On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 07:35:42PM -0400, Jesse Mazer wrote:
> Russell Standish wrote:
>
> >
> >You are arguing that it is possible to have an absolute measure for
> >each observer moment, as well as a relative measure on the transitions
> >between observer moments. Of course this is correct.
> >
> >However, the ASSA and the RSSA are more than that. The SS stands for
> >self sampling, ie the principle that one should reason as though one's
> >own observer moment were sampled from the A or the R measure
> >respectively. With the RSSA, only the birth moment is sampled
> >according to an absolute measure, so it is an elaboration of the
> >SSA. I'm not sure how compatible the ASSA is with the SSA.
> >
> >The ASSA and RSSA are incompatible principles, even if both absolute
> >and relative measures are compatible.
>
> Well, perhaps the problem is that we don't have definite agreement on this
> list about how these acronyms are defined--for example, Hal Finney gave
> different definitions on the original "Request for a glossary of acronyms"
> thread, in his post at http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4778.html --
>
> "ASSA - The Absolute Self-Sampling Assumption, which says that you should
> consider your next observer-moment to be randomly sampled from among all
> observer-moments in the universe.
>
> RSSA - The Relative Self-Sampling Assumption, which says that you should
> consider your next observer-moment to be randomly sampled from among all
> observer-moments which come immediately after your current observer-moment
> and belong to the same observer."
>
How does this differ? The only difference I see is that the word
"measure" is not mentioned explicitly, however random sampling implies
sampling according to some measure. Sometimes uniform measure is
implied by random sampling, but I can't see how Hal Finney might have
thought that, as the measure is so patently nonuniform.
>
> And as I said in my response to that post at
> http://www.escribe.com/science/theory/m4782.html , I would prefer to define
> the ASSA in terms of reasoning as if your *current* observer-moment is
> randomly sampled from the set of all observer-moments, weighted by each
> observer-moment's absolute probability.
>
> Jesse
>
I can't see that changing "next" to "current" makes any difference to
the meaning, except if there is no "next" OM. If you are comparing the
two - eg perhaps asserting a compatibility, then there must be a "next"
OM. This is pedantry for pedantry sake.
It does not change the fact that the RSSA and the ASSA are
fundamentally incompatible principles.
Cheers
--
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Received on Thu Jun 09 2005 - 23:15:39 PDT