From: Wei Dai (weidai@weidai.com)
Date: Thu Nov 01 2007 - 14:30:46 MDT
Suppose an SI wants to do something with a very small, but non-zero
probability, say 0 < p <= 1/3^^^3 (in Knuth's up-arrow notation). How would
it go about doing this? The answer seems to be "it can't", because
algorithmic information theory says there is no way that it can generate a
sufficiently long random number that it can know is truly random. Can anyone
see a way around this limitation?
This problem came up in the context of Eliezer's "Torture vs. Dust Specks"
dilemma (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/10/torture-vs-dust.html), but I
think it might be of interest outside that context.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:59 MDT