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> On the other hand, if taken as a literary statement, it can hold some truth -- or maybe many truths. Except that is a different kind of truth. We can learn f

by ajuc 12y ago

> On the other hand, if taken as a literary statement, it can hold some truth -- or maybe many truths. Except that is a different kind of truth. We can learn from people telling stories, we don't need to call these stories "truths" to do that. No need to muddle up the terminology. There's a hilarious proverb about kinds of truth BTW, but I can't manage to translate it to English, idioms just work differently. > It would be one that believes that anything not quantifiable is not worth knowing, and would try to plug any missing holes in our knowledge with data and quantitative theory, even if that's mathematically impossible. I think you misunderstood. It's not that it's not worth knowing. It's that you don't really know it if you can't quantify it. You're just slapping together some explanation to feel better. > But just like we'll likely never write a computer program that can fully reason about other computer programs Not about ALL the possible computer programs, but about many useful ones - why not? If our brains can do it - surely turing machines can do it too. At worst it would take exponential time and space.

pron 12y ago
> We don't need to call these stories "truths" to do that. No need to muddle up the terminology And what is that terminology? Even math and physics have different definitions of truth; why can't literature ( literature's use of the word is closer to math's definition rather than physics)? I think most people are capable of accepting different definitions in different contexts. > I think you misunderstood. It's not that it's not worth knowing. It's that you don't really know it if you can't quantify it. You don't really know even when you can. The consequence of the Gettier problem[1] is that we cannot define "knowledge" in a way that is both completely satisfactory yet still applies to anything other than math. That is, if we define knowledge narrowly enough to be rigorous and in accordance of our ideal of what knowledge is, we find that we don't know anything. Hence, all knowledge is knowledge to a degree. > You're just slapping together some explanation to feel better. Isn't that what understanding means? Suppose we could simulate the entire universe from the Big Bang on extremely fast, and move forward and backward in time in an instant. That would be very useful indeed for some purposes, I guess. Some would even call it knowledge. But would anyone call it understanding? All understanding is meant to make us feel better. :) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem

by ajuc 12y ago

pron 12y ago

> We don't need to call these stories "truths" to do that. No need to muddle up the terminology And what is that terminology? Even math and physics have different definitions of truth; why can't literature ( literature's use of the word is closer to math's definition rather than physics)? I think most people are capable of accepting different definitions in different contexts. > I think you misunderstood. It's not that it's not worth knowing. It's that you don't really know it if you can't quantify it. You don't really know even when you can. The consequence of the Gettier problem[1] is that we cannot define "knowledge" in a way that is both completely satisfactory yet still applies to anything other than math. That is, if we define knowledge narrowly enough to be rigorous and in accordance of our ideal of what knowledge is, we find that we don't know anything. Hence, all knowledge is knowledge to a degree. > You're just slapping together some explanation to feel better. Isn't that what understanding means? Suppose we could simulate the entire universe from the Big Bang on extremely fast, and move forward and backward in time in an instant. That would be very useful indeed for some purposes, I guess. Some would even call it knowledge. But would anyone call it understanding? All understanding is meant to make us feel better. :) [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem