Academian comments on Second-Order Logic: The Controversy - Less Wrong
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Comments (188)
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.
For what it's worth, I'm an ultrafinitist. Since 2005, at least as far as I've been able to tell.
How long do you expect to stay an ultrafinitist?
Until I'm destroyed, of course!
... but since Qiaochu asked that we take ultrafinitism seriously, I'll give a serious answer: something else will probably replace ultrafinitism as my preferred (maximum a posteriori) view of math and the world within 20 years or so. That is, I expect to determine that the question of whether ultrafinitism is true is not quite the right question to be asking, and have a better question by then, with a different best guess at the answer... just because similar changes of perspective have happened to me several times already in my life.
Is that because 2005 is as far from the present time as you dare to go?