On Thu, 9 Sep 1999, Russell Standish wrote:
> > On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Russell Standish wrote:
> > > Anyway, back to our muttons - what you are saying is that ASSA is true
> > > by definition. This is wrong. It is an assumption, just as the SSA is
> > > an assumption (that's what the last A stands for, after all).
> >
> > That's your opinion. It is wrong.
> > [At this point we could obviously trade the above line ad nauseaum.]
>
> The SSA is not a true statement - for one thing it predicts that I
> would be a chinese or indian peasant, which I clearly am not.
First I note you say SSA rather than ASSA. I am not sure how that
is related to your confusion.
Your above statement is complete nonsense. The RSSA does not
predict anything about nationality, I suppose, but if that is true it is
obviously lacking the ability to predict anything such as what kind of
universe we are in. Another possibility is that the RSSA makes the same
prediction of peasantry. (Here I neglect the fact that, contrary to your
statement, most people are neither Chinese nor Indian!)
So let me talk about what does make sense, the ASSA. Assume that
most people are Chinese. If you are a person that doesn't know his
nationality, you would be justified in guessing that you are probably
Chinese, based on the ASSA that your observation is drawn from a set with
uniform weighting per capita. If everyone made this guess, most of them
would be right, and of course some of them would be wrong unless the
probability was 100%.
It is unlikely to roll a 6 on a die. A number from 1-5 is more
likely. It does not mean a 6 is surprising! By contrast, if I had a
theory that the next number you roll will be a 6, and it comes true, that
would be more impressive. All the ASSA is saying here is that if 1-5 is
painted red and 6 is painted blue, you are more likely to get red.
Getting a 6 is not evidence against that. If you don't understand
this you need remedial tutoring in probability.
> What is true about the SSA is that it is a reasonable assumption in
> the absence of further information. That further information
> constrains the set of outcomes over which the SSA can be applied. In
> my case, I have a history of 35 years of doing this and that. ASSA
> ignores that. For example, I have an extremely low chance of
> experiencing standing on the moon tomorrow. For Neil Armstrong on a
> certain day in 1969, that chance would have been rather high. ASSA
> would predict the same value for both of us - way too high for me, and
> way too low for Neil. RSSA, on the other hand, takes into account our
> respective histories, and gives more believable values.
The above once again makes no sense. The ASSA does not predict
any chance of you standing on the moon tomorrow, at least not unless you
define 'you'. If it is taken to refer to computational continuations of
your present state, the usual conditional probabilities obviously apply.
But again, the ASSA does not require any such notion of 'you', and the
most natural thing would be to say that you only exist at one moment while
future Russells are really different people.
- - - - - - -
Jacques Mallah (jqm1584.domain.name.hidden)
Graduate Student / Many Worlder / Devil's Advocate
"I know what no one else knows" - 'Runaway Train', Soul Asylum
My URL:
http://pages.nyu.edu/~jqm1584/
Received on Sun Sep 12 1999 - 19:42:38 PDT