From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 00:56:59 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> 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.
More emphasis! You should stop and question yourself when you feel
licensed to use asterisks as a substantial element of your argument. ;)
Basically, the medieval astronomist would have been right from his
perspective, and wrong from ours. But, you know what? Our perspective is
*better* than his perspective. (*REALLY*)
In fact, it's so much better that we could probably convince a medieval
astronomer to switch camps if we just showed him some of the cool evidence
and experiments that back up our side. It's so easy that he may not even
have a distinguishable "perspective" at all; he may have our perspective,
but just be ill-informed.
But if we must assign him his own perspective, then we must assign it and
then reject it. Medieval astronomy *is* wrong. (WOO! Go team!)
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:36 MST