PhilGoetz comments on Probability is Subjectively Objective - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 July 2008 09:16AM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 24 August 2010 03:51:01AM *  1 point [-]

But it also makes a deep philosophical point as well, which I never saw Jaynes spell out explicitly, but I think he would have approved: there is no such thing as a probability that isn't in any mind. Any mind that takes in evidence and outputs probability estimates of the next event, remember, can be viewed as a prior - so there is no probability without priors/minds.

Is this why you believe so strongly in Many-Worlds? To avoid mind-free, objective, quantum-mechanical probabilities?

I felt all the way through this post like it was confronting a difficult philosophical problem head-on, and that if I kept reading a little more it would reveal a solution; but I never saw a solution. It described the problem very well; but if it was intended to move beyond that, then I missed it.