Comment on Fixedness From Frailty

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:24:05 GMT

That problem is why you have to be careful with the insanity hypothesis: there IS a possibility that you are insane, but it doesn't have all the same evidence that Omega existing does. Which is where a lot of people in this thread are coming from: sanity tests, dreaming tests, and so on will give you evidence about your sanity without having to involve Omega; so that you can through repeated and varied tests reduce the probability of your insanity below Omega existing, and then start considering the Omega possibility.

In other words, experiencing Omega existing is strong evidence for your insanity, and strong evidence for Omega existing. Since your prior for insanity is higher than your prior for Omega existing, you ought to conclude that you need to test your insanity hypothesis until you have enough strong evidence against it to update your priors so that Omega is more likely than insanity.

Discuss