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Mizue comments on Consistent extrapolated beliefs about math? - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: cousin_it 04 September 2014 11:32AM

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Comment author: Mizue 04 September 2014 02:26:31PM *  2 points [-]

I think (it's not my post) that it's supposed to be evidence that numbers are real because the set of all possible minds is vast. Because there are so many possible minds, it's unlikely that a mind chosen randomly from that set would have similar intuitions about numbers to mine. It's even more unlikely that a third mind would also have those intuitions. Yet, for some reason, this vastly unlikely thing happens anyway. This implies that there is some reason which is responsible for all the minds feeling the same way. One such reason would be "the intuition is correct, and the minds have correctly figured it out".

(Other possible reasons could be "all the minds are biased in the same way" or some other reason unrelated to truth of the idea, but nobody's saying it's proof, it's just evidence.)

Comment author: piero 07 September 2014 03:21:32PM *  2 points [-]

Though the number of possible minds is vast, I think the likelihood of two minds sharing an intuitive concept of number is high, because minds (or perhaps I should say consciousnesses) process information sequentially. Perhaps it is akin to the shared perception of rhythm, which is not limited to human minds. I suppose you have already seen it, but this video is amazing: the dancing cockattoo.