Interesting, thank you. I guess our views are not that far apart. And I also
don't think that there is a meaningful sense in which some of these things are more real than others.
though if someone comes up with an interesting, accurate and fruitful meta-model of partial existence, I'd be happy to change my mind.
I don't think unicorns or ghosts exist to any degree, because they are not part of our best theory of the relevant domain.
Could it be because you are trying to apply them to a wrong domain? Would you agree that in a certain setting (a fantasy tale, a horror story) we can predict behavioral and visual features of the creatures inhabiting it with a fair degree of accuracy? Often more accurately than, say, a path and strength of a tropical storm being born in the Atlantic.
Would you agree that in a certain setting (a fantasy tale, a horror story) we can predict behavioral and visual features of the creatures inhabiting it with a fair degree of accuracy? Often more accurately than, say, a path and strength of a tropical storm being born in the Atlantic.
Yeah, but what we're using there is a theory of literary and mythological tropes. Those tropes certainly exist, and can be used to predict features of various books and movies. But I think it's misleading to characterize this as unicorns or ghosts existing. When people ordin...
What is something you used to believe, preferably something concrete with direct or implied predictions, that you now know was dead wrong. Was your belief rational given what you knew and could know back then, or was it irrational, and why?
Edit: I feel like some of these are getting a bit glib and political. Please try to explain what false assumptions or biases were underlying your beliefs - be introspective - this is LW after all.