RichardChappell comments on The Anthropic Trilemma - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 September 2009 01:47AM

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Comment author: RichardChappell 27 September 2009 08:31:09PM 6 points [-]

Speakers Use Their Actual Language, so someone who uses 'leg' to mean leg or tail speaks truly when they say 'dogs have five legs.' But it remains the case that dogs have only four legs, and nobody can reasonably expect a ham sandwich to support hundreds of pounds of force. This is because the previous sentence uses English, not the counterfactual language we've been invited to imagine.