From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Jan 10 2003 - 20:25:04 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Brett Paatsch claims that the two extended statements
>
> A. "I believe that life begins at conception. I believe
> that any other points we might choose are essentially
> arbitrary and uncertain. And I believe that this is
> a view founded not in religion, not in faith, but on
> the logic of the matter.
>
> B. "My working hypothesis is that human existence begins
> at conception, and I contend that this is a view founded
> not in religion, not in faith, but on logic."
>
> are not equivalent. I claim that they *are* equivalent.
>
> Who is correct?
Parts of the two statements may be equivalent, but are equivalent only if
the speaker defines vis concepts such that "belief" and "working
hypothesis" are coextensional, which is true for only a very restricted
class of speakers.
The statement "I believe that any other points we might choose are
essentially arbitrary and uncertain" appears in A but not in B. B might
cite it as support for the selection of the working hypothesis.
As a listener, when I read A I hear a tone of finality, and when I read B
I hear a tone of tentativeness. I can interpret A to be in correspondence
with B, but if I heard them as statements from different speakers in an
ordinary discussion with the ordinary prior probabilities of various kinds
of speakers, I would guess that A had come to a definite conclusion and
that B was uncertain of verself, and that A probably had substantially
different views of the matter than B.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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