From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Aug 31 2002 - 23:57:27 MDT
At 01:34 AM 9/1/02 -0400, Eliezer wrote:
> > 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.
This is too broad and deep a topic for one-liners on an email list. But
consider: in 100 years' time, I might well know that the Sun is quite
literally a virtual construct based on an amusing imaginary physics written
by hyperdimensional aliens for the sim in which we are running. In that
case, almost no one here and now holds the belief that corresponds to
reality. Correspondence theories of this direct and naive sort are
notoriously fallible.
Damien Broderick
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