FeepingCreature comments on The sin of updating when you can change whether you exist - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Benja 28 February 2014 01:25AM

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Comment author: FeepingCreature 28 February 2014 04:25:31AM *  0 points [-]

I think the "transparent Newcomb" version of the blue-sky scenario is more well-known? Might want to point that out.

There is a much more principled possibility, which I'll call pseudo-Bayesian decision theory, or PBDT. PBDT can be seen as re-interpreting updating as saying that you're indifferent about what happens in possible worlds in which you don't exist as a conscious observer, rather than ruling out those worlds as impossible given your evidence.

I can't follow the math but this feels like it'd inexorably lead to Quantum Suicide.