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Slider 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: Slider 04 September 2014 04:33:10PM *  3 points [-]

But it covers only what it is able to say. Thus any attempt to be more expressive breaks it.

edit: actually the theory works just fine. It isn't even broken but it is a different theory. If I would had said that this was a theory of "amounts" this would have been clearly progress that should be welcomed. But what if in my pretheoretic sense I equivocate "integers" and "amounts" (as could be assumed if I can't fraction). Thus when wanting a better theory it's ambigous whether I want or don't want it to cover that kind of scenario.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 04 September 2014 10:53:48PM 3 points [-]

Exactly. If it acts like integers, then use integers. The above example, you tried to use integers despite the underlying phenomenon not acting like integers. That broke it.