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NihilCredo comments on Fixedness From Frailty - Less Wrong
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But it is relevant to the argument about dismissing hypotheticals as only occurring when you're insane or dreaming, and so trying to sanely work your way through such a problem has no use for you, because you'll never apply any of this reasoning in any sane situation.
The main post made the point that
and this is the counterpoint: that there are ways of checking whether the situation's insane, and ways of assuring yourself that the situation is almost certainly sane. Saying that the point of the Omega problems is to discuss it conditional on it being truthful doesn't help when the author is saying that the "whole point of the Omega problems" is only going to be of use to you when you're insane.
Being completely simulated by an external party is an unrealistic scenario for a human, but a very realistic one for an artificial intelligence. I always assumed that was one of the primary reasons for LW's fascination with Omega problems.
Also, not all Omega problems are equal. As has been pointed out a bazillion of times, Newcomb's Paradox works just as well if you only assume a good guesser with a consistent better-than-even track record (and indeed, IMO, should be phrased like this from the start, sacrificing simplicity for the sake of conceptual hygiene), so insanity considerations are irrelevant. On the flip-side, Counterfactual Mugging is "solved" by earning the best potential benefit right now as you answer the question, so the likelihood of Omega does have a certain role to play.
Being completely simulated by an external party is a realistic scenario for a human, given that an artificial intelligence exists. This might also be part of the fascination.
And also conditional on the frequent LW belief that AIs become gods, but yeah.