gwern comments on The Twin Webs of Knowledge - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 28 August 2009 09:45AM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 28 August 2009 08:19:33PM 1 point [-]

Hum. Plenty of people have apparently had the time to read this, but the post itself appears to remain at zero karma. I'm curious: is that because it's getting an equal amount of up- and downvotes, or did genuinely nobody consider the post any good?

As far as my more poetic sort of writing goes, I thought this if not good then at least adequate, and am a bit puzzled of the lackluster reaction it seems to be getting.

Comment author: gwern 29 August 2009 01:43:56PM 0 points [-]

I thought it was adequate. I think I've seen better appeals to intuitions, though, like Indra's net:

"Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the 1st magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select 1 of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this 1 jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring."

The original Hindu descriptions of Indra's net are even better but I don't have on hand.

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