Interesting! I have a post cooking somewhere in the guf of my brain which is something like “How Much Imagination Should We Use?”. A “Proof by Lack of Imagination” is dual to a “Proof by Excess of Imagination”.
Example: suppose someone says “I can imagine an atomic copy of ourselves which isn’t conscious, therefore consciousness is non-physical.” and I say “No, I can’t imagine that.”
On the one hand, a good model of the world should prevent me from imagining things which aren’t possible. If I have a solid idea of what acidic and alkaline solutions are, I should have great difficulty imagining a solution which is both at once! But on the other hand, it is a good thing if my model can imagine things which are possible, like a power-plant which harvests energy from a miniature sun.
I’ve been thinking about things from a pedagogical angle a lot lately, which is why this post is phrased in the specific way it is. I would like to come to a better conclusion of how to move disagreements forward. If I say to someone “It seems quite easy to imagine an AI smart enough to take over the world using a medium-bandwidth internet connection” and someone says “No I can’t imagine that at all”, then it seems like we just reach an impasse immediately! How do we move forward?
Example: suppose someone says “I can imagine an atomic copy of ourselves which isn’t conscious, therefore consciousness is non-physical.” and I say “No, I can’t imagine that.”
If I have a solid idea of what acidic and alkaline solutions are, I should have great difficulty imagining a solution which is both at once!
Or at least one that is both at once for more than a very short period of time, as the relevant ions will quickly react to make “neutral” water until one runs out...
I think the phrase ‘Proof by lack of imagination’ is sometimes used to describe this (or a close cousin).
Interesting! I have a post cooking somewhere in the guf of my brain which is something like “How Much Imagination Should We Use?”. A “Proof by Lack of Imagination” is dual to a “Proof by Excess of Imagination”.
Example: suppose someone says “I can imagine an atomic copy of ourselves which isn’t conscious, therefore consciousness is non-physical.” and I say “No, I can’t imagine that.”
On the one hand, a good model of the world should prevent me from imagining things which aren’t possible. If I have a solid idea of what acidic and alkaline solutions are, I should have great difficulty imagining a solution which is both at once! But on the other hand, it is a good thing if my model can imagine things which are possible, like a power-plant which harvests energy from a miniature sun.
I’ve been thinking about things from a pedagogical angle a lot lately, which is why this post is phrased in the specific way it is. I would like to come to a better conclusion of how to move disagreements forward. If I say to someone “It seems quite easy to imagine an AI smart enough to take over the world using a medium-bandwidth internet connection” and someone says “No I can’t imagine that at all”, then it seems like we just reach an impasse immediately! How do we move forward?
Possibly of interest
Or the followup by Logan Strohl, even more directly on this
Or at least one that is both at once for more than a very short period of time, as the relevant ions will quickly react to make “neutral” water until one runs out...