From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Aug 31 2002 - 23:34:34 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 09:16 PM 8/31/02 -0700, Lee wrote:
>
>> 1. Do you believe that there is a big hot ball of gas about 8 light
>> minutes from the Earth that we call "the sun"? (And I dearly pray
>> that this can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no"
>
> Too bad. Do I `believe' this assertion? Not exactly; a belief is a
> conviction derived from confidence in another person's report
> unsubstantiated in one's own direct experience. Do I `know' that it's
> true? Not in the sense that I surely know the light coming from the
> small flat circle up there is very bright and hurts my eyes if I gaze
> at it too long. But in an extended sense of `know', drawing upon my
> education, I do indeed know that the Sun is a big hot ball of gas about
> which our spherical world orbits. Had I lived a thousand years ago, I
> would have `known' in exactly the same sense that the Sun is a small
> bright flaming ball which orbits about our flat world.
And you would have been *wrong*. Yes, beliefs have complex causal
histories. But beliefs which correspond to reality remain true, and
beliefs which depart from reality remain false.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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