Comment on Mixed Reference: The Great Reductionist Project

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:57:12 GMT

All right, that was much clearer, thanks ! But then, why do we care about a "counterfactual world" at all ?

My impression was that Eliezer claimed that we need a counterfactual world in order to evaluate counterfactuals. But I argue that this is not true; for example, we could ask our model "what are my chances of getting cancer ?" just as easily as "what are my chances of getting cancer if I stop smoking right now ?", and get useful answers back -- without constructing any alternate realities. So why do we need to worry about a fully-realized counterfactual universe ?

Discuss