Johnicholas comments on Hypothetical Paradoxes - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Psychohistorian 19 September 2009 06:28AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 21 September 2009 07:06:26PM *  1 point [-]

Suppose someone may or may not have a gene causing a taste for cilantro, and they are tasting cilantro. As they get information about their own tastes, they also revise their estimate of their own ancestry. Is that paradoxical?

That's not analogous, because you don't choose (directly) whether you like cilantro. In contrast, I am choosing what box to take, which means I'm choosing what Omega's past decision was. That can make sense, but only if you can accept that you shift between e.g. Everett branches as your computation unfolds.

Comment author: Johnicholas 21 September 2009 07:31:31PM 1 point [-]

The analogy is between having imperfect information of your future choice (while choosing), and imperfect information of your own tastes (while tasting).

None of this Newcomb's problem stuff is relevant to quantum physics; even if we were living in a non-quantum, Newtonian world, we would have all the same experiences related to this problem.

Comment author: SilasBarta 21 September 2009 07:50:12PM 1 point [-]

The analogy is between having imperfect information of your future choice (while choosing), and imperfect information of your own tastes (while tasting).

That still doesn't work. In making my choice (per AnnaSalamon's drawing of Eliezer_Yudkowsky's TDT causal model for Newcomb's problem), I get to disconnect my decision-making process from its parents (parents not shown in AnnaSalamon's drawing because they'd be disconnected anyway). I do not disconnect the influence of my genes when learning whether I like cilantro.

Moreover, while I can present myself with reasons to change my mind, I cannot (knowingly) feed myself relevant evidence that I do not like cilantro, arbitrarily changing the probability of a given past ancestry.

None of this Newcomb's problem stuff is relevant to quantum physics; even if we were living in a non-quantum, Newtonian world, we would have all the same experiences related to this problem.

Yes, the Everett branch concept isn't necessary, but still, the weirdness of the implications of the situation do indeed apply to whatever physical laws contain it.