philippe comments on Where Philosophy Meets Science - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 April 2008 09:21PM

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Comment author: philippe 13 April 2008 10:40:17PM 0 points [-]

So how does one avoid this basic error while formulating a good theory of nature ?

Optimistically, and very speculatively, I would like a good theory to, at least, formally suggest how a bunch of particles (or whatever concept we replace them with in the future) can come up with a good theory of themselves in the first place.

Or why not make this the starting ansatz such that one builds upon this very requirement in a way similar to how one builds a quantum field in a manifestly covariant way. Since infinite recursion seems to get in the way, maybe these good theories should incorporate a fundamental "unit of approximation" related to the maximal recursion depth or complexity cutoff.

Excuse my rambling.