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Nornagest comments on Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: MrMind 16 March 2015 08:13AM

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Comment author: Nornagest 16 March 2015 05:53:42PM *  6 points [-]

That's kind of a Hofstadter-esque question. I think the answer is "no", but the reason why depends on what meta-level you're looking at: if the label refers only to the object-level question, then it's straightforwardly true or false; but if you construe it as applying to the entire context of the question including its labeling, then it's possible to imagine a trick question that's transparent enough that labeling it as such exposes the trick and stops it from being tricky. It can be a self-fulfilling or a self-defeating prophecy.

Comment author: Lumifer 16 March 2015 06:05:33PM 0 points [-]

In other words, it's turtles all the way down :-)