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drnickbone comments on You only need faith in two things - Less Wrong Discussion

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 March 2013 11:45PM

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Comment author: drnickbone 12 March 2013 07:34:29PM 0 points [-]

Well, supposing that a large ordinal exists is equivalent to supposing a form of Platonism about mathematics (that a colossal infinity of other objects exist). So that is quite a large statement of faith!

All maths really needs is for a large enough ordinal to be logically possible, in that it is not self-contradictory to suppose that a large ordinal exists. That's a much weaker statement of faith. Or it can be backed by an inductive argument in the way Eliezer suggests.