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Jack comments on Confidence levels inside and outside an argument - Less Wrong
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This is totally testable. I'm going to download some raw quantum noise. If the first byte isn't FF I will say the magic word. I will then report back what the first byte was.
Update: the first byte was 1B
...
Abracadabra.
Still here.
Initially this was anthropic evidence for normality, until people would have had time to replicate the experiment. Suppose the word was that dangerous, and the first byte had been FF. By now, all the people replicating the experiment have destroyed those universes. Only the universes where the experiment failed to show FF on the first try are still around.
Which means we have to cut down on the worlds where FF didn't happen. Say it with me everyone.
Abracadabra, Abracadabra, Abracadabra, Abracadabra, Abracadabra, Abracadabra...
If everyone who reads this comments says the word say, thirty times, we should be good, right?
At what point would you have accepted that saying "Abracadabra" does destroy the world? How would you have felt about that? And what service have you been using? I only know about random.org. Thanks.
ETA:
I used this one. After two FFs I would have decided I was in a simulation which some Less Wrong poster had set up post-singularity to screw with us. Those kind of Cartesian Joker scenarios are way more probable than "Abracadabra" destroying the world...
Just two FFs? That doesn't seem all that improbable even forgetting all thought of world destruction. After about 100 FFs I would suspect that there was a problem with my experimental procedure (eg. internet quantum byte source broken). That too would be testable. ("I'm not going to say Abracadabra this time. FF? FF? Now I am. FF? FF?)
Well two FFs by chance is 1 in 65536. And my prior for "I'm in a simulation" isn't that low. You're right about the service being broken or fraudulent and really right about needing to test what happens if I don't say Abracadabra. But you definitely don't have to wait for 100 FFs!
That isn't the number to consider here. The relevant prior is "I'm in a simulation and this particular simulation involves the abracadabra trick". That number is quite a bit lower!
True enough. I estimate that I'd start testing after 4 or 5. :)
Yeah. Hmm. I don't really have a stable estimate of that probability. Of course, it's not like like I would have stopped after two trials, but at that point I'm poring myself a drink. Worth noting that by coming up with the hypothesis I drastically increased its probability and then by mentioning it here I increased it's probability even further.
Would you mind attempting to narrate any internal dialog you'd imagine yourself having after the 3rd? Lol.
"Um. WTF? Is this even working?"
(Yes, since the test is so trivial I might even click through a test after 2. I just wouldn't start suspecting modded sims.)