ciphergoth comments on Infinite Certainty - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 January 2008 06:49AM

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Comment author: Kingreaper 16 December 2010 01:44:13PM *  3 points [-]

I don't think you could get up to 99.99% confidence for assertions like "53 is a prime number". Yes, it seems likely, but by the time you tried to set up protocols that would let you assert 10,000 independent statements of this sort - that is, not just a set of statements about prime numbers, but a new protocol each time - you would fail more than once.

If you forced me to come up wit 10,000 statements I knew to >=99.99% I would find it easy, given sufficient time. Most of them would be probability much much more than 99.99% however.

Here is a sample of the list: I am not the Duke of Edinburgh. Ronald Mcdonald is not on my roof I am not currently in a bath I am currently making a list of things I believe are highly likely Eliezer Yudowsky is not a paperclip maximising AI I am not the 10,000th sentient being ever to have existed. The Queen is not a cockerspaniel in disguise. I am not a P-zombie.

53 has no prime factors other than itself. (this is much greater certainty; as I can hold in my mind the following facts "the root of 53 is less than 8. 53 is not in the 7 times table. 53 is not in the 5 times table. 53 is not in the 3 times table and 53 is odd" simultaneously. For 53 not to be prime would require, as for 2+2 not to equal 4, that I be very insane. My probability of being that insane is less than 1 in 10,000, and of having that specific insanity is lower still.)

The difficult part is in finding 10,000 statements with precisely 1 in 10,000 odds; not finding 10,000 statements with less than 1 in 10,000 odds.

Comment author: ciphergoth 16 December 2010 01:58:59PM 1 point [-]

If you can make a statement every two seconds, you could actually stand up and do this. If I could get sponsorship to offset existential risk, I'd take this challenge on to actually stand up for the best part of a day and make 10,000 true statements with nary a false one.

I would however go for less variety than you if I wanted to be confident of winning this challenge. "My teeth are smaller than Jupiter. The Queen is smaller than Jupiter. A Ford Mondeo is smaller than Jupiter..."

Comment author: Kingreaper 16 December 2010 02:08:33PM *  1 point [-]

Those statements aren't even approximately independent though, if Jupiter turns out to be really small, they're all true. That's why mine were so weird, the independence clause.*

*(they still aren't actually independent, but I'm >99.99% sure you couldn't make a set of statements that were)

However, it's possible to make a set of statements that are mutually exclusive, which might actually be a superior task "I am not the 11,043rd sentient entity ever to exist. I am not the 21,043rd sentient entity ever to exist, etc."