cousin_it comments on Think Like Reality - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 May 2007 06:36AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 08 September 2015 02:36:26PM *  0 points [-]

It's interesting how we use the word "model" to mean two different, perhaps even opposite things. In this post we have "models" describing "reality", and in logic we have "theories" describing "models".

For some reason it felt like a big insight to me to realize that computers aren't identical to any particular piece of math, but rather are a model of that math, which can also be studied with other math. Any given piece of computer-related math might ignore some properties of computers that another formalism would bring to the forefront.