wedrifid comments on Newcomb's Problem: A problem for Causal Decision Theories - Less Wrong

8 [deleted] 16 August 2010 11:25AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (120)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: wedrifid 25 August 2010 07:07:02AM 6 points [-]

Hereinafter, "to Know x" means "to be objectively right about x, and to be subjectively 100 percent certain of x,

I know nothing! Nothing!

Comment author: GrateGoo 01 September 2010 09:13:52PM *  1 point [-]

My previous post resulted in 0 points, despite being very thoroughly thought-through. A comment on it, consisting of the four words "I know nothing! Nothing!" resulted in 4 points. If someone could please explain this, I'd be a grateful Goo.

Comment author: Clippy 01 September 2010 09:26:22PM *  10 points [-]

That is unfortunate. You deserve a better explanation.

I believe a lot of the posters here (because they're about as good as me at correct reasoning) did not read much of your exposition because toward the beginning, you posited a circumstance in which someone has 100% certainty of something. But this breaks all good epistemic models. One of the humans here provided a thorough explanation of why in the article 0 and 1 are not probabilities.

That, I believe, is why User:wedrifid found it insightful (as did 4 others) to say that User:wedrifid knows nothing, as per your standard, User:wedrifid knows nothing, since that User (like me and most others here) do not use 100% for any probability in our models.

Also, why do you call yourself "goo"? Wouldn't you rather be something stronger?

If you introduce yourself in the introduction thread, perhaps explaining your name, you can gain some Karma. Currently, you seem to be below zero, which introduces waiting periods between comments. I had that problem when I first posted here, but you can overcome it!

Comment author: wnoise 01 September 2010 09:20:40PM 3 points [-]

In general, the voting system doesn't reward thought through, nor large wads of text. It rewards small things that can be easily digested and seem insightful, no more than one or maybe two inferential steps from the median voter. Nitpicking and jokes are both easily judged.

Comment author: steven0461 01 September 2010 09:22:58PM 5 points [-]

In general, the voting system doesn't reward thought through, nor large wads of text.

The opposite is true: large wads of text can be turned into top-level posts, which get tenfold karma.

Comment author: wedrifid 01 September 2010 11:50:57PM *  2 points [-]

I don't know why your post got 0 points and no replies. But one of the reasons may be that it is hard to extract what the central point or conclusion you are trying to make is.

My comment gleaned 4 karma by taking the definition you introduce in the first sentence and tracing the implications using the reasoning Clippy mentions. This leads to the conclusion that I am literally in the epistemic state that is used in a hyperbolic sense by the character Shcultz from Hogans Heroes. While humour itself is hard to describe things that are surprising and include a contrast between distant concepts tend to qualify.

(By the way, the member Clippy is roleplaying an early iteration of an artificial intelligence with the goal of maximising paperclips - an example used to reference a broad group of unfriendly AIs that could be plausibly created by well meaning but idiotic programmers.)

Comment author: Clippy 02 September 2010 02:42:28AM 2 points [-]

I'm not role-playing, ape.