alexey comments on L-zombies! (L-zombies?) - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Benja 07 February 2014 06:30PM

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Comment author: alexey 16 February 2014 07:11:17AM *  2 points [-]

But my point is that at some point, a "static analysis" becomes functionally equivalent to running it. If I do a "static analysis" to find out what the state of the Turing machine will be at each step, I will get exactly the same result (a sequence of states) that I would have gotten if I had run it for "real", and I will have to engage in computation that is, in some sense, equivalent to the computation that the program asks for.

Crucial words here are "at some point". And Benja's original comment (as I understand it) says precisely that Omega doesn't need to get to that point in order to find out with high confidence what Eliezer's reaction to counterfactual mugging would be.