metaphysicist comments on Can infinite quantities exist? A philosophical approach - Less Wrong
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Comments (28)
I just found it curious: I've addressed typography issues in a blog posting, "Emphasis by Typography."
I have to say I'm surprised by your tone; like you're accusing me of some form of immorality for not being attentive to readers. This all strikes me as very curious. I read Hanson's blog and so have gotten attuned to status issues. I'm not plotting a revolution over font choice; I'm only curious about why people find Verdana objectionable just because other postings use a different font.
The argument concerns conceptual possibility, not empirical existence. If actually existing sets can consist of brutely distinguishable elements and of infinite elements, there's nothing to stop it conceptually from being both.
You have located a place for a counter-argument: supplying the conceptual basis. But it seems unlikely that a conceptual argument would successfully undermine brutely distinguishable infinite elements without undermining brutely distinguishable elements in general.
You can distinguish the cardinality of finite sets with brutely distinguishable points. That is, if a set contains 7 points, you can know there are seven different points, and that's all you can know about them.
Sorry for the perceived tone, it wasn't my intention to accuse you of anything immoral (although I think you aren't being much attentive to readers, but that is hardly immoral). I was mainly trying to say that violating the local aesthetic code against the disagreement of everybody who cares to voice their opinion is instrumentally bad. Even if you think that your style makes communication easier, the disagreement of others is a strong piece of evidence that it doesn't, at least with the LW audience.
As aesthetic preferences are usually difficult to explain or even describe, I probably cannot provide a deep reason why your style is unwelcome. Few particular things I find annoying:
Originally I thought that these "features" accidentally arose when you had copied the text from elsewhere. Now when you are defending the typography, I am curious whether you really have a reason for them all, especially no. 5.