Tyrrell_McAllister comments on What Are Probabilities, Anyway? - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Wei_Dai 11 December 2009 12:25AM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 11 December 2009 04:46:58AM 1 point [-]

Thanks. That makes it a lot clearer.

It seems like this "caring" could be analyzed a lot more, though. For example, suppose I were an altruist who continued to care about the "heads" worlds even after I learned that I'm not in them. Wouldn't I still assign probability ~1 to the proposition that the coin came up tails in my own world? What does that probability assignment of ~1 mean in that case?

I suppose the idea is that a probability captures not only how much I care about a world, but also how much I think that I can influence that world by acting on my values.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 11 December 2009 11:23:47PM 0 points [-]

See http://lesswrong.com/lw/15m/towards_a_new_decision_theory/ for more details. Many of my later posts can be considered explanations/justifications for the "design choices" I made in that post.