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DanielLC comments on Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable - Less Wrong
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Although, each wouldn't know about the other... so maybe they would be justified in inferring that the other doesn't exist.
(After all, invisible fairies could be hiding in your attic right now, provided they are invisible, inaudible, massless, permeable to all substances...)
Say what you will about them being justified. They're still wrong.
Um... If there's a particle which does not interact with anything in the observable universe, then the state of the universe would be exactly the same if that particle did not exist. While we can go about postulating the existence of a myriad of such particles, the entire idea of Occam's razor is that it is easier to just say that things which cannot possibly affect the universe don't exist.
Why are you suggesting saying it doesn't exist? Because it's easier?
Because there's no evidence of it.
But there's also no evidence against it. Just don't update your priors. Don't pick the simplest explanation in the set and claim it's the only possible one.
It's not the only possible one, but I'm going to act as if it doesn't exist because I have no evidence it exists and because there's no reason to expect that to change.
Ask yourself, "What's your anticipated experience?"
If you don't have one, how can you even say you have a belief?
I have a past experience that leads me to predict essentially no direct experiences yet that I have nonetheless have not forgotten. For example, if I remember sending the relativistic rocket outside my future light-cone or towards a black hole. I still believe it probably exists.
Well, your memory counts as an experience. As does the hawking radiation that you expect to find emitting out of a black hole.
Just as your subjective experience of consciousness counts as evidence of you being conscious. Just as the similarities between your behavior and the behavior of others is exactly what you'd expect if they were as conscious as you are.
Your memory only shows that the ship left. It doesn't tell you that the ship continued existing once it crossed the event horizon.
Suppose someone offers you what's either an experience machine or an omnipotence machine. As much fun as an experience machine is, you know other people need you enough that it's important not to enter it. An omnipotence machine will let you help these people much more efficiently, so it would be very important to enter. Your anticipated experiences are the same either way, yet you do not value each possibility the same. If you use the machine, you clearly believe it's an omnipotence machine. If not, you believe it's an experience machine.
I'm not sure I understand the hypothetical.
I enter the omnipotence machine and experience omnipotence with expected experience of saving the human race versus entering the experience machine and... what exactly? Dreaming I saved the human race? I expect to save the human race. Are you saying I should say expected consequences? Or what?
If I can't tell the difference, I don't know how this applies. At that point, we're back at solipsism. If my experiences are false, then any attempt to steer my future is doomed.
Yes.
Any attempt to experiment is doomed. You have to make a decision under uncertainty. You'd have to do that anyway. It's just that now "experiment" isn't one of the options.