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ialdabaoth comments on The Limits of Intelligence and Me: Domain Expertise - Less Wrong
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Comments (78)
Wave functions are complex, as are impedance values. (The former might be closer to "ontologically basic" than the latter)
However, I believe there are alternatives.
You are talking about maps -- about human minds finding it convenient to describe certain natural phenomena through complex numbers. I read the original claim as saying that complex numbers are part of the territory.
Are there square roots of -1 in nature?
Why do you think wave functions are part of the map but electric charge is part of the territory? (I'm assuming you agree with scav's claim that electric charge is an example of negative integers occurring in nature.)
Hmm... I don't have a good answer. My intuition is that integers are "simple enough" and, in particular, sufficiently unambiguous, to be part of the territory, but complex numbers are not. However even a tiny bit of reflection shows that my idea of "simple enough" is arbitrary.
I guess we've fallen into the "is mathematics real?" tar pit. Probably shouldn't thrash around too much :-)
Umm... I'm gonna punt this one.