Deutsch essentially thinks that humans are what I think he called at one point “universal knowledge generators”. I confess that I don’t fully understand his argument for this claim. It seemed to be something like the idea that we can in principle run a universal Turing machine. He does apparently discuss this idea more in his book The Beginning of Infinity, but I haven’t read it yet.
What would you think of a loose convention to not say one hasn’t learned about a specific thing yet?
Saying that I haven’t read something yet makes me more likely to think others think I am more likely to read it than if I hadn’t said “yet”. But that prematurely gives me some of the prestige that makes me want to read it in the first place, making it less likely I will.
That might make sense. In this particular context, I do intend to read it eventually. But some of Deutsch’s less insightful comments and the whole Popperclipping episode here has made me less inclined to do so.
Deutsch essentially thinks that humans are what I think he called at one point “universal knowledge generators”. I confess that I don’t fully understand his argument for this claim. It seemed to be something like the idea that we can in principle run a universal Turing machine. He does apparently discuss this idea more in his book The Beginning of Infinity, but I haven’t read it yet.
What would you think of a loose convention to not say one hasn’t learned about a specific thing yet?
Saying that I haven’t read something yet makes me more likely to think others think I am more likely to read it than if I hadn’t said “yet”. But that prematurely gives me some of the prestige that makes me want to read it in the first place, making it less likely I will.
That might make sense. In this particular context, I do intend to read it eventually. But some of Deutsch’s less insightful comments and the whole Popperclipping episode here has made me less inclined to do so.
(You might be thinking of http://lesswrong.com/lw/z8/image_vs_impact_can_public_commitment_be/ )