RolfAndreassen comments on "What Is Wrong With Our Thoughts" - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 May 2009 07:24AM

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Comment author: RolfAndreassen 27 May 2009 03:57:57PM 0 points [-]

Again, it does seem observable that nobody has explained why three is prime and four isn't. (I'm not sure you can actually use 'why' in an intelligible way here; possibly I'm being confused by non-mathematical language applied to math.) It's not an observation I would expect anyone to care about, and possibly it may be the equivalent of nobody having seen something invisible; but it does seem to make a statement that could in principle have gone the other way.

Comment author: thomblake 27 May 2009 04:29:05PM 0 points [-]

I agree that I'm not sure how you're intending to use 'why' here, and I'm pretty sure there's a good answer for any particular meaning.

To answer the question in a possibly unsatisfactory way, 3 is prime because it is a natural number which has exactly two distinct natural number factors, whereas 4 is not prime because it has more than two distinct natural number factors.