Re: Raymond Smullyan

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 13:55:19 -0700

On Thu, Jul 15, 1999 at 04:38:05PM +0100, Marchal wrote:
> Wei Dai, you should read cautiously SMULLYAN'S "An Epistemological
> Nightmare".
> You will understand at once that, with comp, there is no hope to use any
> "scientific theory" to build a "decision theory".

Ok, I just read it, but I don't see how it rules out a decision theory. The
point of the article seems to be that a person can be wrong about his own
subjective experiences, i.e. think or believe that he experienced something
when in fact he experienced something else. Current decision theory doesn't
take this possibility into account, just like it doesn't take into account
the possibility that a person makes a mistake while trying to compute
probabilities. I see no reason why both won't eventually be part of a more
realistic decision theory.
Received on Wed Aug 04 1999 - 13:58:29 PDT