Scott Aaronson's "On Self-Delusion and Bounded Rationality"

cousin_it

Poignant short story about truth-seeking that I just found. Quote:

"No," interjected an internal voice. "You need to prove that your dad will appear by a direct argument from the length of your nails, one that does not invoke your subsisting in a dream state as an intermediate step."

"Nonsense," retorted another voice. "That we find ourselves in a dream state was never assumed; rather, it follows so straightforwardly from the long-nail counterfactual that the derivation could be done, I think, even in an extremely weak system of inference."

The full thing reads like a flash tour of OB/LW, except it was written in 2001.

Poignant short story about truth-seeking that I just found. Quote:

"No," interjected an internal voice. "You need to prove that your dad will appear by a direct argument from the length of your nails, one that does not invoke your subsisting in a dream state as an intermediate step."

"Nonsense," retorted another voice. "That we find ourselves in a dream state was never assumed; rather, it follows so straightforwardly from the long-nail counterfactual that the derivation could be done, I think, even in an extremely weak system of inference."

The full thing reads like a flash tour of OB/LW, except it was written in 2001.

I dunno. I mean, a lot of horror stories that are famous for being good talk about stuff that can never be and should never be, but that nonetheless (in-story) is. I think it's that sense of a comforting belief about the world being violated that makes a good horror story, even if the prior probability of that belief being wrong is low.

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Scott Aaronson's "On Self-Delusion and Bounded Rationality"

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Scott Aaronson's "On Self-Delusion and Bounded Rationality"

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