Peterdjones comments on Stuff That Makes Stuff Happen - Less Wrong

51 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 October 2012 10:49AM

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Comment author: Peterdjones 25 October 2012 08:29:25AM 0 points [-]

What has that to do with mathemmatica truth? You might as well say that if someone follows the same recipe there e is a significant chance that the same dish will be produced. Inasmuch as you are takling about someting that can haphazardly fail, you are not talking about mathematical truth.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 October 2012 12:35:03AM 0 points [-]

I can predict what someone else will conclude, without any causal relationship, in the conventional sense, between us.

Comment author: CCC 26 October 2012 07:42:56AM 0 points [-]

Your prediction is a prediction of what someone else will conclude, given a set of initial conditions (the mathematical problem) and a set of rules to apply to these conditions. The conclusion that you arrive at is a causal descendant of the problem and the rules of mathematics; the conclusion that the other person arrives at is a causal descendant of the same initial problem and the same rules.

That's the causal link.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 October 2012 11:02:35PM 0 points [-]

That's my point. Specifically, that one should have nodes in one's causal diagram for mathematical truths, what you called "rules of mathematics".

Comment author: CCC 28 October 2012 02:26:36PM -1 points [-]

Surely the node should be "person X was taught basic mathematics", and not mathematics itself?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 November 2012 09:50:15PM 1 point [-]

The point of having the node is to have a common cause of person X's beliefs about mathematics and person Y's beliefs about mathematics that explains why these two beliefs are correlated even if both discovered said mathematics interdependently.

Comment author: Peterdjones 26 October 2012 01:05:30AM 0 points [-]

What has that to do with any causal powers of mathematical truth?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 October 2012 01:08:49AM 0 points [-]

If you what your causal graph to have the property I quoted here, you need to add nodes for mathematical truths.

Comment author: Peterdjones 26 October 2012 01:19:36AM 0 points [-]

Two people can arrive at the same solution to a crossword, but that does not mean there is a Cruciverbial Truth that has causal powers.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 26 October 2012 02:32:52AM *  0 points [-]

Yes it does. In this case said truth even has a physical manifestation, i.e., as the crossword-writer's solution as it exists in some combination of his head and his notes which is causal to the form of the crossword the solver sees.

Comment author: Peterdjones 26 October 2012 08:01:47AM -1 points [-]

It only has a physical manifestation. Cruciverbial Truth only summarises what could have been arrived at by a massively fine-grained examinination of the crossword-solver's neurology. It doesn't have causal powers of its own. Its redundant in relation to physics.