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Kaj_Sotala comments on Open Thread, November 8 - 14, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: witzvo 08 November 2013 08:13PM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 09 November 2013 07:26:11AM 10 points [-]

Doesn't seem very strange to me. For any (realistic) situation, there are any number of irrelevant false beliefs that you could have while still managing to predict the result correctly. Or even relevant false beliefs that nonetheless produced the right prediction: e.g. a tribe that believed in spirits might believe that sexual intercourse attracted a disembodied spirit into a woman's body and caused it to grow a new body for itself, which would be false but still lead to the correct prediction of (intercourse -> pregnancy).