From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 01:25:53 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
>
> 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.
>
AI work is a rather rude awakening in this area. I think I may have posted
this before, but FWIW, Scientific Method has basically enshrined the
following and seems entirely analogous to the operation of the mind (lines
up pretty well with what Eliezer said, not surprisingly):
1) Fact. Unprovable theories about reality a la scientific method based on
the assumption of an unknowable universe.
2) Belief. 1st person causal construct (regardless of any sound basis).
3) Truth. Belief as transferred to a 3rd party (2 layers of potential error
additions).
The relation of Truth/Belief to Facts is open. In evolutionary terms if your
belief model works (even if it's got nothing to do with facts), you get to
live.
Funnily enough I managed to get to this point without knowing anything about
Post Modernism. I remain triumphant in claiming near to complete ignorance
of it. Bliss.
cheers,
Colin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:36 MST