From: Marc Geddes (marc_geddes@yahoo.co.nz)
Date: Wed Jun 02 2004 - 01:45:55 MDT
--- Wei Dai <weidai@weidai.com> wrote: > What does
"knew more" mean? For example, the
> majority of human beings in
> existence today do not "know" that humans are the
> product of biological
> evolution. As another example, they believe that
> their own religious
> beliefs are correct and that the religious beliefs
> of most other people
> are incorrect. In trying to extrapolate their true
> volitions, would you
> replace their belief in creationism with belief in
> evolution? Would you
> replace their belief in a particular God with a
> Bayesian probability
> distribution over a wide range of possible gods? If
> the answer is "yes",
> how would you then convince them that the
> extrapolated volitions is in any
> sense *theirs*?
Right Wei! The whole idea of things working out for
the best seems to me to imply an objective answer of
what constitutes 'best'.
For instance clearly a belief in evolution is
objectively more likely to be true than a belief in
creationism. A belief in Bayesian probablity
distribution over a wide range of possible gods is
objectively more likely to be true than belief in a
particualr god and so forth.
Volition just evades the question of what in fact are
the objectively best answers.
=====
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"The Universe...or nothing!"
-H.G.Wells
Please visit my web-sites.
Science-Fiction and Fantasy: http://www.prometheuscrack.com
Science, A.I, Maths : http://www.riemannai.org
Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.
http://au.movies.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Feb 21 2006 - 04:22:38 MST