From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Sep 02 2002 - 21:39:42 MDT
One must keep track of the distinction between the actual, real fact that
the Sun is a great big hot thing roughly eight light minutes away, and the
fact that we humanfolk can never be 100.0000% sure of this - which is
*nonetheless* absolutely true. The universe contains a great many
absolute facts and we cannot be absolutely sure of them. The fact that
*we* are uncertain about these facts and that we are aware of *our own*
uncertainty does not mean that we should model the *universe* as being
uncertain about the same subject matter. That goes beyond
anthropomorphism; it is confusing the map with the territory.
Now of course you can argue that the universe is also uncertain, but if
you do that, you need to provide evidence. Pointing at uncertain humans
is not evidence for this thesis.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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