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Eugine_Nier comments on An additional problem with Solomonoff induction - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: gedymin 22 January 2014 11:34PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 25 January 2014 04:15:49AM 0 points [-]

The "Game of Life" does not describe a single universe but a collection of universes. A single universe consists merely of a series of time steps. Yes, you can observe patterns in the time steps, but it's not clear how to meaningfully talk about cause and effect.

Comment author: kokotajlod 25 January 2014 02:23:41PM 0 points [-]

That may be true, but I don't see how it affects the discussion between ThisSpaceAvailable and me.

I could easily change my example so that it involves a single universe rather than a collection. And if we can't talk about cause and effect in the game of life universe, we can't talk about cause and effect in the real universe either. (Unless you can find some relevant distinction between the two, and thus show my analogy to be faulty.)