Screw set theory. I live in the physical universe where when you run a Turing machine, and keep watching forever in the physical universe, you never experience a time where that Turing machine outputs a proof of the inconsistency of Peano Arithmetic. Furthermore, I live in a universe where space is actually composed of a real field and space is actually infinitely divisible and contains all the points between A and B, rather than space only containing a denumerable number of points whose existence can be proven from the first-order axiomatization of the real numbers. So to talk about physics—forget about mathematics—I’ve got to use second-order logic.
Supposing that physics is computable, this isn’t necessarily true. For example, if physics is computable in type-theory (or any language with non-standard models), then the non-standard-ness propagates not just to your physics, but to the individuals living in that physics which are trying to model it. Consider the non-standard model of the calculus of inductive constructions (approximately, Martin-Löf type theory) in which types are pointed sets, and functions are functions between sets which preserve the distinguished point. Then any representation of a person in space-time you can construct in this model (of the computation running physics) will have a distinguished point. Since any function to or from such a person-located-in-space-time must preserve this point, I’m pretty sure no information can propagate from the the person at the non-standard time to the person at any standard time. So even if you expect to observe the turing machine to halt whenever you find yourself in a non-standard model, you should also expect to not be able to tell that it’s non-standard except when you’re actively noticing its non-standardness. Furthermore, since functions must preserve the point, you should expect (provably) that for all times T, the turing machine should not be halted at time T (because the function mapping times T to statements must map the non-standard point of T to the non-standard (and trivial) statement).
For a more eloquent explanation of how non-standard models are unavoidable, and often useful, see The Elements of an Inductive Type.
Positive:
After reading the “What is Dragon Army [Barracks]?”, my emotional response was “oooh, maybe I want to join!”, whereas before, my emotional tone was “looks interesting and I want to see what happens”+”long-term social commitment tied to housing, ahhhhhhhh”
Less positive:
“its members are willing to hold doubt in reserve and act with full force in spite of reservations—if they’re willing to trust me more than they trust their own sense of things (at least in the moment, pending later explanation and recalibration on my part or theirs or both).” Owwwww. This is not a thing I think I’m capable of, and this is not a thing I think I want to twist myself into being capable of. That said, there’s an approximation to this (which might or might not be what you are actually pointing at), which I could easily see myself doing: it could become the case that my sense of things would frequently be “Duncan has more domain knowledge and better intuitions and a better sense of things than I do here”, and I could possibly act with full force in spite of reservations when that is my sense of things (and am in fact doing something like that right now by posting here rather than on your FB wall), but, at least for me, trust is not yet a decision or a choice, but a thing that is built.
Relatedly, I think point 5 in the code of conduct is where I have the most internal pushback; committing to being unconditionally fully present and supportive, even if, e.g., I’m emotionally blown out or ~triggered, seems … violating.