MichaelVassar comments on Metaphilosophical Mysteries - Less Wrong

35 Post author: Wei_Dai 27 July 2010 12:55AM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 27 July 2010 11:20:48AM 4 points [-]

Consider a universal prior based on an arbitrary logical language L, and a device that can decide the truth value of any sentence in that language. Such a device has no finite description in L (according to Tarski's undefinability theorem), so the universal prior based on L would assign it zero probability. A human would also think that such a device is unlikely, but not infinitely so. (I gave a version of this argument in is induction unformalizable?, which is linked to from Berry's Paradox and universal distribution. Did you read it?)

Comment author: MichaelVassar 27 July 2010 05:02:54PM 0 points [-]

Maybe the human is a bad philosopher in this case and is simply wrong.