Re: [sl4] Rolf's gambit revisited

From: Matt Mahoney (matmahoney@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jan 12 2009 - 10:36:11 MST


--- On Mon, 1/12/09, Stuart Armstrong <dragondreaming@googlemail.com> wrote:

> >> The difference between pascal's wager and rolf's gambit is that gods do not
> >> exist, and AIs do. In fact, for rolf's gambit to work, you have to already
> >> HAVE one.
> >
> > How do you know that gods don't exist? If the
> > godlike AI that simulates the universe that you now observe
> > programs you to believe that it doesn't exist, then that
> > is what you will believe.
>
> Yes, but with that type of reasoning, nothing is knowable and nothing
> is true.

That's right.

> Unless you have a short cut directly into the mind of this
> hypothetical AI, we have to make do with evidence and facts of the
> world, as we perceive it. And the evidence for the non-existence of
> gods, as they are conventionally imagined, is overwhelming.

If you mean the writings in various religious texts, keep in mind the difficulty of explaining superhuman intelligence to the masses in the terminology that was available over 1000 years ago. Even today, our minds are not capable of comprehending the possibility of all strings X for which K(X|Y) = K(X) and Y describes our universe.

-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com



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