DanielLC comments on Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable - Less Wrong

124 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 August 2007 03:21AM

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Comment author: RomanDavis 27 August 2012 04:40:14AM 0 points [-]

Because there's no evidence of it.

Comment author: DanielLC 27 August 2012 04:58:45AM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: RomanDavis 27 August 2012 05:03:15AM *  0 points [-]

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?

Comment author: wedrifid 27 August 2012 05:27:38AM *  3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: RomanDavis 27 August 2012 05:42:25AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: DanielLC 27 August 2012 05:51:45AM 0 points [-]

Well, your memory counts as an experience.

Your memory only shows that the ship left. It doesn't tell you that the ship continued existing once it crossed the event horizon.

Comment author: RomanDavis 27 August 2012 06:02:04AM *  0 points [-]

It probably didn't exist as a rocket, at least for very long near a black hole, but you need magic to turn matter into nothing, and there's no evidence of magic.

Comment author: wedrifid 27 August 2012 06:56:38AM -1 points [-]

It probably didn't exist as a rocket, at least for very long near a black hole

It was a particularly large black hole.

Comment author: shminux 27 August 2012 07:04:50AM 0 points [-]

As far is we know, there is nothing inside a black hole, yet it is not magic.

Comment author: RomanDavis 27 August 2012 07:07:09AM *  0 points [-]

Not much space. Lots of mass.

Comment author: shminux 27 August 2012 07:14:37AM 0 points [-]

There is no standard way to define blackhole's volume, so your first statement is meaningless. ("Not much time" would make a bit more sense.) Black hole's mass can vary, so "Lots of mass" depends on what you mean by lots.

Comment author: DanielLC 27 August 2012 05:56:07AM *  4 points [-]

If you don't have one, how can you even say you have a belief?

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.

Comment author: RomanDavis 27 August 2012 06:09:36AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: DanielLC 27 August 2012 10:30:48PM 1 point [-]

Dreaming I saved the human race?

Yes.

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.

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.