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wedrifid comments on This post is for sacrificing my credibility! - Less Wrong Discussion

-29 Post author: Will_Newsome 02 June 2012 12:08AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 02 June 2012 01:21:42AM * 22 points [-]

Don't be shallow, don't just consider the obvious points. Consider that I've thought about this for many, many hours, and that you don't have any privileged information.

So? You say crazy (and wrong) shit a lot and have no credibility.

Whence our disagreement, if one exists?

Try explaining your reasoning and we might see. The whole "I have mysterious reasons why this crazy idea is true" thing is just annoying. (Whether done by you or Eliezer.)

Comment author: Will_Newsome comment score below threshold [+] (16 children)

Comment author: Armok_GoB 02 June 2012 07:31:30PM 3 points [-]

If that's the reason, shouldn't you try to maximize credibility with reliable, high credibility people who understand those aspects of fun theory (especialy those who themselves are credible), keep it neutral with mental helth related profesionals who may lock you up, and minimize it with everyone else?

In other words; credibility is a two place function and your question is a false dichotomy.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 June 2012 07:40:15PM 1 point [-]

You're the closest I've seen to understanding this post. You grok at least 20% of it.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 02 June 2012 10:12:32PM 2 points [-]

I only commented on 33% of it, so I'd say that's a pretty decent result.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 June 2012 01:34:23AM * 2 points [-]

So now we're in a situation mildly close to an interesting epistemic situation, which is, winning the lottery. Winning the lottery or some better-optimized event provides a lot of incommunicable evidence that you're in a simulation. The typical anthropic problem in group epistemology -- your winning tells me nothing. I have a question for you: How serious a problem do you think this is in practice? If it's a common problem and been one throughout history, what social institutions would have evolved to help solve the problem? Or is solving the problem impossible? Only try to answer these if you're interested in the questions themselves of course.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 03 June 2012 02:31:53AM 4 points [-]

You're looking at it all wrong, "you" are not "in" any simulation or universe. There exists instantiations of the algorithm, including the fact that it remembers winning the lottery, which is you in various universes and simulations and boltzman brains and other things, with certainty (for our purposes), and what you need to do depends on what you want ALL instances to do. It doesn't matter how many simulations of you are run, or what measure they have, or anything else like that, if your decisions within them don't matter for the multiverse at large.

None of the evolved concepts and heuristics, which you have been wired to assume so deeply alternatives may be literally unthinkable, are inapplicable in this kind of situation. These concepts include the self, anticipation, and reality. Anthropic is an heuristic as well, and a rather crappy one at that.

So ask yourself, what is your objective, non-local utility function over the entirety of the tegmark-4 multiverse, and for what action would it be logically implied to be the largest if all algorithms similar to yours outputted that action?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 June 2012 02:40:44AM 2 points [-]

Yes, I really despise non-decision-theoretic approaches to anthropics. I know how to write a beautiful post that explains where almost all anthropic theories go wrong -- the key point is a combination of double counting evidence and only ever considering counterfactual experiences that logically couldn't be factual -- but it'd take awhile, and it's easier to just point people at UDT. Might give me some philosophy cred, which is cred I'd be okay with.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 03 June 2012 02:57:51AM 4 points [-]

Actually, it does wrong on a much deeper and earlier level than that, and also you don't grok UDT as well as you think you do, or you wouldn't have considered the lottery question worth even considering.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 June 2012 03:10:25AM * 0 points [-]

More precisely, though, I thought the subject was worth your consideration, because I hadn't seen you in decision theory discussion. (Sorry, I don't mean to be or come across as defensive here. I'm a little surprised your model of me doesn't predict me asking those as trick questions. But only a little.)

Re deeper problems, there are metaphysical problems that are deeper and should be obvious, but the tack I wanted to take was purely epistemological, such that there's less wiggle room. Many people reject UDT because "values shouldn't affect anticipation", and I think I can neatly argue against anthropics without hitting up against that objection. Which would be necessary to convince the philosophers, I think.

continue this thread »

Comment author: JoshuaZ 03 June 2012 03:12:42AM 2 points [-]

I'd be very interested in seeing such a post.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 June 2012 03:17:17AM * -1 points [-]

I should at least make a few paragraphs of summary, because I've referenced the idea like three times now, I've never written it down, and if it ends up being wrong I'm going to feel pretty dumb. I'll try to respond to your comment in the next few days with said paragraphs.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 June 2012 01:51:12AM * 2 points [-]

Wait, I thought in my case those were, like, really tied into each other, barely two different things.

Nope, you say some crazy-sounding things that are actually right too. There are just other people that manage to say the crazy-sounding-but-right things and not say the just-plain-crazy things a hell of a lot better than you are capable of.

Comment author: Will_Newsome comment score below threshold [+] (1 child)

Comment author: mwengler comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

Comment author: Username 05 August 2015 03:25:04PM 0 points [-]

I don't know about "no credibility", Will knew some.

wedrifid comments on This post is for sacrificing my credibility! - Less Wrong Discussion

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