kithpendragon comments on The Number Choosing Game: Against the existence of perfect theoretical rationality - Less Wrong

-1 Post author: casebash 29 January 2016 01:04AM

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Comment author: kithpendragon 06 January 2016 01:49:24AM 0 points [-]

Are you arguing that all things end, therefore there is no value in anything?

My argument was not meant to imply nihilism, though that is an interesting point. (Aside: Where is the quote from?) Rather, I meant to imply the hidden costs (e.g. time for calculation or input) making the exercise meaningless. As has been argued by several people now, having the Agent be able to state arbitrarily large or accurate numbers, or able to wait an arbitrarily large amount of time without losing any utility is... let's say problematic. As much so as the likelyhood of the Game Master being able to actually hand out utility based on an arbitrarily large/accurate number.

Comment author: gjm 06 January 2016 02:12:04AM 0 points [-]

The quotation is from the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, traditionally (but probably wrongly) ascribed to the allegedly very wise King Solomon.