But how does not this story about 2+2=3 apply too to the belief in god for example? If you are raised in the right circumstances, you will end up with this belief you think its unconditional, even though it was conditonal on your circumstances. Arent ultimately all believes entangled with reality by virtue of believes being encoded in the brain which is a physical system entangled with reality? to not fall in a fallacy of gray, we can conceede that some ways of entanglement are better than others, in that they lead to mora accurate believes. Hmmm
In any case, in your story of 2+2=3, you have just learned a new definition of the symbols, not that 2+2=3 by our symbols? that would seem to require learning belief in different logical axioms? Would you agree with that?
So if you cannot conceive of a situation where 2+2 actually equalled 3, then you cant conceive of a situation where you would learn the believe 2+2=3, with our semantics, using a correct believe learning method?
It seems to me that the fundamental logical truths are only self consistent, i.e. only facts about our brains, which we use to then fit models to the world. There’s a lot of math that isnt used for that and doesn’t fit the world, but still follows self consistent rules. These believes dont seem to need to be entangled to reality except in the trivial sense of being part of reality. They are like the building blocks of our minds, that when analyzed deeply just say stuff about our own minds, and so dont need external empirical test.
It’s like, to even begin making models of the world, you need something, some mental substance to shape. That’s there before any evidence. Thats logic, and I guess a Bayesian prior also satisfies this.
I think this may be hinting too at the idea that there may be many mental structures that are equally good maps of reality*, and so believes about which of these to use cant really be about empirical evidence in the usual sense.
*in the sense or predictive power. If we weigh them by other metrics, then maybe theres other types of “evidence” that can select for one or the other, e.g. social acceptance/utility.
one can also start to realize, as in the example of hofstadter, or of teaching a rock, that the foundamental believes are just the automatic dynamics of thoughts, so believeing something completely different would just be changing those dynamics, which would be equivalent changing the “meaning” of things, and so i dont think there’s any sense in which “2+2=3″ could be true that doesnt involve redefining things
But how does not this story about 2+2=3 apply too to the belief in god for example? If you are raised in the right circumstances, you will end up with this belief you think its unconditional, even though it was conditonal on your circumstances. Arent ultimately all believes entangled with reality by virtue of believes being encoded in the brain which is a physical system entangled with reality? to not fall in a fallacy of gray, we can conceede that some ways of entanglement are better than others, in that they lead to mora accurate believes. Hmmm
In any case, in your story of 2+2=3, you have just learned a new definition of the symbols, not that 2+2=3 by our symbols? that would seem to require learning belief in different logical axioms? Would you agree with that?
So if you cannot conceive of a situation where 2+2 actually equalled 3, then you cant conceive of a situation where you would learn the believe 2+2=3, with our semantics, using a correct believe learning method?
It seems to me that the fundamental logical truths are only self consistent, i.e. only facts about our brains, which we use to then fit models to the world. There’s a lot of math that isnt used for that and doesn’t fit the world, but still follows self consistent rules. These believes dont seem to need to be entangled to reality except in the trivial sense of being part of reality. They are like the building blocks of our minds, that when analyzed deeply just say stuff about our own minds, and so dont need external empirical test.
It’s like, to even begin making models of the world, you need something, some mental substance to shape. That’s there before any evidence. Thats logic, and I guess a Bayesian prior also satisfies this.
I think this may be hinting too at the idea that there may be many mental structures that are equally good maps of reality*, and so believes about which of these to use cant really be about empirical evidence in the usual sense.
*in the sense or predictive power. If we weigh them by other metrics, then maybe theres other types of “evidence” that can select for one or the other, e.g. social acceptance/utility.
one can also start to realize, as in the example of hofstadter, or of teaching a rock, that the foundamental believes are just the automatic dynamics of thoughts, so believeing something completely different would just be changing those dynamics, which would be equivalent changing the “meaning” of things, and so i dont think there’s any sense in which “2+2=3″ could be true that doesnt involve redefining things