Yesterday, I proposed that you should resist the temptation to generalize over all of mind design space. If we restrict ourselves to minds specifiable in a trillion bits or less, then each universal generalization “All minds m: X(m)” has two to the trillionth chances to be false, while each existential generalization “Exists mind m: X(m)” has two to the trillionth chances to be true.
I personally feel that further justification is needed to convince me that the mind space is arranged this way. Suppose we made the same argument about generalizations on the numbers one to one-trillion; couldn’t we argue against a generalized statement such as “All numbers n: n is positive” in the same way? Just because the space is vast and complex doesn’t necessarily mean it contains objects with all properties. Isn’t it possible that the way we define a mind might restrict the space in a certain way, as to only allow certain arguments to be validated by all minds?
I personally feel that further justification is needed to convince me that the mind space is arranged this way. Suppose we made the same argument about generalizations on the numbers one to one-trillion; couldn’t we argue against a generalized statement such as “All numbers n: n is positive” in the same way? Just because the space is vast and complex doesn’t necessarily mean it contains objects with all properties. Isn’t it possible that the way we define a mind might restrict the space in a certain way, as to only allow certain arguments to be validated by all minds?