RichardKennaway comments on Open Thread: April 2010 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Unnamed 01 April 2010 03:21PM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 07 April 2010 03:24:10PM 3 points [-]

I've always taken Omega to be just a handy tool for thinking about philosophical problems. "Omega appears and tells you X" is short for "For the purposes of this conundrum, imagine that X is true, that you have undeniably conclusive evidence for X, and that the nature of this evidence and why it convinces you is irrelevant to the problem."

In a case where X is impossible ("Omega appears and tells you that 2+2=3") then the conundrum is broken.