Ronny Fernandez

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 10:50 UTC

  0 points

  on: Mak­ing Beliefs Pay Rent (in An­ti­ci­pated Ex­pe­riences)

  Wonderful exposition of versificationism (I meant verificationism lol, but I won’t change it cause I like the reply bellow). I do have a question though. You said:

  It’s tempting to try to eliminate this mistake class by insisting that the only legitimate kind of belief is an anticipation of sensory experience. But the world does, in fact, contain much that is not sensed directly.

  Well yes, we don’t directly observe atoms (actually we do now but we didn’t have to). But it is still save to say that if a belief doesn’t make predictions about future sensory experiences it is meaningless, or at least unverifiable. Those predictions may be about the shape of ink squiggles on a piece of paper after some rules are applied, or they may be a prediction about the pattern that a monitor’s many pixels will form after reacting to some instrument in an experiment. In either case, the hypothesis is always linked to the world by the senses, or are you claiming something different?

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 11:59 UTC

  −1 points

  on: The Ir­ra­tional­ity Game

  The natural world is only different from other mathematically describable worlds in content not in type. Any universe that is described by some mathematical system has the same ontological status as the one that we experience directly. (90% about)

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 12:38 UTC

  9 points

  on: Wel­come to Less Wrong!

  Hello Less wrong.

  I’ve been reading Yudkowsky for a while now. I’m a philosophy major from NJ and he’s been quite popular around here since I showed some of my friends three worlds collide. I am here because I think I can offer this forum new and well considered views on cognition, computability, epistemology, ontology, valid inference in general and also have my views kicked around a bit. Hopefully our mutual kicking around of each others views will toughen them up for future kicking battles.

  I have studied logic at high levels, and have an intricate understanding of Godel’s incompleteness theorem and of Tarski’s undefinability theorem. I plan to write short posts that might make the two accessible when I have the Karma to do so. So the sooner you give me 20 Karma the sooner you will have a non-logician friendly explanation of Godel’s first incompleteness theorem.

In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 15:23 UTC

  0 points

  on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  Sorry about the citations, I’m not good with format most of the time, I’ll work on it.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 15:55 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Emile’s comment on: For the game the­o­rists out there...

  In a place like this that should never happen. Vote up vote up.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 15:59 UTC

  0 points

  on: A Philo­soph­i­cal Trea­tise of Univer­sal In­duc­tion (Link)

  Seems very interesting, i will do my best to give it a read. I just posted a discussion with a lot of questions this work might be applicable in. If you answer some questions from my post I’ll be more tempted to read it. ;)

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 15:59 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Ronny Fernandez’s comment on: A Philo­soph­i­cal Trea­tise of Univer­sal In­duc­tion (Link)

  Use what you learned from this pdf though if you really wanna entice me.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 21:19 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Pavitra’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  On it

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 21:30 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: ’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  Only if you can’t proof that given that starting value the function will always rise, but that is an unlikely situation.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 21:42 UTC

  2 points

  on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  What I’m really asking is, if some statement turns out to be undecidable for all of our Tarskian truth translation maps to models, does that make that conjecture meaningless, or is undecidable somehow distinct from unverifiable. What is the difference between believing “that conjecture is unverifiable” and believing “that conjecture is undecidable.”? Are the expectations/​restrictions on experience that those two believes offer identical? If so does that mean that the difference between those two believes is a syntactic issue?

  See Making Beliefs Pay Rent :

  http://​​lesswrong.com/​​lw/​​i3/​​making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_anticipated_experiences/​​

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 21:49 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Benquo’s comment on: Wel­come to Less Wrong!

  Good point, I’ve already written a discussion page to get people talking about the epistemic status of undecidable propositions, but I feel like a full description of Godel’s first incompleteness theorem might be a bit much for a discussion page.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 22:11 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Pavitra’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  Could you elaborate on what question that is your answer to? Is that an answer to one of my questions? I might just be confused.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 22:37 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: analyticsophy’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  So does that mean that we should reject the principle of excluded middle? If so, that means that our standard logics are useless for dealing with mathematical (if not all) reasoning. Intuitionistic logic might be better suited at dealing with these sorts of issues, but it seems strange that some meaningful statements might be neither true nor false.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 22:42 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: analyticsophy’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  If there is a difference between undecidable and meaningless, and a statement can be shown to be undecidable, then we need to accept that not every meaningful statement is true or false at least in the case of the natural numbers.

• Ronny Fernandez 15 Jun 2011 23:51 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: AlephNeil’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  You’re right I do mean theory. But importantly I’m including the first order language that holds for the model of the natural numbers. So the interpreted first order language of the natural numbers is included in this usage of “theory”.

  I’m using a 1920′s (ish) style of verificationism that considers cases of P(T|S) ≠ P(T|~S) to be cases of a verifiable statement. See Ayler’s Language, Truth, and Logic. The positivists always held that inductively verifiable statements are still verifiable and thus meaningful.

  What makes you say that all statements about the laws of physics are unverifiable? If it restricts your expectations for experience, it is a verifiable prediction. Certainly our hypothetical-deductive theories of the natural universe do in fact restrict our expected stimulus, and can be rejected on the grounds that the restrictions are not met.

  I’m using the word “verifiable” as it is used in Positivism and Verificationism. A statement S is verifiable if and only if S is a tautology or there is a strong inductive argument with S as the conclusion, which if cogent gives us a probability for S.

• Ronny Fernandez 16 Jun 2011 0:07 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: AlephNeil’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  Oh and I’m not talking about true or false in terms of provability (necessarily), don’t forget that there is a semantic theory of truth for formal languages called model theory. Falsification or verification of a statement from a language by semantic means works just as well.

• Ronny Fernandez 16 Jun 2011 0:29 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Pavitra’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  Ha, I just got it. Pretty good, of course x<N holds for all numbers you try. But of course, there is a simple one line proof that ~P(N+1), so the inductive-conjecture with x<N certainly has a proof in the negative. This only applies to P where there is no proof of the existence of a counter example.

• Ronny Fernandez 16 Jun 2011 0:31 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Pavitra’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  Aw ouch, why so cold? (though I admit quite clever.)

• Ronny Fernandez 16 Jun 2011 2:22 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: In­duc­tion, De­duc­tion, and the Col­latz Con­jec­ture: the De­cid­edly Un­de­cid­able Propo­si­tions.

  A statement can be proven outside of a formal system (I should have said from the beginning: “outside of a complete and consistent formal system) . There is no complete and consistent axiomatization of the differential calculus as shown by Godel’s first and second theorem, yet I think we can all agree that there are proofs in the calculus.