anonymous1 comments on Second-Order Logic: The Controversy - LessWrong

24 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 January 2013 07:51PM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 04 January 2013 10:43:08PM *  16 points [-]

One of the participants in this dialogue seems too concerned with pinning down models uniquely and also seems too convinced he knows what model he's in. Suppose we live in a simulation which is being run by superbeings who have access to oracles that can tell them when Turing machines are attempting to find contradictions in PA. Whenever they detect that something in the simulation is attempting to find contradictions in PA, that part of the simulation mysteriously stops working after the billionth or trillionth step or something. Then running such Turing machines can't tell us whether we live in a universe where PA is consistent or not.

I also wish both participants in the dialogue would take ultrafinitism more seriously. It is not as wacky as it sounds, and it seems like a good idea to be conservative about such things when designing AI.

Edit: Here is an ultrafinitist fable that might be useful or at least amusing, from the link.

I have seen some ultrafinitists go so far as to challenge the existence of 2^100 as a natural number, in the sense of there being a series of 'points' of that length. There is the obvious 'draw the line' objection, asking where in 2^1, 2^2, 2^3, … , 2^100 do we stop having 'Platonistic reality'? Here this … is totally innocent, in that it can be easily be replaced by 100 items (names) separated by commas. I raised just this objection with the (extreme) ultrafinitist Yesenin-Volpin during a lecture of his.

He asked me to be more specific. I then proceeded to start with 2^1 and asked him whether this is 'real' or something to that effect. He virtually immediately said yes. Then I asked about 2^2, and he again said yes, but with a perceptible delay. Then 2^3, and yes, but with more delay. This continued for a couple of more times, till it was obvious how he was handling this objection. Sure, he was prepared to always answer yes, but he was going to take 2^100 times as long to answer yes to 2^100 then he would to answering 2^1. There is no way that I could get very far with this.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 January 2013 08:52:54PM 1 point [-]

I like your proposal, but why not just standard finitism? What is your objection to primitive recursive arithmetic?

As a side note, I personally consider a theory "safe" if it fits with my intuitions and can be proved consistent using primitive recursive arithmetic and transfinite induction up to an ordinal I can picture. So I think of Peano arithmetic as safe, since I can picture epsilon-zero.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 05 January 2013 09:54:11PM 1 point [-]

This isn't my objection personally, but a sufficiently ultra finitist rejects the principle of induction.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 January 2013 01:56:59PM 3 points [-]

I think it's more that an ultrafinitist claims not to know that successor is a total function - you could still induct for as long as succession lasts. Though this is me guessing, not something I've read.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 January 2013 11:42:21PM *  0 points [-]

Either that, or they claim that certain numbers, such as 3^^^3, cannot be reached by any number of iterations of the successor function starting from 0. It's disprovable, but without induction or cut it's too long a proof for any computer in the universe to do in a finite human lifespan, or even the earth's lifespan.