Le 25-oct.-07, à 03:25, Wei Dai a écrit :
>
> Rolf Nelson wrote:
>> 1. Provides a possible explanation for the "Measure Problem" of why we
>> shouldn't be "extremely surprised" to find we live in a lawful
>> universe, rather than an extremely chaotic universe, or a homogeneous
>> cloud of gas.
>
> One thing I still don't understand, is in what sense exactly is the
> "Measure
> Problem" a problem? Why isn't it good enough to say that everything
> exists,
> therefore we (i.e. people living in a lawful universe) must exist, and
> therefore we shouldn't be surprised that we exist. If the "Measure
> Problem"
> is a problem, then why isn't there also an analogous "Lottery Problem"
> for
> people who have won the lottery?
>
> I admit that this "explanation" of why there is no problem doesn't seem
> satisfactory, but I also haven't been able to satisfactorily verbalize
> what
> is wrong with it.
Perhaps there can be a measure problem with the ASSA, or not. I have no
idea because I think the ASSA idea, before having a measure problem,
has a reference class problem. We don't know what is the set or class
on which the measure can bear. If we say "observer", "observer-moment",
"observer-life" etc... we have to define observer first, and each time
this is done, it looks like I should be a bacteria instead of a human,
or the measure cannot be well defined, or it presuppose a "physical
world", etc. (see my old critics on ASSA, or on the Doomsday Argument.
Now, with the COMP (and thus the RSSA), things change.The reference
class is utterly well defined. For example, in the WM-duplication, it
is the set {W,M}. In front of the UD, the reference class, although it
is a non constructive object, it is, thanks to Church Thesis, a
perfectly well defined mathematical object: it is the set of all
states, going through your current state, generated by the DU. And the
measure problem is made equivalent with the white rabbits problem (due
to the existence of consistent but aberrant computations/histories (an
history, I recall, is a computation as viewed from a first person
perspective).
If you disagress with this, it means you stop somewhere in between the
first seven step of the 8-steps version of the UDA as in the slides
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf
with explanations in
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm
(html document), or
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.pdf
(pdf document).
I would be interested to know where.
>
>> Of course, I could solve the problem by deciding that I'd rather be
>> self-destructive and evil than be inconsistent; then I could consider
>> adopting UD+ASSA as a philosophy. But I think I'll pass on that
>> option. :-)
>
> I think our positions are pretty close on this issue, except that I do
> prefer to substitute 'counter-intuitive'. :-) The problem is, how can
> we be
> so certain that our intuitions are correct?
>
>> An example
>> that Yudowsky gave: you might spend resources on constructing a unique
>> arrow pointing at yourself, in order to increase your measure by
>> making it easier for a search algorithm to find you.
>
> While I no longer support UD+ASSA at this point (see my posts titled
> "against UD+ASSA"), I'm not sure this particular example is especially
> devastating. UD+ASSA perhaps implies an ethical theory in which all
> else
> being equal, you would prefer that there was a unique, easy to find
> arrow
> pointing at yourself. But it doesn't say that you should actually spend
> resources constructing it, since those resources might be better used
> in
> other ways, and it's not clear how much one's measure would actually be
> increased by such an arrow.
I am not sure who "reads" that arrow, or even what *is* that arrow.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Thu Oct 25 2007 - 06:26:19 PDT