srn347 comments on Second-Order Logic: The Controversy - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 January 2013 07:51PM

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

Comments (188)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 04 January 2013 10:43:08PM *  16 points [-]

One of the participants in this dialogue seems too concerned with pinning down models uniquely and also seems too convinced he knows what model he's in. Suppose we live in a simulation which is being run by superbeings who have access to oracles that can tell them when Turing machines are attempting to find contradictions in PA. Whenever they detect that something in the simulation is attempting to find contradictions in PA, that part of the simulation mysteriously stops working after the billionth or trillionth step or something. Then running such Turing machines can't tell us whether we live in a universe where PA is consistent or not.

I also wish both participants in the dialogue would take ultrafinitism more seriously. It is not as wacky as it sounds, and it seems like a good idea to be conservative about such things when designing AI.

Edit: Here is an ultrafinitist fable that might be useful or at least amusing, from the link.

I have seen some ultrafinitists go so far as to challenge the existence of 2^100 as a natural number, in the sense of there being a series of 'points' of that length. There is the obvious 'draw the line' objection, asking where in 2^1, 2^2, 2^3, … , 2^100 do we stop having 'Platonistic reality'? Here this … is totally innocent, in that it can be easily be replaced by 100 items (names) separated by commas. I raised just this objection with the (extreme) ultrafinitist Yesenin-Volpin during a lecture of his.

He asked me to be more specific. I then proceeded to start with 2^1 and asked him whether this is 'real' or something to that effect. He virtually immediately said yes. Then I asked about 2^2, and he again said yes, but with a perceptible delay. Then 2^3, and yes, but with more delay. This continued for a couple of more times, till it was obvious how he was handling this objection. Sure, he was prepared to always answer yes, but he was going to take 2^100 times as long to answer yes to 2^100 then he would to answering 2^1. There is no way that I could get very far with this.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 January 2013 11:07:14PM 0 points [-]

Alternatively, one could start by asking whether 2^50 is a real number or not, if yes go up to 2^75, if no go to 2^25, and in up to 7 steps find a real number that, when doubled, ceases to be a real number. There may be impractical or even noncomputable numbers, but continuity holds that doubling a real number always yields a real number.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 04 January 2013 11:09:38PM 5 points [-]

I think the point of the fable is that Yesenin-Volpin was counting to each number in his head before declaring whether it was 'real' or not, so if you asked him whether 2^50 was 'real' he'd just be quiet for a really really long time.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 January 2013 11:13:30PM *  3 points [-]

But wouldn't that disprove ultrafinitism? All finite numbers, even 3^^^3, can be counted to (in the absence of any time limit, such as a lifespan), there's just no human who really wants to.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 04 January 2013 11:18:51PM 11 points [-]

All finite numbers, even 3^^^3, can be counted to

As I understand it, this is precisely the kind of statement that ultrafinitists do not believe.

Comment author: MrMind 08 January 2013 01:45:30PM 0 points [-]

If that's true, then Yesenin-Volpin was just playin the role of a Turing machine trying to determine if a certain program halts (the program that counts from 0 to the input). If 3^^^3 (say) for a finitist doesn't exists, then s/he really has a different concept of number than you have (for example, they are not axiomatized by the Peano Arithmetic). It's fun to observe that ultrafinitism is axiomatic: if it's a coherent point of view, it cannot prove that a certain number doesn't exists, only assume it. I also suspect (but finite model theory is not my field at all) that they have an 'inner' model that mimics standard natural numbers...

Comment author: Larks 04 January 2013 11:19:59PM 5 points [-]

Well, that's what the anti-ultrafinitists say. It is precisely the contention of the ultrafinitists that you couldn't "count to 3^^^3", whatever that might mean.

Comment author: SecondWind 05 January 2013 02:55:47AM 0 points [-]

Hmm.

So, it's not sufficient to define a set of steps that determine a number... it must be possible to execute them? That's a rather pragmatic approach. Albeit it one you'd have to keep updating if our power to compute and comprehend lengthier series of steps grows faster than you predict.

Comment author: Larks 05 January 2013 02:01:54PM 0 points [-]

No, ultrafinitism is not a doctrine about our practical counting capacities. Ultrafinitism holds that you may not have actually denoted a number by '3^^^3', because there is no such number.

Comment author: Peterdjones 05 January 2013 02:13:34PM 3 points [-]

Utlrafrinitists tend no to specfify the highest number, to prevent people adding one to it.

Comment author: Larks 05 January 2013 09:31:31PM 2 points [-]

Hence "may not"

Comment author: wuncidunci 05 January 2013 02:57:53AM *  0 points [-]

I would have done the following if I had been asked that: calculate which numbers I would have time to count up to before I was thrown out/got bored/died/earth ended/universe ran out of negentropy. I would probably have to answer I don't know, or I think X is a number for some of them, but it's still an answer, and until recently people could not say wether "the smallest n>2 such that there are integers a,b,c satisfying a^n + b^n = c^n" was a number or not.

I'm not advocating any kind of finitism, but I agree that the position should be taken seriously.