PaulAlmond comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong

23 Post author: multifoliaterose 19 August 2010 10:47PM

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

Article Navigation

Comments (726)

Comments (726)

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

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 August 2010 06:21:21PM 17 points [-]

I certainly do not assign a probability as high as 70% to the conjunction of all three of those statements.

And in case it wasn't clear, the problem I was trying to point out was simply with having forbidden conclusions - not forbidden by observation per se, but forbidden by forbidden psychology - and using that to make deductions about empirical premises that ought simply to be evaluated by themselves.

I s'pose I might be crazy, but you all are putting your craziness right up front. You can't extract milk from a stone!

Comment author: PaulAlmond 28 August 2010 09:55:00PM *  3 points [-]

Just curious (and not being 100% serious here): Would you have any concerns about the following argument (and I am not saying I accept it)?

  1. Assume that famous people will get recreated as AIs in simulations a lot in the future. School projects, entertainment, historical research, interactive museum exhibits, idols to be worshipped by cults built up around them, etc.
  2. If you save the world, you will be about the most famous person ever in the future.
  3. Therefore there will be a lot of Eliezer Yudkowsky AIs created in the future.
  4. Therefore the chances of anyone who thinks he is Eliezer Yudkowsky actually being the orginal, 21st century one are very small.
  5. Therefore you are almost certainly an AI, and none of the rest of us are here - except maybe as stage props with varying degrees of cognition (and you probably never even heard of me before, so someone like me would probably not get represented in any detail in an Eliezer Yudkowsky simulation). That would mean that I am not even conscious and am just some simple subroutine. Actually, now I have raised the issue to be scary, it looks a lot more alarming for me than it does for you as I may have just argued myself out of existence...
Comment author: wedrifid 29 August 2010 02:45:07AM 2 points [-]

Actually, now I have raised the issue to be scary, it looks a lot more alarming for me than it does for you as I may have just argued myself out of existence...

That doesn't seem scary to me at all. I still know that there is at least one of me that I can consider 'real'. I will continue to act as if I am one of the instances that I consider me/important. I've lost no existence whatsoever.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 29 August 2010 02:04:48AM 0 points [-]

You can see Eliezer's position on the Simulation Argument here.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit