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Just struck me that an important AI problem, formal logic reasoning, is actually defined at the wrong level. The problem is not to get a computer to do logic, but to get it to conclude logic is in fact a thing to do, and invent/discover the *idea* of logic via ML
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Logic is easy. Discovering that logic is a thing you can do, uncovering its rules, and deciding when to use them, is the hard part.
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I think it's a deconstruction of logical positivism rather than logic per se, in Science and Human Values: but really I was just avoiding the obvious cheap appeal to Goedel.
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Yeah, I don't buy that kind of argument. Godel is a formal result that actually does not apply to what we're talking about here. Logical positivism is a kind of spherical cow strawman epistemology. Pragmatically, we use logic in a way that works well enough, often enough.
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Formal result of formal logic: so as you say, logic is a servant of a master that is of necessity not itself logic. Which is fine, so long as we don't idolise it: but it doesn't make it easy, because self-inconsistency isn't easy.
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Self inconsistency isn't actually that important. Humans are self inconsistent and we do fine. The point is not to live perfectly forever in a consistent way but to survive long enough to have an interesting life before you die.
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