Will_Newsome comments on The curse of identity - Less Wrong

121 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 17 November 2011 07:28PM

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

Comments (295)

Sort By: Controversial

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

Comment author: Will_Newsome 06 August 2012 08:34:33PM *  1 point [-]

in his mind it also has a computational-transhumanist meaning

And a cybernetic/economic/ecological/signal-processing meaning, ethical meaning, sometimes a quantum information theoretic meaning, et cetera. I would not be justified in drawing a conclusion about the validity of a concept based on merely a perceived correspondence between two models. That'd be barely any better than talking acausal simulation seriously simply because computational metaphysics and modal-realist-like-ideas are somewhat intuitively attractive and superintelligences seem theoretically possible. One's inferences should be based on significantly more solid foundations. I just don't have a way to talk about equivalence classes of things while still being at all understood—then not even people like muflax could reliably understand me, and much of why I write here is to communicate with people like muflax, or angels.