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Jiro comments on Open thread, 9-15 June 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Tenoke 09 June 2014 01:07PM

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Comment author: Jiro 14 June 2014 04:29:32PM *  0 points [-]

If you have a choice between living in Sitka and living in New York, isn't that a choice that splits the worlds too? So in one world you'd be living in Sitka and in another world you'd be living in New York. In general, it would seem like "choose X so that I am in this set of worlds and not in that set of worlds" doesn't work--you're always still in the set of worlds where you made the opposite choice.

Even "choose X so as to increase my measure in this set of worlds and decrease my measure in that set of worlds" won't really work. By definition, the whole set of worlds encompasses all choices. You can't choose X so as to affect something about your situation with respect to the worlds. What would that mean anyway? Would there be a meta-set of sets of worlds, and there's a branch of the meta-set where you chose X and increased the measure of part of the set, and another branch of the meta-set where you didn't choose X and didn't increase the measure of the same part?

Comment author: [deleted] 14 June 2014 10:10:14PM 1 point [-]

See the free will sequence; it assumes one deterministic world but it easily generalizes to many deterministic negligibly-interacting worlds.