AlexMennen comments on Probabilistic Löb theorem - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 26 April 2013 06:45PM

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Comment author: AlexMennen 27 April 2013 08:26:46PM 1 point [-]

And yet F is not only false, the system can disprove it!

Maybe this would be obvious if I knew anything about logic, but how do you know the system is consistent?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 28 April 2013 07:35:01AM 0 points [-]

We don't - generally we build systems where we can show "system X is consistent iff Peano Arithmetic is consistent". And we assume that PA is consistent (or we panic).

Comment author: AlexMennen 29 April 2013 01:33:57AM 1 point [-]

Sorry my phrasing was bad; I actually do know that much about logic. But how do you know that this system is consistent iff Peano Arithmetic is consistent?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 29 April 2013 07:11:15AM 0 points [-]

We don't have that system yet! Just that that is what we generally do with the systems we have.

Comment author: hairyfigment 28 April 2013 03:52:31PM *  -1 points [-]

The result linked at the beginning shows that there exists, in principle, a coherent probability distribution with certain properties. Edit: in particular, it assigns probability 0 to F or any other contradiction. And while it doesn't always (ever?) know the exact probability it assigns, it does know that P(F)<1-a for any a<1. That statement itself has probability 1. Therefore the part about violating the probabilistic Lob's Theorem clearly holds.

I can't tell at a glance if the distribution satisfies derivation principle #3, but it certainly satisfies #1.