brian_jaress comments on Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 August 2009 01:10AM

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Comment author: brian_jaress 21 August 2009 06:33:10PM *  0 points [-]

If you can't choose whether you believe, then you don't choose whether you believe. You just believe or not. The full equation still captures the correctness of your belief, however you arrived at it. There's nothing inconsistent about thinking that you are forced to not believe and that seeing the equation is (part of) what forced you.

(I avoid the phrase "free will" because there are so many different definitions. You seem to be using one that involves choice, while Eliezer uses one based on control. As I understand it, the two of you would disagree about whether a TV remote in a deterministic universe has free will.)

edit: missing word, extra word

Comment author: PhilGoetz 21 August 2009 07:57:09PM *  -1 points [-]

Brian said:

If you can't choose whether you believe, then you don't choose whether you believe. You just believe or not. The full equation still captures the correctness of your belief, however you arrived at it. There's nothing inconsistent about thinking that you are forced to not believe and that seeing the equation is (part of) what forced you.

And Alicorn said:

What if we're in a possible world where we can't choose not to consider those worlds? ;)

And before either of those, I said:

"But", you might object, "what should you do if you are a computer program, running in a deterministic language on deterministic hardware?"

The answer is that in that case, you do what you will do. You might adopt the view that you have no free will, and you might be right.

These all seem to mean the same thing. When you try to argue against what someone said by agreeing with him, someone is failing to communicate.

Brian, my objection is not based on the case fb. It's based on the cases Fb and fB. fB is a mistake that you had to make. Fb, "choosing to believe that you can't choose to believe", is a mistake you didn't have to make.

Comment author: brian_jaress 21 August 2009 11:26:29PM 0 points [-]

Yes. I started writing my reply before Alicorn said anything, took a short break, posted it, and was a bit surprised to see a whole discussion had happened under my nose.

But I don't see how what you originally said is the same as what you ended up saying.

At first, you said not to consider f because there's no point. My response was that the equation correctly includes f regardless of your ability to choose based on the solution.

Now you are saying that Fb is different from (inferior to?) fB.

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