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wedrifid comments on Less Wrong: Open Thread, September 2010 - Less Wrong
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Really? How about "when you are, in fact, 1/10^(N-12) and have good reason to believe it"? Throwing in a large N doesn't change the fact that 10^N is still 1,000,000,000,000 times larger than 10^(N-12) and nor does it mean we could not draw conclusions about belief (2).
(Not commenting on Eliezer here, just suggesting the argument is not all that persuasive to me.)
To an extremely good approximation one in a million events don't ever happen.
To an extremely good approximation this Everett Branch doesn't even exist. Well, it wouldn't if I used your definition of 'extremely good'.
Your argument seems to be analogous to the false claim that it's remarkable that a golf ball landed exactly where it did (regardless of where it did land) because the odds of that happening were extremely small.
I don't think my argument is analogous because there is reason to think that being one of the most important people to ever live is a special happening clearly distinguishable from many, many others.
Yet they are quite easy to generate - flip a coin a few times.
I agree. Somebody has to be the most important person ever. If Elizer really has made significant contributions to the future of humanity, he's much more likely to be that most important person than a random person out of 10^N candidates would be.
The argument would be that Eliezer should doubt his own ability to reason if his reason appears to cause him to think he is 1 in 10^N. My claim is that if this argument is true everyone who believes in (1) and thinks N is large should, to an extremely close approximation, have just as much doubt in their own ability to reason as Eliezer should have in his.
Agreed. Not sure if Eliezer actually believes that, but I take your point.
Here, here. That is a trillion times more probable!