Vladimir_M comments on Great Explanations - Less Wrong

23 Post author: lukeprog 31 October 2011 11:58PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (113)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 03 November 2011 03:35:04AM 5 points [-]

You most certainly can gain enough knowledge to make conclusions about personal identity without knowing math. Ask an impressive physicist: [...]

The critical step however involves asking a physicist and accepting his opinion on authority. Such evidence is by no means invalid, to be sure, but it's something quite different from the original context, which was about understanding things yourself. (Plus, the weight of this evidence should be discounted due to the fact that the question is, strictly speaking, outside of the physicist's immediate domain of expertise, and dependent on issues that raise significant controversy.)