It also fails in the case where the strangest thing that’s true is an infinite number of monkeys dressed as Hitler. Then adding one doesn’t change it.
More to the point, the comparison is more about typical fiction, rather than ad hoc fictional scenarios. There are very few fictional works with monkeys dressed as Hitler.
Indeed, I posted this quote partially out of annoyance at a certain type of analysis I kept seeing in the MoR threads. Namely, person X benefited from the way event Y turned out; therefore, person X was behind event Y. After all, thinking like this about real life will quickly turn one into a tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.
Yes but in real life the major players don’t have the ability to time travel, read minds, become invisible, manipulate probability etcetera, these make complex plans far more plausible than they would be in the real world. (That and conservation of detail.)
In real life the major players are immune to mindreading, can communicate securely and instantaneously worldwide, and have tens of thousands of people working under them. You are, ironically, overlooking the strangeness of reality.
Conservation of detail may be a valid argument though.
Yes, I was referring to the theories that Dumbledore sabotaged Snape’s relationship with Lilly so that the boy-who-lived (who hadn’t even been born then) would have the experience of being bullied by his potions master.
Depends on the infinity. Ordinal infinities change when you add one to them.
If we’re restricting ourselves to actual published fiction, I present Cory Doctorow’s Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The protagonist’s parents are a mountain and a washing machine, it gets weirder from there, and the whole thing is played completely straight.
I was originally going to post that one, but decided to go with Chesterton’s version since it better explains what is meant. (At the expense of loosing some of the snappiness.)
G. K. Chesterton
Zach Wiener’s elegant disproof:
(Although to be fair, it’s possible that the disproof fails because “think of the strangest thing that’s true” is impossible for a human brain.)
It also fails in the case where the strangest thing that’s true is an infinite number of monkeys dressed as Hitler. Then adding one doesn’t change it.
More to the point, the comparison is more about typical fiction, rather than ad hoc fictional scenarios. There are very few fictional works with monkeys dressed as Hitler.
Indeed, I posted this quote partially out of annoyance at a certain type of analysis I kept seeing in the MoR threads. Namely, person X benefited from the way event Y turned out; therefore, person X was behind event Y. After all, thinking like this about real life will quickly turn one into a tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.
Yes but in real life the major players don’t have the ability to time travel, read minds, become invisible, manipulate probability etcetera, these make complex plans far more plausible than they would be in the real world. (That and conservation of detail.)
In real life the major players are immune to mindreading, can communicate securely and instantaneously worldwide, and have tens of thousands of people working under them. You are, ironically, overlooking the strangeness of reality.
Conservation of detail may be a valid argument though.
Conservation of detail is one of the memetic hazards of reading too much fiction.
Which is exactly what MoR tells us to do to analyze it, is it not?
That’s still not a reason for assuming everyone is running perfect gambit roulettes.
You can say that with a straight face after the last few chapters of plotting?
Yes, I was referring to the theories that Dumbledore sabotaged Snape’s relationship with Lilly so that the boy-who-lived (who hadn’t even been born then) would have the experience of being bullied by his potions master.
Depends on the infinity. Ordinal infinities change when you add one to them.
If we’re restricting ourselves to actual published fiction, I present Cory Doctorow’s Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. The protagonist’s parents are a mountain and a washing machine, it gets weirder from there, and the whole thing is played completely straight.
Depends on which end you add one at. :-)
(I mention this not because I think there’s any danger Ezekiel doesn’t know it, but just because it might pique someone’s curiosity.)
[comment deleted]
This quote seems relevant:
G. H. Hardy, upon receiving a letter containing mathematical formulae from Ramanujan
Doesn’t work if (n + 1) monkeys dressed as Hitler are no stranger than n monkeys dressed as Hitler, and n monkeys dressed as Hitler are true.
Eliezer’s unconventional definition of “strange” is occasionally annoying.
Strange I would almost accept. But in this case the quote is ‘unusual’… that’s even worse! Unusual fits squarely into the realm of ‘actually happens’.
Also:
I was originally going to post that one, but decided to go with Chesterton’s version since it better explains what is meant. (At the expense of loosing some of the snappiness.)
“Reality is the thing that surpises me.”—Paraphrase of EY