Maybe this is because I’m fairly confident of physicalism? Of course I’ll change my mind if presented with enough evidence, but I’m not anticipating such a surprise.
You’d need the FAI able to change its mind as well, which requires that you retain this option in its epistemology. To attack the communication issue from a different angle, could you give examples of the kinds of facts you deny? (Don’t say “god” or “magic”, give a concrete example.)
Yes, we need the FAI to be able to change its mind about physicalism.
I don’t think I’ve ever been clear about what people mean to assert when they talk about things that don’t reduce to physics/math.
Rather, people describe something non-natural or supernatural and I think, “Yeah, that just sounds confused.” Specific examples of things I deny because of my physicalism are Moore’s non-natural goods and Chalmers’ conception of consciousness.
I don’t think I’ve ever been clear about what people mean to assert when they talk about things that don’t reduce to physics/math.
SInce you can’t actually reduce[*] 99.99% of your vocabulary, you’re either so confused you couldn’t possibly think or communicate...or you’re only confused about the nature of confusion.
[*] Try reducing “shopping” to quarks, electrons and photons.You can’t do it, and if you could, it would tell you nothing useful. Yet there is nothing that is not made
of quarks,electrons and photons involved.
Is this because you’re not familiar with Moore on non-natural goods and Chalmers on consciousness, or because you agree with me that those ideas are just confused?
They are not precise enough to carefully examine. I can understand the distinction between a crumbling bridge and 3^^^^3>3^^^3, it’s much less clear what kind of thing “Chalmers’ view on consciousness” is. I guess I could say that I don’t see these things as facts at all unless I understand them, and some things are too confusing to expect understanding them (my superpower is to remain confused by things I haven’t properly understood!).
(To compare, a lot of trouble with words is incorrectly assuming that they mean the same thing in different contexts, and then trying to answer questions about their meaning. But they might lack a fixed meaning, or any meaning at all. So the first step before trying to figure out whether something is true is understanding what is meant by that something.)
(No new idea is going to be precise, because precise definitions come
from established theories, and established theories come from speculative theories,
and speculative theories are theories about something that is defined relatively
vaguely. The Oxygen theory of combustion was a theory about “how burning works”--
it was not, circularly, the Oxygen theory of Oxidisation).
You’d need the FAI able to change its mind as well, which requires that you retain this option in its epistemology. To attack the communication issue from a different angle, could you give examples of the kinds of facts you deny? (Don’t say “god” or “magic”, give a concrete example.)
Yes, we need the FAI to be able to change its mind about physicalism.
I don’t think I’ve ever been clear about what people mean to assert when they talk about things that don’t reduce to physics/math.
Rather, people describe something non-natural or supernatural and I think, “Yeah, that just sounds confused.” Specific examples of things I deny because of my physicalism are Moore’s non-natural goods and Chalmers’ conception of consciousness.
SInce you can’t actually reduce[*] 99.99% of your vocabulary, you’re either so confused you couldn’t possibly think or communicate...or you’re only confused about the nature of confusion.
[*] Try reducing “shopping” to quarks, electrons and photons.You can’t do it, and if you could, it would tell you nothing useful. Yet there is nothing that is not made of quarks,electrons and photons involved.
Not much better than “magic”, doesn’t help.
Is this because you’re not familiar with Moore on non-natural goods and Chalmers on consciousness, or because you agree with me that those ideas are just confused?
They are not precise enough to carefully examine. I can understand the distinction between a crumbling bridge and 3^^^^3>3^^^3, it’s much less clear what kind of thing “Chalmers’ view on consciousness” is. I guess I could say that I don’t see these things as facts at all unless I understand them, and some things are too confusing to expect understanding them (my superpower is to remain confused by things I haven’t properly understood!).
(To compare, a lot of trouble with words is incorrectly assuming that they mean the same thing in different contexts, and then trying to answer questions about their meaning. But they might lack a fixed meaning, or any meaning at all. So the first step before trying to figure out whether something is true is understanding what is meant by that something.)
How are you on dark matter?
(No new idea is going to be precise, because precise definitions come from established theories, and established theories come from speculative theories, and speculative theories are theories about something that is defined relatively vaguely. The Oxygen theory of combustion was a theory about “how burning works”-- it was not, circularly, the Oxygen theory of Oxidisation).