From: Christian Rovner (cro1@tutopia.com)
Date: Fri Aug 13 2004 - 15:56:33 MDT
J. Andrew Rogers wrote:
>
> I'm pretty sure the math of all this has been argued before on SL4.
> This entire discussion is reflogging the long-dead horse of arbitrary
> and infinite compression, not a productive pursuit. A rigorous
> construction of the question would have made it obvious, but instead we
> are getting caught up in semantics.
Indeed. However, asking the right question is part of the problem. In
fact it's the *hard* part. I would really appreciate a more careful
elaboration of this particular problem.
I should also note that you're possibly using circular logic here. To
create a rigorous construction of a question is equivalent to make it
mathematical. Which is what we're debating in the first place: can
everything be reduced to mathematics? Can we use a rigorous construction
of everything? So you seem to argue "If we made the question 'Is all
mathematical?' a mathematical problem, it would be obvious that the
answer is 'Yes'."
I don't disagree, actually. I do believe that math is the deepest form
of understanding. But I'm afraid I don't have a mathematical proof of
this, so I must rely on intuition (and maybe circular logic).
-- Christian Rovner Volunteer Coordinator Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence http://www.intelligence.org/
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