DSimon comments on The Useful Idea of Truth - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (513)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 October 2012 06:32:45AM 1 point [-]

Taboo "theoretically possible".

Comment author: DSimon 03 October 2012 07:21:45PM 0 points [-]

Hm, how about: "[...] of any observer which our best current theory of how minds work says could exist".

So for example, a statement along the lines of "a ghost watches and sees whether or not Mars continues to exist when it passes behind the Sun from Earth's perspective" would have been meaningful a long time ago, but is not meaningful for people today who know a little about brains.

This also means that a proposition may be meaningful only because the proposer is ignorant.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 04 October 2012 02:12:54AM 1 point [-]

Hm, how about: "[...] of any observer which our best current theory of how minds work says could exist".

Taboo "could". Basically, counter-factual surgery is a lot trickier than you seem to think.