Nick_Tarleton comments on Possibility and Could-ness - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 June 2008 04:38AM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 20 June 2008 09:49:00PM 0 points [-]

@constant: regardless of the label, you still have 2 sets of things, those which it is possible to label fizzbin (following the rules) and those which it is not. Possibility is still there.

No, there are just things that are labeled fizzbin, and those that aren't. The algorithm is deterministic.

The base case might be something hardwired into us, but then that would mean that the thing that is hardwired into us is what possibility really is, and that the sensation of possibility that arises from the search algorithm is just something that depends on our primitive notion of possibility.

Um, if you want to define it that way, OK, but I think you're just confusing yourself here.