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> I assume the hidden leg of your rhetorical enthymeme is that the universe is a Turing machine No, I am not making that claim. Not sure how you inferred that.
by ericjang 5y ago
> I assume the hidden leg of your rhetorical enthymeme is that the universe is a Turing machine
No, I am not making that claim. Not sure how you inferred that.
... by any chance, are you the author of the paper linked in this post? I am asking because I wonder if you are a philosopher by training, rather than being an actual AI researcher. If you are, I wonder if you'd heard of the essay "Newton's Flaming Laser Sword" (https://philosophynow.org/issues/46/Newtons_Flaming_Laser_Sword https://philosophynow.org/issues/46/Newtons_Flaming_Laser_Sw...)
- User23 5y agoI’m not. I’m just an interested layman who likes to read and think. And if I’m really fortunate, to think clearly and distinctly. Evidently then whatever claim it was you were making was not clear to me. I’d be obliged if you made it so. In case it’s not obvious I supposed you implied the universe is a TM on account of that was the first way it occurred to me to make sense of your claim. Incidentally, that Newton’s laser sword monograph was interesting but philosophically rather immature. I think the author would greatly benefit from reading some pragmaticist philosophy, in particular that of C.S. Peirce. Who, by the way, was a mathematician and logician in the Frege tier. Frankly though I do share the author’s disdain for the more navel-gazing pursuits that occupy many contemporary philosophy departments.
- ericjang 5y agoAnother commenter made exactly the same point I try to make, so I copy them here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29293687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29293687