Tyrrell_McAllister comments on No Universally Compelling Arguments in Math or Science - Less Wrong

30 Post author: ChrisHallquist 05 November 2013 03:32AM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 05 November 2013 08:11:22PM 4 points [-]

Except that "sufficiently sane/intelligent" here just means, it seems, "implements modus ponens, has inductive priors, etc."

"Sufficiently sane/intelligent" means something like, "Has a sufficient tendency to form true inferences from a sufficiently wide variety of bodies of evidences."

Now, we believe that modus ponens yields true inferences. We also believe that a tendency to make inferences contrary to modus ponens will cause a tendency to make false inferences. From this you can infer that we believe that a sufficiently sane/intelligent agent will implement modus ponens.

But the truth of this inference about our beliefs does not mean that "sufficiently sane/intelligent" is defined to mean "implements modus ponens".

In particular, our definition of "sufficiently sane/intelligent" implies that, if A is a sufficiently sane/intelligent agent who lives in an impossible possible world that does not implement modus ponens, then A does not implement modus ponens.