You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

OrphanWilde comments on What's wrong with this picture? - Less Wrong Discussion

15 Post author: CronoDAS 28 January 2016 01:30PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (80)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 28 January 2016 06:46:45PM 1 point [-]

I think, but am not certain, that you're missing the point, by examining Bob's incredulity rather than the problem as stated. Let's say your probability that the universe is being simulated is 2^x.

Alice flips a coin (x+1) times. You watch her flip the coins, and she carefully marks down the result of each flip.

No matter what sequence you watch, and she records - that sequence has less likelihood of having occurred naturally than that the universe is simulated, according to your priors. If it helps, imagine that a coin you know to be fair turns up Heads each time. (A sequence of all heads seems particularly unlikely - but every other sequence is equally unlikely.)

Comment author: cousin_it 29 January 2016 01:24:55AM *  3 points [-]

I agree that the probability of seeing that exact sequence is low. Not sure why that's a problem, though. For any particular random-looking sequence, Bob's prior P(see this sequence | universe is simulated) is pretty much equal to P(see this sequence | universe is not simulated), so it shouldn't make Bob update.