Re: My definitions of Intelligence, Consciousness, Mathematics and Universal Values

From: Russell Wallace (russell.wallace@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Jan 22 2006 - 22:59:23 MST

On 1/23/06, Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:
>
> My own intuition is that modeling the universe using consistent formal
> systems is a good idea! However, I can see the real possibility that
> using different, mutually inconsistent formal systems to model
> different aspects of reality could be valuable at some point.
>
> I don't see any great philosophical profundity in this point, however.

I don't either; the argument seems to be tripping over vagueness in the use
of the word "consistent". For example, Newtonian mechanics and relativity
are inconsistent with each other (they give different outputs from the same
input, albeit only slightly different for low speeds), and yet it is useful
to keep both of them to hand. This doesn't imply that mathematics is
inconsistent!

- Russell

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