xrchz comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong

63 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 January 2007 03:46AM

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Comment author: xrchz 02 November 2009 09:08:50PM 0 points [-]

I tentatively believe in real numbers and differential equations because physics requires (though I also hold out hope that e.g. holographic physics or some other discrete view may enable me to go digital again). However, I don't believe that the real numbers in physics are really made of Dedekind cuts, or any other sort of infinite set.

Shouldn't you add probability theory to the list [physics, differential equations]? Only because probabilities are usually taken to be real numbers. I'm curious what you think of real numbers... how would you construct them? I guess it must be some way that looks a limit of finite processes operating on finite sets, right?