= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
NancyLebovitz comments on Open Thread - Aug 24 - Aug 30 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (318)
Sorry I don't follow. Please use baby steps for me.
The purpose of knowing about confirmation bias is to always keep in mind that you tend to overly favor your own preferred hypothesis, so you must adopt a detached perspective and try to consider all alternative explanations.
But in this case we are dealing with the rules of logic. Unless you're a follower of one of the many paraconsistent schools, there are no alternative explanations. The rules just work. It's not confirmation bias to favor an explanation based on the rules of logic.
Denying square circles a priori is not the same as denying black swans a priori: swans are real things in the real universe, and as such can have limitless variations. Swans that fall outside of their former definition force us to update the definition. A black swan is not a logical impossibility. Circles, on the other hand, are abstractions in our heads, and only have one form. Circles that fall outside of their definition are just not circles.
Going back to your original example: IF God is a logical impossibility, no instantiation of a God in the real universe will occur, because, again, nothing impossible happens. You don't need to bother examining the truth value of something that in principle can't occur, for the same reason geometrists don't go on field trips in search for square circles. You can trust logic; it simply won't happen.
I disagree.
You're implying that square circles are platonic concepts that aren't empirically verifiable. I would argue that they entirely are, just the task would be too difficult to be worth anyone's while. Just because something is in someone else's field of perception, doesn't make it any less real if it's a particular hypothesised shape, or a particular hypothesised colour. I could simply ask someone if they've seen a square circle and if everyone says no, can comfortably believe there aren't any till I perhaps see one, just as if I ask about black swans and if everyone says no, comfortable b eleive they don't exist unless I see one.
This is the assumption made in your last paragraph and I completely disagree. I've frequently found that things I thought were impossible happened. That kind of dogmatic certainty sounds awefully dangerous. While thinking about logic in that kind of self-consistent, but externally inconsistent sense seems to be absurd. One can describe a particular mythology that might make sense in a self-consistent way, but when related to other systems of belief isn't coherent.
There is a difference between things that are impossible per se and things we think are impossible. Logical impossibilities are impossible regardless of anyone's opinion. Good luck with that square circle survey.
Square circles exist in the Manhattan metric.
It is not really interesting that a circle can be X if you first change the definition of circle.
It's not arbitrary redefinition, though. like the old joke about "calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one"; it's actually a consistent geometry.
Yes, any real-world circle is imperfect and deviates from being a circle in the mathematical sense. Something that's square deviates a lot from the circle in the mathematical sense and is thus no real circle.