From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Sun Apr 27 2003 - 16:37:51 MDT
Eliezer wrote:
> Any Process which contains you up until this point, or Bayesia up until
> this point, *not* with a hands-off condition, affects your future
> subjective probabilities because you might turn out to be living there -
> you cannot distinguish Bens in "interventionist simulations" from Bens in
> "top-level Bayesia" or "hands-off simulated Bayesia". "You" are
> a pointer
> state that refers to all the hubble volumes, universes, quantum branches,
> simulations, and Processes that have faithfully computed Ben Goertzel up
> to this point.
OK, but any two processes that contain me up to this point, and that are
indistinguishable by any experiment I could do in the future, are
effectively equivalent from my point of view. They don't have separate,
independent existence.
So, considering the hypothetical aliens outside my light cone -- if
universes with & without them are not distinguishable by any future
experiments I could do, then the universes with & without them are
equivalent to me.
Now, we may invoke Occam's Razor ;) If I'm given an equivalence class C of
universes, all of which are pragmatically indistinguishable to me, I'm going
to assess the plausibility of a universe in C in terms of its simplicity.
Simpler universes in C are more plausible. The universes with the
hypothetical aliens in it are going to be rated relatively implausible,
because the aliens fail the Occam's razor test -- they are extra elements,
which make the hypothetical universe more complex without adding any new
testable properties.
-- Ben G
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