I recognize the title could be more informative. At the same time I believe it says what is important.
I believe in a deity, I believe in mathematical entities in the same way.
The community of LessWrong (from whenceforth: LessWrong) is deeply interesting to me, appearing as a semi-organized atheist, reductionist community.
LessWrong seems very interested in promoting rationality, which I applaud. The effort does seem scattered, though, and this is the reason I post.
One has Eliezer's website with some interesting posts. The same of this community. The community links to some posts when you are coming for the first time into it, and you also have a filter for top posts. One has the blog. And recently, the center for modern rationality (in the same page as harrypoter fanfiction about rationality).
The point being there is no defined roadmap to go from AIC (average irrational chump to make an analogy to Game - which also seems to come up around quite a bit) to RA (again, rationality artist).
I write this post as to maybe generate a discussion on how the efforts could be concentrated and a new direction taken.
Should the creation of the Center for Modern Rationality envision this same concentration, this post may and should be disregard.
If it does not, then I leave it to your consideration.
Hang.
Ok, but here is your original reply:
And all your replies since have taken the form "the platonist might say". Can I suggest that you should defend the theory you actually believe in? At this point you seem to agree with me that theorems within some particular formal theory is not a good reason to say that numbers exist. What then do you mean by asserting the existence of the number 2? No more platonism, if you please, since you don't believe in it.
No, actually, I don't see how it could. If, by construction, I never, either in past or future, interact with any of the species or with anything that it has interacted with, then I don't see how I can get an empirically supported theory of their existence.
Ok, just use the past interaction then.
I haven't been able to come up with a full-fledged theory of what mathematics is about that I'm happy with. I can say some vague things, but there is no reason to burden you with their vagueness. I spoke from the perspective of platonism so that at least there would be a concrete theory of mathematical meaning on the table. I have no alternative concrete theory to offer in its place.
Nonetheless, a... (read more)