HamletHenna comments on AI reflection problem - Less Wrong

4 [deleted] 27 November 2011 06:29AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 27 November 2011 10:02:45AM *  5 points [-]

It's nice that more people are starting to think about AI-related logic issues. But I don't understand this part:

When we set them equivalent, we get A1 ⊢ ∀t. ∀P. [[t]]P → P which is okay.

Why is it okay? It seems to me that if the AI can prove ∀t. ∀P. [[t]]P → P, then it can prove that ∀P. (∃t. [[t]]P) → P and blow up by Löb's Theorem again. Like this:

  1. Assume that ∃t. [[t]]P

  2. Apply your statement and obtain ∃t. P

  3. Note that t is unused and obtain P

Also, here's Wei Dai's solution from the original SL4 thread, which seems correct to me:

I think you probably misunderstood the paper. The purpose of searching for new theorem provers is to speed up the theorem proving, not to be able to prove new theorems that were unprovable using the old theorem prover. So the Gödel Machine only needs to prove that the new prover will prove a theorem if and only if the current prover will. I don't think this should be a problem.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 November 2011 05:31:11PM *  1 point [-]

I agree with Wei Dai's solution, though somehow I didn't see it before. The formula I wrote was incorrect. Do you know why Eliezer is still talking about the problem seven years after Wei Dai provided the solution? Or more specifically, why he wants to have A1 ⊢ ∀P . ◻(A2⊢P) → P instead of A1 ⊢ ∀P . (A2⊢P) → P ?

I've rewritten the post, giving credit to Wei Dai, and expanding on my contribution. Does that look okay?

Comment author: cousin_it 27 November 2011 11:24:32PM *  2 points [-]

Your rewrite seems to have the same error as the previous version. A correct formalization of Wei's solution could look like this:

A1 ⊢ ∀P. (A1 ⊢ P) ↔ (A2 ⊢ P)

If A1=A2, that equation collapses into a tautology, as it should.