Re: Interpretations, subjectivity & spread-spectrum

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1999 17:40:49 -0700

On Wed, Jul 14, 1999 at 04:19:45PM -0400, Hans Moravec wrote:
> The "intelligent life evolved in alternate iterpretations of the sun"
> discussion led me to notice an almost perfect analogy in everyday
> life.

Interesting, but we still have no reason to believe there exist intelligent
life in alternate interpretations of the sun. But the key point I want to
make is that not all interpretations are equally valid. Some
interpretations are more "natural" than others in the sense of having
smaller relative logical depth and smaller relative information content.

If not all interpretations are equal, the dividing line between reality and
interpretation doesn't really matter. A model where everything is objective
and nothing is subject to interpretation may be isomorphic to a model where
everything is interpretation, if each object in the first model corresponds
to an interpretation in the second model and their weights are the same.

Earlier you said that every model that treats subjectivity as an objective
attribute is ill defined or full of paradoxes. But what is wrong with a
theory that gives a set of all objects that exist, a measure on the set,
and for each object in the set its subjective experience (which might be
null if it's not conscious)?
Received on Thu Jul 15 1999 - 17:42:58 PDT