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shminux comments on Mixed Reference: The Great Reductionist Project - Less Wrong
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Comments (353)
Sorry, EY is right, "define" is not a strong enough word. Taboo "correct" and all its synonyms, like "true" and "accurate".
This is somewhat better. What is "obtaining fact" but analyzing (=modeling) an experience?
Yes, given that experiences+models=reality, cucumbers are a subset of reality.
A personal favorite is: Achieves optimal-minimum "Surprising Experience" / "Models"(i.e. possible predictions consistent with the model) ratio.
That the same models achieve correlated / convergent such ratios across agents seems to be evidence that there is a unified something elsewhere that models can more accurately match, or less accurately match.
Note: I don't understand all of this discussion, so I'm not quite sure just how relevant or adequate this particular definition/reduction is.
That a fact obtains requires no analysis, modeling, or experiencing. For instance, if no thinking beings existed to analyze anything, then it would be a fact that there is no thinking, no analyzing, no modeling, no experiencing. Since there would still be facts of this sort, absent any analyzing or modeling by any being, facts cannot be reduced to experiences or analyses of experience.
You still aren't responding to my argument. You've conceded premise 1, but you haven't explained why you think premise 2 or 3 is even open to reasonable doubt, much less outright false.
This is a deductively valid argument (i.e., the truth of its premises renders its conclusion maximally probable). And it entails the falsehood of your assertion "Experience + models = reality" (i.e., it at a minimum entails the falsehood of ∀x(model(x) ∨ experience(x))). And all three of my premises are very plausible. So you need to give us some evidence for doubting at least one of my premises, or your view can be rejected right off the bat. (It doesn't hurt that defending your view will also help us understand what you mean by it, and why you think it better than the alternatives.)
This is a counterfactual. I'm happy to consider a model where this is true, as long as you concede that this is a model.
Sure, all counterfactuals are models. But there is a distinction between counterfactuals that model experiences, counterfactuals that model models, and counterfactuals that model physical objects. Certainly not all models are models of models, just as not all words denote words, and not all thoughts are about thoughts.
When we build a model in which no experiences or models exist, we find that there are still facts. In other words, a world can have facts without having experiences or models; neither experiencelessness nor modellessness forces or entails the total absence of states of affairs. If x and y are not equivalent — i.e., if they are not true in all the same models — then x and y cannot mean the same thing. So your suggestion that "obtaining fact" is identical to "analyzing (=modeling) an experience" is provably false. Facts, circumstances, states of affairs, events — none of these can be reduced to claims about models and experiences, even though we must use models and experiences in order to probe the meanings of words like 'fact,' 'circumstance,' 'state of affairs.' (For the same reason, 'fact' is not about words, even though 'fact' is a word and we must use words to argue about what facts are.)
Not sure who that "we" is, but I'm certainly not a part of that group.
Anyway, judging by the downvotes, people seem to be getting tired of this debate, so I am disengaging.
Are you saying that when you model what the Earth was like prior to the existence of the first sentient and reasoning beings, you find that your model is of oblivion, of a completely factless void in which there are no obtaining circumstances? You may need to get your reality-simulator repaired.
I haven't gotten any downvotes for this discussion. If you've been getting some, it's much more likely because you've refused to give any positive arguments for your assertion "experience + models = reality" than because people are 'tired of this debate.' If you started giving us reasons to accept that statement, you might see that change.