
One might worry that this is a recipe for only crediting authorities with which one already agrees, and hence for intellectual stagnation. But I don't think so. You can, on these rational grounds, credit an authority so much that you will believe the authority over some other result of your own reasoning, so that you modify your basic assumptions. This will lead to changes in the way that you evaluate evidence, which in turn can result in different authorities "making the cut".

Quoting bjkeefe: Maybe you didn't mean it to that degree, but it is my experience that such a mindset frequently exists in those more fond of the liberal arts than of more technical fields, so I thought I'd say something.

Quoting Francoamerican: See my previous reply to T McAllister.

My "mindset" is philosophical, more informed by philosophy and history than, say, by biology or mathematics. But, as I think I have made pretty clear, I don't disrespect the sciences (nota bene the plural), or theoretical rationality in general.

The problems of practical rationality---the why and the wherefore and the how of action--cannot be answered by any theoretical science.

Quoting bjkeefe: This is beyond my ability to address. I don't understand well enough the precise meaning of the philosophical terms you're using.
This is not just to do with you. I always end up feeling out of my depth for this reason.

Quoting Francoamerican: [...]

The natural sciences, which include the sciences that study man as a natural being, tell us absolutely nothing about man as a moral being. And they have precious little to tell us about human beings as historical or cultural beings.

Quoting bjkeefe: That much I can understand and agree with, although I'd want to add "yet." I do think we're at the beginning of being able to explain at least some of what we call morals in terms of evolutionary psychology, for example. I believe understanding what seems like human irrationality or non-rationality is a hard problem, but not ultimately an insoluble one.

Quoting Francoamerican: I agree with you entirely. My point was conceptual, or, as Wittgenstein might have said, "grammatical." Religious belief, unless it is founded on some metaphysical argument--one of the traditional so-called proofs of God's existence--is always based on authority, tradition, revelation, a holy book. In that sense, it is beyond or above reason. I certainly didn't mean to imply that religious beliefs are rational in any sense of the word.

It is important, however, to distinguish between two senses of "rationality" that are often confused: rationality as applied to beliefs and rationality as applied to actions, or, theoretical reason and practical reason (to use Kantian vocabulary). All I meant was that we shouldn't give ourselves credit for being rational in either sense just because we accept science as the ultimate authority for the truth. The mere fact that most of us are obliged to accept scientific truths on authority should caution us against being too presumptious in this regard.

Of course, you could say that in accepting the truths of scientific reason, even on authority, we are being rational in the practical sense of the word because that is how our civilization defines practical rationality.

I would agree.

Quoting AemJeff: Heh. Wittgenstein would tell us we were playing games. The distinction between rational beliefs and rational actions is cogent. .

Quoting AemJeff: What interests me most is what you might call epistemic hygiene. I personally want to know that the sieve I apply to distinguish what I probably should believe from everything else is as good as I can make it.

Quoting AemJeff: The extent to which I'm a rational agent, applying optimized algorithms to maximize utility, is not as significant a concern for me. (Not entirely insignificant though - I do have to earn a living - creating and implementing optimized algorithms to maximize utility for my clients, as it happens - however, living every moment in the ongoing process of goal-attainment sounds like hell to me.).

Quoting Francoamerican: Are you addressing a question to me? What is it? Yes, the distinction between rational beliefs and rational actions is cogent. That's why I made it. Wittgenstein would not have told us we are "playing games" if by that you mean the distinction is unserious. That isn't what Wittgenstein meant by a Sprachspiel. This particular language game is as old as Aristotle.

Don't we all if we are rational? Again, are you objecting to something I said?

I am glad to hear it. Maximizing utility, as it is understood by RCT, is certainly anything but rational. Goal attainment, however, is avoidable only if you sleep most of the time, drink yourself into oblivion, or spend all your time commenting on bhtv.... Far be it from me, however, to dismiss pointless pursuits.

True, calculability is essential both to rational action and rational belief. So what?

Quoting Francoamerican: Understanding is one thing; acting is another. Even if we were ever in a position to "explain" morals scientifically, or to "explain" irrational actions, or to "explain" whatever it is that people do, whether rational or irrational, we would still have to go on doing, acting, being.

Framing every question as a "problem" to be solved is a category mistake. It is the assimilation of "practical rationality" to "theoretical rationality." That will never happen. Or if it were to happen, we would find ourselves in some kind of totalitarian, nightmare of science fiction: Brave New World, 1984.

Quoting AemJeff: I'm following up on what I wrote a day or so ago. Why the apparent hostility? To a great extent I was saying I agree with you. The remark about Wittgenstein was mainly a joke - it's true, I think he would have viewed this conversation as being mostly a "language game," so what? Wittgenstein viewed the idea that language maps onto a deeper reality as something like a category error. Discussions like this, concerned less directly with the grammar used than with the underlying abstractions were, in his view, based on unprovable assumptions. Are we therefore being "unserious" in those terms? I think that interpretation would certainly be a category error.

The point I made about goal attainment was attached to the ideas of optimization and maximal utility. Behaving solely as an optimized goal achieving machine is equivalent to being "trapped in an 'iron cage' that formal rationalization has spawned with irresistible efficiency and at the expense of substantive rationality." That latter quote characterizing the "hell" I referred to in the previous post.

The point I'm making, and the point I believed you were making is about balance. To Define "rationality" as a global goal - that is, devoting all of our

Quoting Francoamerican: The distinction between theoretical rationality and practical rationality is pretty basic, and requires no heavy metaphysical machinery.

Quoting Francoamerican: ...As a former academic I am particularly annoyed when someone unloads on me a big chunk of text, a passage from some encyclopedia or some other authority, as if to say: YOU SEE! I AM RIGHT! My students used to do that, thinking the authority would carry the argument for them. Generally, it just made me want to lower the grade.

Quoting bjkeefe: If so, and if it's not too much trouble, would you outline that distinction, please?

Just for my own edification.

Quoting Francoamerican: May I suggest that you read all my postings on this subject, or at least the last ten? If the distinction is still unclear to you, well, I am afraid there is nothing more that I can do for you.

First of all, though, you must rid your mind of the colloquial English sense of the word "practical" = handy, useful. [...]

Quoting Francoamerican: NO! And what is the difference between fundamental and basic anyway?

Quoting bjkeefe: Hee hee! Temper, FA, temper.

To me, basic connotes simple; something that is basic in the sense that you used it means easily described in a few words. Fundamental means something deeper, more profound; e.g., The Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, which is likely not easily defined to the uninitiated.*

But yes, the two words are often synonymous in various contexts. I'm not sure whether the difference I draw between the two is widely shared, but leaving the exact words aside, do you see what I mean by the difference itself?

* [Added] Here's another example. One could state many fundamental principles of quantum mechanics that would leave the lay listener none the wiser, but one could say a basic difference between quantum and classical mechanics is that the latter believes that infinite precision is obtainable, at least in principle, while the former says it is not, that there is a (here comes that word again) fundamental limit to how precisely one can measure certain (pairs of) quantities.

Quoting Francoamerican: Point taken, but I think the differences are a more a matter of idiom than meaning. The metaphor is more or less the same: Basic from basis, the lower part, foundation of a building; fundamental from fundamentum, also foundation but with an amusing secondary derivation--- anus!

My repugnance for calculus is well-founded or fundamental.

Quoting bjkeefe: Agree with your etymology, but I guess we don't agree on what I meant by the difference, independent of the words chosen.

One more try: to me, something is basic to a topic if a person who understands that topic can explain it to some satisfaction to someone who has no background in the topic. This is not necessarily so for something fundamental to that topic.

Quoting Francoamerican: Sorry, but you are not convincing me. There are certain topics (like quantum mechanics) that are intrinsically, fundamentally, basically difficult, and that is why it is difficult to explain them, difficult even to explain their basics, or fundamentals, whether or not the listener has the appropriate background.

There are other topics (cooking) that are not very difficult, and whose basics or fundamentals may be easily explained to anyone, also with or without the appropriate background.

You are free to make the distinction if it seems idiomatic to you. To me it just seems to be the result of your choice of examples.