Vladimir_Nesov comments on Call for new SIAI Visiting Fellows, on a rolling basis - Less Wrong

29 Post author: AnnaSalamon 01 December 2009 01:42AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 December 2009 07:05:57PM 1 point [-]

Pearl's causal networks can be encoded in ZFC

That's what I would expect most mathematical-existence types to think. It's true, but it's also the wrong thought.

Wei, do you see it now that I've pointed it out? Or does anyone else see it? As problems in philosophy go, it seems like a reasonable practice exercise to see it once I've pointed to it but before I've explained it.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 December 2009 08:11:06PM 1 point [-]

It's still unclear what you mean. One simple idea is that many formalisms allow to express each other, but some give more natural ways of representing a given problem than others. In some contexts, a given way of stating things may be clearly superior. If you e.g. see math as something happening in heads of mathematicians, or see implication of classical logic as a certain idealization of material implication where nothing changes, one may argue that a given way is more fundamental, closer to what actually happens.

When you ask questions like "do you see it now?", I doubt there is even a good way of interpreting them as having definite answers, without already knowing what you expect to hear, a lot more context about what kinds of things you are thinking about than is generally available.