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Wei_Dai comments on A Thought on Pascal's Mugging - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: komponisto 10 December 2010 06:08AM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 04 April 2011 03:59:22PM *  0 points [-]

Ok, I think in that case my argument doesn't work. Let me try another approach.

Suppose some stranger appears to you and says that you're living in a simulated world. Out in the real world there is another simulation that contains 3^^^^3 identical copies of a utopian Earth-like planet plus another 3^^^^3 identical copies of a less utopian (but still pretty good) planet.

Now, if you press this button, you'll turn X of the utopian planets into copies of the less utopian planet, where X is a 10^100 digit random number. (Note that K(X) is of order 10^100 which is much larger than K(3^^^^3) and so pressing the button would increase the Kolmogorov complexity of that simulated world by about 10^100.)

What does your proposed utility function say you should do (how much would you pay to either press the button or prevent it being pressed), and why?

Comment author: komponisto 04 April 2011 11:29:15PM 1 point [-]

Utility is monotonic, even though complexity isn't. (Thus X downgrades out of the 3^^^^3 wouldn't be as bad as, say, 3^^^3 downgrades.) However, utility is bounded by complexity: the complexity of a scenario with utility N must be at least N. (Asymptotically, of course.)