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ike comments on Absolute Authority - Less Wrong
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Comments (72)
I think deception should be treated as a special case, here. Normally, P(X | a seemingly correct argument for X) is pretty high. When you specifically expect deception, this is no longer true.
I'm not sure it's useful to consider "what if they hack your mind" in this kind of conversation. Getting hacked isn't a Bayesian update, and hallucinations do not constitute evidence.
If there was a way to differentiate hallucinations from real vision, then I'd agree, but there isn't.
Anyway, I thought of a (seemingly) knockdown argument for not believing future selves: what if you currently believe at 50% that tomorrow you'll be convinced of 2+2=3, the next day 2+2=5, and the next day 2+2=6? (And that it only has one answer.) If you just blindly took those as minimums, then your total probability mass would be at least 150%. Therefore, you can only trust your current self.
Sure, but that is a different problem than what I'm talking about. Expecting to hallucinate is different than expecting to receive evidence. If you expect to be actually convinced, you ought to update now. If you expect to be "convinced" by hallucination, I don't think any update is required.
Framing the 2+2=3 thing as being about deception is, IMO, failing to engage with the premise of the argument.
I would be very confused, and very worried about my ability to separate truth from untruth. In that state, I wouldn't feel very good about trusting my current self, either.