paper-machine comments on The Irrationality Game - Less Wrong

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

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

Comments (910)

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

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2012 06:02:23PM -1 points [-]

What paradox? There wasn't even a paradox.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 13 April 2012 06:15:32PM 2 points [-]

As I understood it, the paradox was that by the rules of the thread, "This comment will be massively upvoted. 100%" is something I should upvote if I believe it's unlikely to be true. But if I upvote it on that basis, I should expect others to upvote it as well. But if I expect others to upvote it, then I should expect it to be upvoted, and therefore I should consider it likely to be true. But if I consider it likely to be true, then by the rules of the thread, I should downvote it. But if I downvote on that basis, I should expect others to downvote it as well, and therefore I should consider it unlikely to be true. But...

Comment author: thomblake 13 April 2012 06:12:10PM 1 point [-]

Naively:

Everyone should agree that 100% certainty of something is infinitely overconfident. Then, everyone should upvote. Knowing this, I'm completely certain that I'll get lots of upvotes, and so absurdly large amounts of certainty seem justified. And as a kicker, everyone said I was overconfident of something that turned out to be correct.

Obviously, there are other possibilities (like me retracting the comment before it can be massively upvoted), so (like usual) 100% certainty really isn't justified. And unforseen consequences like that are exactly why you don't play with outcome pumps, as the time turner story reminds us.