From: Marc Geddes (marc_geddes@yahoo.co.nz)
Date: Wed Jun 02 2004 - 01:51:39 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',
implies that there is an objective standard of what is
'better'.
For instance the belief in evolution is clearly
objectively more likely to be true than the belief in
creationism. The belief in a Bayesian probability
distribution over a wide range of various gods is
objectively more likely to be true than the belief in
a particular God and so on.
There is nothing to be gained by looking at the
volition of the person holding these beliefs. What we
actually want is the objectively correct answer. Even
if extrapolated volition led to the objectively
correct answer, as you point out, it would be so
different from the original beliefs of the person that
the person would not perceive it as reflected their
'volition' at all.
=====
"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