Kevin comments on The Irrationality Game - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Will_Newsome 03 October 2010 02:43AM

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Comment author: Kevin 03 October 2010 07:43:11AM *  34 points [-]

It does not all add up to normality. We are living in a weird universe. (75%)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 October 2010 07:53:59AM 5 points [-]

Please specify what you mean by a weird universe.

Comment author: Kevin 03 October 2010 08:13:53AM 5 points [-]

We are living in a Fun Theory universe where we find ourselves as individual or aggregate fun theoretic agents, or something else really bizarre that is not explained by naive Less Wrong rationality, such as multiversal agents playing with lots of humanity's measure.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 October 2010 04:54:18AM 3 points [-]

The more I hear about this the more intrigued I get. Could someone with a strong belief in this hypothesis write a post about it? Or at the very least throw out hints about how you updated in this direction?

Comment author: Interpolate 03 October 2010 11:20:26AM *  4 points [-]

It does not all add up to normality. We are living in a weird universe. (75%)

My initial reaction was that this is not a statement of belief but one of opinion, and to think like reality.

We are living in a Fun Theory universe where we find ourselves as individual or aggregate fun theoretic agents, or something else really bizarre that is not explained by naive Less Wrong rationality, such as multiversal agents playing with lots of humanity's measure.

I'm still not entirely sure what you mean (further elaboration would be very welcome), but going by a naive understanding I upvoted your comment based on the principle of Occam's Razor - whatever your reasons for believing this (presumably perceived inconsistencies, paradoxes etc. in the observable world, physics etc.) I doubt your conceived "weird" universe would the simplest explanation. Additionally, that conceived weird universe in addition to lacking epistemic/empirical ground begs for more explanation than the understanding/lack thereof of the universe/reality that's more of less shared by current scientific consensus.

If I'm understanding correctly, your argument for the existence of a "weird universe" is analagous to an argument for the existence of God (or the supernatural, for that matter): where by introducing some cosmic force beyond reason and empiricism, we eliminate the problem of there being phenomena which can't be explained by it.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 03 October 2010 10:10:40AM *  4 points [-]

Would "Fortean phenomena really do occur, and some type of anthropic effect keeps them from being verifiable by scientific observers" fit under this statement?

Comment author: Kevin 03 October 2010 10:13:36AM 1 point [-]

That sounds weird to me.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 October 2010 07:50:01AM *  2 points [-]

Downvoted in agreement (I happen to know generally what Kevin's talking about here, but it's really hard to concisely explain the intuition).

Comment author: Clippy 04 October 2010 04:25:49PM 1 point [-]

Why do you think so?

Comment author: Kevin 09 October 2010 10:49:26PM 2 points [-]

For some definitions of weird, our deal (assuming it continues to completion) is enough to land this universe in the block of weird universes.