bambi comments on Underconstrained Abstractions - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 December 2008 01:58PM

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Comment author: bambi 04 December 2008 05:35:48PM 0 points [-]

When Robin wrote: "It is easy, way too easy, to generate new mechanisms, accounts, theories, and abstractions." he gets it exactly right (though it is not necessarily so easy to make *good* ones, that isn't really the point).

This should have been clear from the sequence on the "timeless universe" -- just as that interesting abstraction is not going to convince more than a few credulous fans of the *truth* of that abstraction, the *truth* of the magical super-FOOM is not going to convince anybody without more substantial support than an appeal to a very specific way of looking at "things in general", which few are going to share.

On a historical time frame, we can grant pretty much everything you suppose and still be left with a FOOM that "takes" a century (a mere eyeblink in comparison to everything else in history). If you want to frighten us sufficiently about a FOOM of shorter duration, you're going to have to get your hands dirtier and move from abstractions to specifics.