Thanks - makes sense. My fault, I don't know how I missed that post... I love this blog!
Reason for downvotes please?
We really don't like that Yudkowsky guy.
More seriously, I think quotes in these threads are supposed to be from external sources, and he recently made a big post expressing this sentiment...
I'd say that is a fair answer. Without more context it’s hard to say exactly what Turing meant; he might have been referring to the different ways science and religion each handle causality. In science, causes are local in space and time -- perfectly modeled by a differential equation. In religion, causality is placed by fiat: a First Cause (boundary condition at the beginning of time) or final causes (teleology).
Another way of looking at the quote is to notice that physics especially concerns itself with continuous changes in space and time. Each infi...
"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."
Alan Turing, Alan Turing: the Enigma (Vintage edition 1992), p. 513
Explanation for the down votes please?
The discovery of truth is prevented most effectively, not by false appearances which mislead into error, nor directly by weakness of reasoning powers, but by pre-conceived opinion, by prejudice, which as a pseudo a priori stands in the path of truth and is then like a contrary wind driving a ship away from land, so that sail and rudder labour in vain.
"The 'law of causality' is obsolete and misleading. The principle 'same cause, same effect' is utterly otiose. As soon as the antecedents have been given sufficiently fully to enable the consequent to be calculated with some exactitude, the antecedents have become so complicated that it is very unlikely they will ever recur." - Bertrand Russell "On the Notion of Cause", 1913