Re: Debunking meatspace (was: I am the Google)

From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Sun Feb 09 2003 - 13:37:15 MST

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    Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
    > Allow me to bring Eliezer's abstractions down to Earth: if you e-mail
    > me the floorplan of your room, I'll PayPal you ten bucks. If you agree
    > to this transaction, then the information was online, wasn't it? (And if
    > you don't I'll just try harder).

    Actually, it looked more like a variant of solipsism to me: roughly, "If
    I don't see it, it doesn't exist. Any effects of the not directly
    observed are due to other causes, perhaps unknown, but it is irrefutable
    fact that it doesn't exist if it isn't observed." This is an especially
    common disorder in Scandinavia and other places with exceptionally dark
    nights. In this case, couple with a narrowing of vision to only that
    which exists online.

    This is a subset of the larger class of logical fallacy commonly known
    as "religious belief": that is, belief in a certain fact even when the
    evidence, if considered without taking that fact on faith, disproves it
    (at least to a very high degree of probability).



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