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scav comments on A Request for Open Problems - Less Wrong
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Comments (104)
Can you even have a clearly defined problem in any field other than Mathematics, or one that doesn't reduce to a mathematical problem regardless of the field where it originated?
Some people like mathematics so much that they define it as encompassing all clearly defined problems. Some people like philosophy so much that they define it as encompassing all problems whatsoever. Both of these definitions are clearly wrong, and the product of affective death spirals.
You say that as if a problem can only belong to one field.
See Wikipedia's list for a few examples.
The distinction between clearly defined and otherwise is somewhat subjective. I have not heard anyone talking about the subject yet, so brought it up.
Since Rationality seems to be strongly related to Bayes' theorem, it makes some sense that a lot of problems could be presented in a fashion where we only have to answer a few questions about priors to understand which actions to take.
I don't know if this answers your question.
It's the best possible kind of answer to my question - a link to a load of interesting stuff - thanks!
I see where I went wrong, in missing out the entire physical universe as a source of questions that can be clearly stated but are about real things rather than mathematical descriptions of them.