Vladimir_Nesov comments on Counterfactual Calculation and Observational Knowledge - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Vladimir_Nesov 31 January 2011 04:28PM

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Comment author: FAWS 02 February 2011 05:48:49AM *  0 points [-]

If you agree that Q's parity is the same I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with. Its not possible for Q to be odd in the counterfactual and even in actuality, so if Q is odd in the counterfactual that implies it is also odd in actuality and vice versa. Thus it's not possible for the calculator to be right in both counterfactual and reality simultaneously, and assuming it to be right in the counter-factual implies that it's wrong in actuality. Therefore you can reduce everything to the two cases I used, Q even/actual calculator right/counterfactual calculator wrong or Q odd/actual calculator wrong/counterfactual calculator right.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 February 2011 11:33:32AM 0 points [-]

Maybe this could be more enlightening. When you control things, one of the necessary requirements is that you have logical uncertainty about some property of the thing you control. You start with having a definition of the control target, but not knowing some of its properties. And then you might be able to infer a dependence of one of its properties on your action. This allows you to personally determine what is that property of a structure whose definition you already know. See my posts on ADT for more detail.