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shannifin | 6 months ago

Problem is, even with symbolic logic, reasoning is not completely deterministic. Whether one can get to a set of given axioms from a given proposition is sometimes undecidable.

discuss

order

bubblyworld|6 months ago

I don't think this is really a problem. The general problem of finding a proof from some axioms to some formula is undecidable (in e.g. first order logic). But that doesn't tell you anything about specific cases, in the same way that we can easily tell whether some specific program halts, like this one:

"return 1"

shannifin|6 months ago

True, I was rather pointing out that being able to parse symbolic language deterministically doesn't imply that we could then "reason" deterministically in general; the reasoning would still need to involve some level of stochasticism. Whether or not that's a problem in practice depends on specifics.