Yes we know the character of the world and so know that the apple will fall.
Okay, so the world has a character. Lets take all the facts about the character of the world together; this is what I'm calling 'natural laws'. The world obeys natural law in the sense that the world obeys its own character: the character of the world determines how things go. Does that sound right to you?
Yes, it sound right. Tried to reread the thread on whether there is more than terminology confusion going on. To me it's not obvious that there is a contraposition between will and determinism. And I am guessing what kind of silliness is employed to get to that end result. It seems like a "one and only one can win" situation is constructed but I can describe the same situation so that both win.
I was saying that you being told your character (correctly) is not dangerous or limiting. It means that you have a character and it's harder to pretend as ...
ErinFlight said:
Thinking about it, I realized that this might be a common concern. There are probably plenty of people who've looked at various more-or-less technical or jargony Less Wrong posts, tried understanding them, and then given up (without posting a comment explaining their confusion).
So I figured that it might be good to have a thread where you can ask for explanations for any Less Wrong post that you didn't understand and would like to, but don't want to directly comment on for any reason (e.g. because you're feeling embarassed, because the post is too old to attract much traffic, etc.). In the spirit of various Stupid Questions threads, you're explicitly encouraged to ask even for the kinds of explanations that you feel you "should" get even yourself, or where you feel like you could get it if you just put in the effort (but then never did).
You can ask to have some specific confusing term or analogy explained, or to get the main content of a post briefly summarized in plain English and without jargon, or anything else. (Of course, there are some posts that simply cannot be explained in non-technical terms, such as the ones in the Quantum Mechanics sequence.) And of course, you're encouraged to provide explanations to others!