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pianoforte611 comments on Robert Aumann on Judaism - Less Wrong Discussion
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Do you think that Aumann's statement can only be interpreted as six 24 hour days?
This is a very jarring dismissal of a very difficult to resolve problem, despite it being very old. Here are some maps that do not yield testable predictions:
-Other people exist
-Other people are conscious
-I was not created in the last minute with all of my current memories
Epistemology is much more than creating testable predictions.
No, it can also be interpreted in uselessly non-predictive ways.
I very much disagree.
Excuse me, but any sensible forms of those hypotheses do yield testable predictions -- unless you're confused about the meaning of words like "exist" and "conscious". Let's list things out:
Other people will exhibit object permanence, a consistency of state across observations. This is a simple prediction, and in fact, "other people exist" is the simplest hypothesis explaining it. Since "I am in the Matrix" is much more complex, it requires its own unique evidence to differentiate it from the simpler "other people exist".
Other people will behave as if they can introspect on internal experiences. Again, simple prediction (though actually reasonably complex: it requires me to have a theory-of-mind), but a prediction generated by a muuuuch simpler hypothesis than "Other people are p-zombies." In fact, if others are p-zombies and I'm not, then we've got a suspicious, weird uniqueness that would itself require explanation.
My memories will be consistent with present and future observations. And in fact, to be even more specific, the world will be consistent with my previous existence in ways that I don't possess memories matching-up to: I might find my keys somewhere in my apartment where I didn't remember leaving them, and then remember how I dropped them there yesterday night when very tired. Again, you could posit a Matrix Lord or a malevolent deity who's deliberately faking everything you experience, but then you just need an explanation for that which still accords with no Matrix-y stuff happening (like the same black cat walking past you twice, in the same direction, in two minutes).
Please leave the philosophy-woo back in undergrad alongside your copy of Descartes' Meditations.
From your last line, I think its unlikely that unlikely that this is going to be productive. It sounds like you think that epistemology is simply erudite nonsense and philosophers need to just accept probably Bayesianism or the scientific method or something. I think this is quite disappointing, mathematicians could have similarly dismissed attempts to ground calculus in something other than loose arguments of the form "well it works what more do you want" but we would have a much less rich and stable field as a result. But if this is a mischaracterization of your view of epistemology then please let me know.
Much of it is, yes.
This would require that "Bayesianism" or "the scientific method" or "or something" actually be a full, formalized solution to How to Reason Inductively. We currently possess no such solution; this does not, by any means, mean that no such solution can exist and we all have to resort to throwing intuitions at each-other or adopt broad skepticism about the existence and contents of reality.
What I recommend is to move past the trivialities, having accepted that the eventual solution will be abductive (in the sense required to dismiss skepticism about the external world or the consciousness of others as silly, which it is), and set to work on the actual details and formalizations, which are of course where all the hard work remains to be done.
(By the way, the reference to philosophy-woo is because professional epistemologists tend not to be radical skeptics. The idea that there just isn't an external reality is mainly only taken seriously by undergrads first learning the subject.)