beoShaffer comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 October 2012 02:11AM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (305)
Tags: seq_epistemology causality reality reference

Comments (305)

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

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2012 05:49:27AM 1 point [-]

Koan 1:

"You say that a universe is a connected fabric of causes and effects. Well, that's a very Western viewpoint - that it's all about mechanistic, deterministic stuff. I agree that anything else is outside the realm of science, but it can still be real, you know. My cousin is psychic - if you draw a card from his deck of cards, he can tell you the name of your card before he looks at it. There's no mechanism for it - it's not a causal thing that scientists could study - he just does it. Same thing when I commune on a deep level with the entire universe in order to realize that my partner truly loves me. I agree that purely spiritual phenomena are outside the realm of causal processes, which can be scientifically understood, but I don't agree that they can't be real."

How would you reply?

Comment author: beoShaffer 12 October 2012 05:13:10AM 2 points [-]

There may or may not be intervening steps, but if your cousins predictions are accurate we can create causal models that either have predictions->card drawn or card drawn->predictions.

Comment author: AlexMennen 13 October 2012 06:44:32PM 1 point [-]

Or predictions <-- lurking variable --> card drawn.

Comment author: AnthonyC 12 October 2012 08:52:15PM 1 point [-]

Or Great Psychiator->Card drawn ^ Great Psychiator->predictions

Which might look the same to use here within the universe but is far less likely as a prior.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit