> From: Brad Paulsen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Not exactly (to start with, you can *never* be 100% sure, try though you > might :-) ). Take all of the investigations into "rockness" since the > dawn of homo sapiens and we still only have a 0.9995 probability that > rocks are not conscious. Everything is belief. Even "hard" science. > That was the nub of Hume's intellectual contribution. It doesn't mean > we can't be "sure enough." It just means that we can never be 100% sure > of *anything*.
We can be 100% sure that we can never be 100% sure of *anything*. > > Of course, there's belief and then there's BELIEF. To me (and to Hume), > it's not a difference in kind. It's just that the leap from > observational evidence to empirical (natural) belief is a helluvalot > shorter than is the leap from observational evidence to supernatural > belief. > I agree that it is for us in the modern day technological society. But it may not have been always the case. We have been grounded by reason. Before reason it may have been largely supernatural. That's why sometimes I think AGI's could start off with little knowledge and lots of supernatural, just to make it easier for it to attach properties to the void. It starts off knowing there is some god bringing it into existence but eventually it figures out that the god is just some geek software engineer and then it becomes atheist real quick heheh John ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
