bigjeff5 comments on Hand vs. Fingers - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 March 2008 12:36AM

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Comment author: bigjeff5 02 February 2011 12:56:28AM 0 points [-]

I'm no mathematician, but Godel's theorems seem to have some heavy constraints placed on them. I also don't see how this maps territory to the map, it still seems like a map of the territory. More like saying "under certain conditions, it's impossible to draw a better map."

I think an important thing to realize is that the map is never the territory. It is merely a description of the territory. Some maps more accurately portray the territory than others, but it doesn't make them any closer to actually being the territory. Even a map that perfectly describes the territory in every possible detail is still just a map, it is not the territory itself. The map is the map, the territory is the territory, the map describes the territory. There can be as many maps as you need, covering as much detail as you need for your given application, but there is still only ever one territory.

The same way, there is a concrete reason that mathematics works the way it does, else it wouldn't work the way it does, and since there is such a reason we should be able to find it. Godel's theorems are no reason to stop looking, though they may be a reason to look somewhere else.