Open Thread, May 11 - May 17, 2015

Gondolinian

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

That just pushes the question back a step. Why can any entity learn?

Why can any entity learn?

A more useful question to ask would be "how do entities, in fact, learn?" This avoids the trite answer, "because if they didn't, we wouldn't be asking the question".

0Lumifer11y

I think if we follows this chain of questions, what we'll find at the end (except for turtles, of course) is the question "Why is the universe stable/regular instead of utterly chaotic?" A similar question is "Why does the universe even have negentropy?" I don't know any answer to these questions except for "That's what our universe is".

2tim11y

In the spirit of Lumifer's comment, anything we would consider an entity would have to be able to learn or we wouldn't be considering it at all.

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Open Thread, May 11 - May 17, 2015

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Open Thread, May 11 - May 17, 2015

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