caiuscamargarus comments on Rationality Quotes - April 2009 - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 April 2009 01:26AM

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Comment author: caiuscamargarus 19 April 2009 12:01:05AM *  12 points [-]

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?

Elizabeth Anscombe: I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Well what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?

Comment author: jscn 19 April 2009 01:18:10AM 2 points [-]

If you don't know about relative motion and inertia, then it does seem like the sun moves around the earth (even when you know, it still looks that way). Prior to the "Copernican" revolution, it was generally thought that our sense experience of everyday life was sufficient to expose the truth to us. Those two things combined make a major roadblock in establishing that the earth rotates.

Now we can fully appreciate that it doesn't even make sense to make an absolute statement either way. If earth is taken to be stationary, then the sun does move around it (interestingly, this was Tycho Brahe's solution to the problem of shifting to a helio-centric view.)

Comment author: gwern 23 November 2010 08:55:00PM 0 points [-]

There's a better version of this discussion - Anscombe's reply, for example, is worth quoting: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p1/a_failure_to_evaluate_returnontime_fallacy/2l29?c=1