Strange7 comments on Compartmentalization as a passive phenomenon - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 26 March 2010 01:51PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (71)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: CronoDAS 26 March 2010 07:46:47PM 18 points [-]

GEB has a section on this.

In order to not compartmentalize, you need to test if your beliefs are all consistent with each other. If your beliefs are all statements in propositional logic, consistency checking becomes the Boolean Satisfiability Problem, which is NP-complete. If your beliefs are statements in predicate logic, then consistency checking becomes PSPACE-complete, which is even worse than NP-complete.

Not compartmentalizing isn't just difficult, it's basically impossible.

Comment author: Strange7 26 March 2010 07:56:58PM 9 points [-]

Reminds me of the opening paragraph of The Call of Cthulhu.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.