amcknight comments on Mixed Reference: The Great Reductionist Project - Less Wrong

29 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 December 2012 12:26AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (353)
Tags: seq_epistemology

Comments (353)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: amcknight 07 December 2012 07:01:14AM 3 points [-]

where both physical references and logical references are to be described 'effectively' or 'formally', in computable or logical form.

Can anyone say a bit more about why physical references would need to be described 'effectively'/computably? Is this based on the assumption that the physical universe must be computable?

Comment author: MrMind 07 December 2012 05:25:57PM 0 points [-]

Can anyone say a bit more about why physical references would need to be described 'effectively'/computably?

I think because if they are described by an uncomputable procedure, one for example involving oracles or infinite resources, then they (with very high probability) would not be able to be computed by our brains.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 08 December 2012 04:21:16AM 2 points [-]

So? Use said oracles to upgrade our brains.

Comment author: amcknight 08 December 2012 09:24:12PM 0 points [-]

MrMind is talking about an "oracle" in the sense of a mathematical tool. Oracles in this sense are are well-defined things that can do stuff traditional computers can't.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 09 December 2012 12:03:08AM 1 point [-]

I'm perfectly aware what an oracle is. I was using it in the same sense.

Comment author: amcknight 08 December 2012 09:16:10PM 0 points [-]

This crossed my mind, but I thought there might be other deeper reasons.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit