Tom_McCabe2 comments on The Dilemma: Science or Bayes? - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 May 2008 08:16AM

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Comment author: Tom_McCabe2 13 May 2008 10:28:54PM 3 points [-]

"Of course I had more than just one reason for spending all that time posting about quantum physics. I like having lots of hidden motives, it's the closest I can ethically get to being a supervillain."

Your work on FAI is still pretty supervillain-esque to most SL0 and SL1 people. You are, essentially, talking about a human-engineered end to all of civilization.

"I wanted to present you with a nice, sharp dilemma between rejecting the scientific method, or embracing insanity. Why? I'll give you a hint: It's not just because I'm evil. If you would guess my motives here, think beyond the first obvious answer."

The obvious answer is that the scientific method is simply an imperfect approximation of ideal rationality, and it was developed before Bayes' Theorem was even proposed, so we should expect it to have some errors. So far as I know, it was never even defined mathematically. I haven't thought of any non-obvious answers yet.

"I don't believe you. I don't believe most scientists would make such huge mistakes."

It took *thirty years* between the original publication of Maxwell's laws (1865) and Einstein's discovery of their inconsistency with classical mechanics (~1895). It took another ten years before he published (1905). In the meantime, so far as I know, nobody else realized the fundamental incompatibility of the two main theories of classical physics.