orthonormal comments on The conscious tape - Less Wrong

11 Post author: PhilGoetz 16 September 2010 07:55PM

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Comment author: Mass_Driver 17 September 2010 01:24:43AM 1 point [-]

Look, of course physicalism or whatever you want to call it is the most plausible known and articulated theory of everything.

But why would you assign physicalism nontrivial probability as against (a) theories that are as yet unknown or unarticulated, or (b) the possibility that the Universe does not behave neatly in accordance with a single coherent, comprehensible theory?

Isn't the concept-space of "single coherent Theory of Everything" vastly smaller than the total concept-space of concepts that could describe our reality?

Comment author: orthonormal 19 September 2010 04:40:35PM 2 points [-]

Our amazement.— It is a profound and fundamental good fortune that scientific discoveries stand up under examination and furnish the basis, again and again, for further discoveries. After all, this could be otherwise. Indeed, we are so convinced of the uncertainty and fantasies of our judgments and of the eternal change of all human laws and concepts that we are really amazed how well the results of science stand up.

  • Nietzsche, The Gay Science I.46

(NB: in this passage, "we" signifies modern atheists, not people in general.)

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