Peterdjones comments on Logical Pinpointing - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 November 2012 03:33PM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 01 November 2012 05:45:09PM 24 points [-]

"- try pondering this one. Why does 2 + 2 come out the same way each time? Never mind the question of why the laws of physics are stable - why is logic stable? Of course I can't imagine it being any other way, but that's not an explanation."

Nothing in the process described, of pinpointing the natural numbers, makes any reference to time. That is why it is temporally stable: not because it has an ongoing existence which is mysteriously unaffected by the passage of time, but because time has no connection with it. Whenever you look at it, it's the same, identical thing, not a later, miraculously preserved version of the thing.

Comment author: Peterdjones 01 November 2012 05:58:51PM *  4 points [-]

I couldn't agree more. The timelessness of maths should be read negatively, as indepence of anything else, not as dependence on a timeless realm.