And axiom schemata of ZFC are more like scratches on paper than infinite sets. Humans are something that could be interpreted as associated with a utility function over possible states of something, but this utility function is an abstract structure, not something made out of atoms or even (a priori) computable. It can be reasoned about, but if it’s too complicated, it won’t be possible to make accurate inferences about it. Descriptive utility functions are normally simple summaries of behavior that don’t fit very well, and you can impose arbitrary requirements on how these are defined.
At the moment I’m picturing a state machine where each state is a utility function (of a fairly conventional type, a bunch of variables go in and you get a “utility” value out) but if you hit a particular range of values the state, and hence function, changes. Not that I’m sure how to make this hypothesis rigorous enough even to falsify …
And axiom schemata of ZFC are more like scratches on paper than infinite sets. Humans are something that could be interpreted as associated with a utility function over possible states of something, but this utility function is an abstract structure, not something made out of atoms or even (a priori) computable. It can be reasoned about, but if it’s too complicated, it won’t be possible to make accurate inferences about it. Descriptive utility functions are normally simple summaries of behavior that don’t fit very well, and you can impose arbitrary requirements on how these are defined.
At the moment I’m picturing a state machine where each state is a utility function (of a fairly conventional type, a bunch of variables go in and you get a “utility” value out) but if you hit a particular range of values the state, and hence function, changes. Not that I’m sure how to make this hypothesis rigorous enough even to falsify …