Comment on Rationality Quotes April 2012

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:01:48 GMT

(LessWrong implicitly assumes certain metaphysics pretty often, e.g. when they talk about "simulation", "measure", "reality fluid", and so on; it seems to me that "anthropics" is a place where experience meets metaphysics. My preferred metaphysic for anthropics comes from decision theory, and my intuitions about decision theory come to a small extent from theological metaphysics and to a larger extent from theoretical computer science, e.g. algorithmic probability theory, which I figured is a metaphysic for the same reason that monadology is a metaphysic. ISTM that even if metaphysics aren't as fundamental as they pretend to be, they're still useful and perhaps necessary for organizing our experiences and intuitions so as to predict/understand prospective/counterfactual experiences in highly unusual circumstances (e.g. simulations).)

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