Quick clarification of Eliezer’s Mixed Reference, intended for me from twelve hours ago:
‘External reality’ is assumed to mean the stuff that doesn’t change when you change your mind about it. This is a pretty good fit to what people mean when they say something like “exists” and didn’t preface it with “cogito ergo.” It’s what can be meaningfully talked about if the minds talking are close enough that “change your mind” is close to “change which mind.”
External reality can be logical, because the trillionth digit of pi doesn’t change even if you change your mind about it. Or it can be physical, because dogs don’t disappear if you decide there are no dogs nearby. (“why do dogs / suddenly disappear / every time / you are near.”)
If we look inside of peoples’ heads, logical external reality seems to be universal and specific—minds are computation, and so if you can do some fairly general stuff like labeling the output of an algorithm you haven’t evaluated yet, you can have logical “external reality,” which now appears to be somewhat of a misnomer, but oh well. “Stuff that doesn’t change when you change your mind about it” is still too long.
Physical reality, on the other hand, is much more general and contingent—it’s just a catch-all term for “hey, I know we’re a mind and have logical reality and that good stuff, but there happens to be a world out here!” In fact, it’s tempting to just say “if it doesn’t change when you change your mind and it’s not a logical thing, it’s a physical thing.” The label external reality might make more sense being applied to this stuff, since “physical” carries some connotation that isn’t necessarily accurate.
Quick clarification of Eliezer’s Mixed Reference, intended for me from twelve hours ago:
‘External reality’ is assumed to mean the stuff that doesn’t change when you change your mind about it. This is a pretty good fit to what people mean when they say something like “exists” and didn’t preface it with “cogito ergo.” It’s what can be meaningfully talked about if the minds talking are close enough that “change your mind” is close to “change which mind.”
External reality can be logical, because the trillionth digit of pi doesn’t change even if you change your mind about it. Or it can be physical, because dogs don’t disappear if you decide there are no dogs nearby. (“why do dogs / suddenly disappear / every time / you are near.”)
If we look inside of peoples’ heads, logical external reality seems to be universal and specific—minds are computation, and so if you can do some fairly general stuff like labeling the output of an algorithm you haven’t evaluated yet, you can have logical “external reality,” which now appears to be somewhat of a misnomer, but oh well. “Stuff that doesn’t change when you change your mind about it” is still too long.
Physical reality, on the other hand, is much more general and contingent—it’s just a catch-all term for “hey, I know we’re a mind and have logical reality and that good stuff, but there happens to be a world out here!” In fact, it’s tempting to just say “if it doesn’t change when you change your mind and it’s not a logical thing, it’s a physical thing.” The label external reality might make more sense being applied to this stuff, since “physical” carries some connotation that isn’t necessarily accurate.