JGWeissman comments on Eliezer Yudkowsky Facts - Less Wrong

124 Post author: steven0461 22 March 2009 08:17PM

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Comment author: JGWeissman 07 March 2010 09:59:12PM 14 points [-]

Eliezer Yudkowsky once explained:

To answer precisely, you must use beliefs like Earth's gravity is 9.8 meters per second per second, and This building is around 120 meters tall. These beliefs are not wordless anticipations of a sensory experience; they are verbal-ish, propositional. It probably does not exaggerate much to describe these two beliefs as sentences made out of words. But these two beliefs have an inferential consequence that is a direct sensory anticipation - if the clock's second hand is on the 12 numeral when you drop the ball, you anticipate seeing it on the 5 numeral when you hear the crash.

Experiments conducted near the building in question determined the local speed of sound to be 6 meters per second.

(Hat Tip)