From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Apr 06 2001 - 17:01:31 MDT
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
>
Ouch. Wince. Apologize. I hit "send" instead of "quote".
Anyway, what I meant to say is:
Chris Cooper wrote:
>
> Arona Ndiaye wrote:
>
> >I do not 'hope'. I stopped doing so the day I realized it had nothing to do
> with reality.<
>
> I hope that it is merely a matter of translation, but damn, that sounds harsh!
Well, sure, in human terms. But I'd say there's a legitimate distinction
between having a preferential view of reality and simply taking the best
available actions within whatever reality you happen to live in. If which
reality you live in is determined by a hidden variable, it doesn't make
sense to confuse that with an instance where which reality you *will* live
in is determined by your choices.
Maybe "hoping" is the optimal strategy if you're born with a cognitive
architecture in which it costs mental energy to visualize negative
possibilities, and you can't always distinguish between the choices and
the hidden variables. But if Arona wants to buck that trend, then I for
one cheer her on.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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