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Decius comments on The Number Choosing Game: Against the existence of perfect theoretical rationality - Less Wrong Discussion

-1 Post author: casebash 29 January 2016 01:04AM

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Comment author: Decius 06 January 2016 04:37:20AM -2 points [-]

The perfectly rational agent considers all possible different world-states, determines the utility of each of them, and states "X", where X is the utility of the perfect world.

For the number "X+epsilon" to have been a legal response, the agent would have had to been mistaken about their utility function or what the possible worlds were.

Therefore X is the largest real number.

Note that this is a constructive proof, and any attempt at counterexample should attempt to prove that the specific X discovered by a perfectly rational omniscient abstract agent with a genie. If the general solution is true, it will be trivially true for one number.

Comment author: casebash 06 January 2016 05:03:12AM 1 point [-]

That's not how maths works.