MagnetoHydroDynamics comments on The Useful Idea of Truth - Less Wrong

77 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 October 2012 06:16PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 03 October 2012 06:19:12PM -1 points [-]

Would a powerful AI, from the "run_ai<enter>" is pressed on the command line till it knows practically everything ever give a significant probability to violation of conservation of energy?

Humans are really amazingly bad at thinking about physics, (Aristotle is a notable example, he practically formalized intuitive physics which are dead wrong,) but what if you aren't?

I am nearly certain there exists some multiverse branch where humans study the avian migration patterns of the wild hog, but I too am nearly certain there is no multiverse branch within this mutiversal causal closure where even one electron spontaneously appears out of nothing and then goes on its merry way.

I agree this is a different viewpoint than a purely epistemological one, and that any epistemological agent can only approximate the function (defun exists-in-mutiverse-p...), but if you want be stringent, physics is the way.

Furthemore it patternmaches against my concept of how Tegmark invented his eponymous hypotheses: finding a basic premise and wondering if it is neccesary. Do we really need brains to talk about meaningful hypotheses, or do we just need a big universe.

Comment author: Peterdjones 03 October 2012 07:02:32PM 0 points [-]

I don't see how that addresses my comment. A sentence is meaningful or not because of the laws of language, not the laws of physics.