syzygy comments on Open Thread, May 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 01 May 2012 04:14AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (264)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: syzygy 05 May 2012 07:30:03AM *  0 points [-]

In any decision involving an Omega like entity that can run perfect simulations of you, there wouldn't be a way to tell if you were inside the simulation or in the real universe. Therefore, in situations where the outcome depends on the results of the simulation, you should act as though you are in the simulation. For example, in counterfactual mugging, you should take the lesser amount because if you're in Omega's simulation you guarantee your "real life" counterpart the larger sum.

Of course this only applies if the entity you're dealing with happens to be able to run perfect simulations of reality.