Silas comments on Building Something Smarter - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 November 2008 05:00PM

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Comment author: Silas 04 November 2008 08:45:48PM 0 points [-]

Nick_Tarleton: Actually, Tim_Tyler's claim would still be true there, because you may want to print out that list, even if you knew some exact arrangement of atoms with that property.

However, I think Marcello's Rule is still valid there and survives Tim_Tyler's objection: in that case, what you don't know is "the sensation arising from looking at a the numbers 1 through 100 prettily printed". Even if you had seen such a list before, you probably would want to print it out unless your memory were perfect.

My claim generalizes nicely. For example, even if you ran a program for the purpose of automating a farm, and knew exactly how the farm would work, then what you don't know in that case is "the sensation of subsisting for x more days". Although Marcello's Rule starts to sound vacuous at that point.

Hey, make a squirrely objection, get a counterobjection twice as squirrely ;-)