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CuSithBell comments on Rationality Quotes May 2012 - Less Wrong
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And assuming an arbitrarily large world, as the area of the island increases, the ratio of shoreline to area decreases, no? Not sure what that means in terms of the metaphor, though...
Eventually the island's population can't fit all at once on the shore, and so not everyone can gather new wonder.
And when you discover modal realism, you realize that everything is known in some universe and there is no sea after all.
Then you realize that in almost all universes there is no life, and consequently, no land...
Now I'm confused, so I guess I'm out.
Modal realism says "all possible worlds are as real as the actual world" (Wikipedia). In different possible worlds there are different laws of physics, almost all of which don't allow for life. In some proportion of those where they do allow for life, there's no life anyway (it seems to be rare in our universe). In some proportion of universes with life, there is no sentient life...
Without sentient life, there's no knowledge, so no shore. No shore means no land.
Well, shoot.
Cf. Larry Niven's early short story "Bordered in Black".