[ExI] Attribution error? (was: Modal Realism and Leibniz: (was The Many))

[Jef Allbright]

On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 11:30 AM, Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Saturday 15 March 2008, Jef Allbright wrote:
>  > I think I use the term "coherent" in its standard sense, and I most
>  > certainly do not mean it in the sense you ascribe to me above.
>
>  Please excuse me while I go recheck. If you do in fact mean the most
>  general sense,

I said the *standard* sense, specifically more specific than the "most
general" sense.


>  then doesn't it mean an integrative model,

huh?

> in the sense of no compile-time errors?

A problem with your metaphor is that compilers deal almost exclusively
with syntax, rather than semantics.  [I know, optimizing compilers are
venturing into semantics, but when they get to the level of
effectively *understanding* their input, they will be long past mere
compilers.]


>  But, since I apparently falsely attributed
>  the definition to you, I'll go back through the docs and double check.

I don't think it wasn't mistaken attribution, but the very
epistemological confusion I was pointing to.

For a long time on this list, I've observed intelligent and
determinedly rational posters like Robin Hanson, Hal Finney, Lee
Corbin, John Clark, the younger Eliezer... harbor and nurture this
implicit assumption of an Archimedian point functioning as a reference
to "reality" or "truth."  It pervades the thinking of many
rationalists, burning with a moral fervor protective of a belief in
objective Truth as if a last refuge from entropic and eccentric slide
into relativism or (worse) postmodernism.

NOTE:  I am by no means disparaging objectivity nor defending
relativism.  I am saying that most of what passes for informed
discussion is epistemologically incomplete.

I'm tempted to write a full essay on this topic, but (1) I have no
doubt it would generate more heat than light, and (2) my boss, who
watches *everything* I do, even when I'm alone, reminds me there's
more rewarding and immediate work to be done in the world of
technologies for increasing awareness.

- Jef