Nick_Tarleton comments on Late Great Filter Is Not Bad News - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Wei_Dai 04 April 2010 04:17AM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 05 April 2010 05:48:09PM *  2 points [-]

would it make you really sad or angry or desperate if you realised that you have won a billion (in any currency) under described circumstances? Would you really celebrate if you realised that the great filter, which wipes out a species 90% of the time, and which you previously believed we have already passed, is going to happen in the next 50 years?

Caring about other branches doesn't imply having congruent emotional reactions to beliefs about them. Emotions aren't preferences.

Comment author: prase 05 April 2010 06:36:03PM 1 point [-]

Emotions are not preferences, but I believe they can't be completely disentangled. There is something wrong with a person who feels unhappy after learning that the world has changed towards his/her prefered state.

Comment author: BrandonReinhart 07 April 2010 04:06:39AM 0 points [-]

I don't see how you can effectively apply social standards like "something wrong" to a mind that implements UDT. There are no human minds or non-human minds that I am aware of that perfectly implement UDT. There are no known societies of beings that do. It stands to reason that such a society would seem very other if judged by the social standards of a society composed of standard human minds.

When discussing UDT outcomes you have to work around that part of you that wants to immediately "correct" the outcome by applying non-UDT reasoning.

Comment author: prase 07 April 2010 12:24:50PM *  0 points [-]

That "something wrong" was not as much of a social standard, as rather an expression of an intuitive feeling of a contradiction, which I wasn't able to specify more explicitly. I could anticipate general objections such as yours, however, it would help if you can be more concrete here. The question is whether one can say he prefers the state of world where he dies soon with 99% probability, even if he would be in fact disappointed after realising that it was really going to happen. I think we are now at risk of redefining few words (like preference) to mean something quite different from what they used to mean, which I don't find good at all.

And by the way, why is this a question of decision theory? There is no decision in the discussed scenario, only a question whether some news can be considered good or bad.