PhilGoetz comments on Rationality Quotes October 2011 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: MinibearRex 03 October 2011 06:41AM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 10 October 2011 10:34:40PM 4 points [-]

Sounds good, but may not be meaningful outside of physics, where by "theory" you usually mean model, and a model can be made simpler or more complex as the occasion demands.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 October 2011 11:02:46AM 2 points [-]

Considering my brain is too small for the universe, making the theory as simple as possible sounds like a good strategy when dealing with hard problems.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 October 2011 02:46:12PM 0 points [-]

It's a good strategy if "possible" means "not too simple to function correctly". You can model a human as a point mass affected only by gravity, and this model is presumably too simple for most purposes, but it's not clear in what sense it's an impossible model.