SodaPopinski comments on Open thread, Oct. 19 - Oct. 25, 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: MrMind 19 October 2015 06:59AM

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Comment author: SodaPopinski 21 October 2015 10:57:26PM -1 points [-]

Do we know whether quantum mechanics could rule out acausal between partners outside eachother's lightcone? Perhaps it is impossible to model someone so far away precisely enough to get a utility gain out of an acuasal trade? I started thinking about this after reading this wiki article on the 'Free will theorem' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem .

Comment author: lmm 24 October 2015 05:42:51PM 0 points [-]

The whole point of acausal trading is that it doesn't require any causal link. I don't think there's any rule that says it's inherently hard to model people a long way away.

Imagine being an AI running on some high-quality silicon hardware that splits itself into two halves, and one half falls into a rotating black hole (but has engines that let it avoid the singularity, at least for a while). The two are now causally disconnected (well, the one outside can send messages to the one inside, but not vice versa) but still have very accurate models of each other.

Comment author: SodaPopinski 24 October 2015 10:51:41PM 0 points [-]

Yes, I understand the point of acausal trading. The point of my question was to speculate on how likely it is that quantum mechanics may prohibit modeling accurate enough to make acausal trading actually work. My intuition is based on the fact that in general faster than light transmission of information is prohibited. For example, even though entangled particles update on each others state when they are outside of each others light cone, it is known that it is not possible transmit information faster than light using this fact.
Now, does mutually enhancing each others utility count as information, I don't think so. But my instinct is that acausal trade protocols will not be possible do to the level of modelling required and the noise introduced by quantum mechanics.

Comment author: lmm 04 November 2015 01:15:18PM 0 points [-]

I don't understand. Computers are able to provide reliable boolean logic even though they're made of quantum mechanics. And any "uncertainty" introduced by QM has nothing to do with distance. You seem very confused.

Comment author: SodaPopinski 04 November 2015 07:30:57PM *  0 points [-]

My question is simply: Do we have any reason to believe that the uncertainty introduced by quantum mechanics will preclude the level of precision in which two agents have to model each other in order to engage in acausal trade?

Comment author: lmm 06 November 2015 08:01:16PM 0 points [-]

No. There are any number of predictable systems in our quantum universe, and no reason to believe that an agent need be anything other than e.g. a computer program. In any case "noise" is the wrong way to think about QM; quantum behaviour is precisely predictable, it's just the subjective Born probabilities that apply.