Decius comments on Logical Pinpointing - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 October 2012 03:11:59AM 3 points [-]

Meditation:

Humans need fantasy to be human.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.

"They're not the same at all!"

You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy.

  • Susan and Death, in Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

So far we've talked about two kinds of meaningfulness and two ways that sentences can refer; a way of comparing to physical things found by following pinned-down causal links, and logical reference by comparison to models pinned-down by axioms. Is there anything else that can be meaningfully talked about? Where would you find justice, or mercy?

Comment author: Decius 02 November 2012 03:24:54AM 3 points [-]

They exist in the same sense that numbers exist, or that meaningful existence exists, or that meaningfulness exists.

Once you grind the universe into powder, none of those things exists anymore.