From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Nov 02 1999 - 17:17:45 MST
The internalist theory of proof is false. Given time and money, it
would actually be fairly easy to set up a situation where the most
rational explanation is the false one, a situation where Occam's Razor
doesn't work. For example, I found my copy of "True Names and Other
Dangers", which I'd been looking for for three years, when I went back
to the bookstore to return nine dollars they undercharged me. Now,
while Occam's Razor says this was a coincidence and not a causal effect
of my charity, I hope, it would be easy to target someone else looking
for a book, pay the store owner to undercharge ver, and then have the
book there when ve returned. Occam's Razor says it's a coincidence, but
in reality, it's not.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
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