Infinite Certainty — LessWrong
If you have to choose between two alternatives A and B, and you somehow succeed in establishing knowably certain well-calibrated 100% confidence that A is absolutely and entirely desirable and that B is the sum of everything evil and disgusting, then this is a sufficient condition for choosing A over B. It is not a necessary condition . . . You can have uncertain knowledge of relatively better and relatively worse options, and still choose. It should be routine, in fact. Concerning the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4, we must distinguish between the map and the territory. Given the seeming absolute stability and universality of physical laws, it’s possible that never, in the whole history of the universe, has any particle exceeded the local lightspeed limit. That is, the lightspeed limit may be not just true 99% of the time, or 99.9999% of the time, or (1 - 1/googolplex) of the time, but simply always and absolutely true. But whether we can ever have absolute confidence in the lightspeed li