Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Outlawing Anthropics: An Updateless Dilemma - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 September 2009 06:31PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 September 2009 08:46:37PM 4 points [-]

But sometimes I wonder why it took so long, if it's really the right idea, given the amount of brainpower spent on this issue.

People are crazy, the world is mad. Also inventing basic math is a hell of a lot harder than reading it in a textbook afterward.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 09 September 2009 09:59:29PM 2 points [-]

People are crazy, the world is mad.

I suppose you're referring to the fact that we are "designed" by evolution. But why did evolution create a species that invented the number field sieve (to give a random piece of non-basic math) before UDT? It doesn't make any sense.

Also inventing basic math is a hell of a lot harder than reading it in a textbook afterward.

In what sense is it "hard"? I don't think it's hard in a computational sense, like NP-hard. Or is it? I guess it goes back to the question of "what algorithm are we using to solve these types of problems?"

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 September 2009 08:14:48AM 3 points [-]

No, I'm referring to the fact that people are crazy and the world is mad. You don't need to reach so hard for an explanation of why no one's invented UDT yet when many-worlds wasn't invented for thirty years.

Comment author: CarlShulman 16 September 2009 02:57:56AM 4 points [-]

I also don't think general madness is enough of an explanation. Both are counterintuitive ideas in areas without well-established methods to verify progress, e.g. building a working machine or standard mathematical proof techniques.