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prase comments on The Blackmail Equation - Less Wrong
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You can influence your source code. You change the words and symbols in the text file, hit recompile, load the new binary into memory and execute it. If your code is such that it considers making such modifications as a suitable action to a situation then that is what you will do.
Common computer programs have a rather sharp boundary between their source code and the data. In brains (and hypothetical AIs) this distinction is (would be) probably less explicit. Whenever the baron learns anything, his source code changes in some sense, involuntarily, without recompiling. Still, the original source code contains all the information. Precommiting, in order to have some importance, should mean learning about a particular output of your own source code, rather than recompiling.
The use of 'source code' here is merely a metaphor.
Metaphor standing for what exactly?
UTM tape, brain, clockwork mechanism... whatever.