The article to which you refer presents a convincing case, but I think it's probably inconsistant with a Tarskian semantic theory of truth. (ETA: assuming it aims at defining truth, or at laying out a criterion for the identity of facts). We would have to infer from Tom's carrying the bucket to the bucket's being carried by Tom, since we couldn't offer the Tarskian sentence "'Tom is carrying the bucket' iff the bucket is being carried by Tom" up as a definition of the truth of "Tom is carrying the bucket."
I can see Eliezer's point on an epistemological level, but what theory of truth do we need in order to understand anticipations as bearing on the identity of facts themselves?
Suppose we say simply that an identical set of anticipations makes two facts identical. Now suppose that I'm working in a factory in which I must crack red and blue eggs open to discover the color of the yolk (orange in the case of red eggs, green in the case of blue. But suppose also that all red, orange yolked eggs are rough to the touch, and all blue, green yolked eggs are smooth. The redness and the roughness of an egg will lead to an identical set of anticipations (the orangeness of the yolk). But we certainly can't say that the redness and the roughness of an egg are the same fact, since they don't even refer to the same material state of affairs.
Apparently we're speaking across a large inferential distance. I don't know about Tarskian sentences, so I can't comment on those, but I can clarify the 'anticipation controller' idea.
Basically, you're defining 'anticipation' more narrowly than what Eliezer meant by the term.
If you tell me that an egg is rough, I will anticipate that, if I rub my fingers over it, my skin will feel the sensations I associate with rough surfaces.
If you tell me that an egg is red, I will anticipate that when I look at it, the cells in my retina that are sensitive to long-wave...
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