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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Vanilla and chocolate and preference judgements - Less Wrong
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Everything is a fact about great many things. It's a fact about her, and a fact about table, and a fact about evolutionary history, and a fact about fusion in the long-dead stars. What makes a certain event a fact about a specific idea for us is usefulness of information gained about that idea, not just existence of a certain relationship between an idea and the event.
Okay, I'll try to clarify what I mean. If Mary did not exist, the table could still be messy; that's a fact about the table. But with no one to observe it, the messiness wouldn't be bad. The badness of the table being messy is a fact about how Mary perceives messiness...which is why the same table, with the same messiness, could be "not-bad" through someone else's eyes, i.e. Albert. Obviously it's a fact about the table in that the table has to exist, and be messy, in order for Mary to think it's bad, but you can't describe it by only describing the table...you have to describe Mary's brain too.
Is there any way I can make this clearer in the article?