ciphergoth comments on Reason as memetic immune disorder - Less Wrong

215 Post author: PhilGoetz 19 September 2009 09:05PM

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Comment author: MichaelVassar 20 September 2009 03:28:42PM 2 points [-]

It would be nice though, if outsiders could show some respect by demonstrating, as is probably demonstrable but difficult, that its object of study is incoherent, not just imaginary.

I'm not really sure it makes sense to talk about mathematical objects as being imaginary but not incoherent.

Comment author: ciphergoth 26 December 2009 04:14:28PM 0 points [-]

I'd be very surprised if this Universe was super-Turing, but you think it's actually incoherent? I can definitely conceive of a hypercomputational cellular automata, what is it about the idea of our Universe being hypercomputational that seems incoherent to you?

Comment author: MichaelVassar 26 December 2009 07:36:49PM 2 points [-]

I think that it is very common for things that we casually think we can definitely conceive of to actually be incoherent. I also think that almost everyone else underestimates how common it is.

Comment author: ciphergoth 26 December 2009 10:21:07PM 1 point [-]

I think I'm correcting for that. Do you agree that the halting oracle function itself is well-defined? If so, what seems inconceivable about a cellular automaton whose rules depend on the output of that oracle? OK, you have to stretch the definition of a cellular automaton to allow it, perhaps by allowing cells to have unbounded state, but the result is a wholly defined and therefore surely in-principle-conceivable Universe which is super-Turing. No?