ABrooks comments on Rationality Quotes April 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 April 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 06 April 2012 03:03:53AM 1 point [-]

If you can, replace 4 with N for sufficiently large N.

If you can't, imagine a creature that evolved in a 4-dimensional universe. I find it unlikely that it would not be able to visualize 4 dimensions.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 April 2012 01:57:25PM 0 points [-]

There's a pretty serious gap between the idea of a person evolved to visualize four dimensions and it being capable of thoughts I cannot think. This might be defensible, but if so only in the context of certain thoughts, something like qualitative ones. But the original quote was inferring from the fact that not everyone can see all the colors to the idea that there are thoughts we cannot think. If 'colors I can't see' are the only kinds of things we can defend as thoughts that I cannot think, then the original quote is trivial.

So even if you can defend 4d visualizations as thoughts I cannot think, you'd have to extend your argument to something else.

But I have a question in return: how would the belief that there are thoughts you cannot think modify your anticipations? What would that look like?

Comment author: Strange7 12 April 2012 08:41:26AM 1 point [-]

By itself? Not much at all. The fun part is encountering another creature which can think those thoughts, then deducing the ability (and, being human, shortly thereafter finding some way to exploit it for personal gain) without being able to replicate the thoughts themselves.