It might be more promising to assume that states with many people hurt have a low correlation with what any random person claims to be able to effect.
Robin: Great point about states with many people having low correlations with what one random person can effect. This is fairly trivially provable.
Aha!
For some reason, that didn't click in my mind when Robin said it, but it clicked when Vassar said it. Maybe it was because Robin specified "many people hurt" rather than "many people", or because Vassar's part about being "provable" caused me to actually look for a reason. When I read Robin's statement, it came through as just "Arbitrarily penalize probabilities for a lot of people getting hurt."
But, yes, if you've got 3^^^^3 people running around they can't all have sole control over each other's existence. So in a scenario where lots and lots of people exist, one has to penalize by a proportional factor the probability that any one person's binary decision can solely control the whole bunch.
Even if the Matrix-claimant says that the 3^^^^3 minds created will be unlike you, with information that tells them they're powerless, if you're in a generalized scenario where anyone has and uses that kind of power, the vast majority of mind-instantiations are in leaves rather than roots.
This seems to me to go right to the root of the problem, not a full-fledged formal answer but it feels right as a starting point. Any objections?
Comment author:Ben123
07 June 2012 05:52:41PM
1 point
[-]
Is that a general solution? What about this: "Give me five dollars or I will perform an action, the disutility of which will be equal to twice that of you giving me five dollars, multiplied by the reciprocal of the probability of this statement being true."
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It might be more promising to assume that states with many people hurt have a low correlation with what any random person claims to be able to effect.
Robin: Great point about states with many people having low correlations with what one random person can effect. This is fairly trivially provable.
Aha!
For some reason, that didn't click in my mind when Robin said it, but it clicked when Vassar said it. Maybe it was because Robin specified "many people hurt" rather than "many people", or because Vassar's part about being "provable" caused me to actually look for a reason. When I read Robin's statement, it came through as just "Arbitrarily penalize probabilities for a lot of people getting hurt."
But, yes, if you've got 3^^^^3 people running around they can't all have sole control over each other's existence. So in a scenario where lots and lots of people exist, one has to penalize by a proportional factor the probability that any one person's binary decision can solely control the whole bunch.
Even if the Matrix-claimant says that the 3^^^^3 minds created will be unlike you, with information that tells them they're powerless, if you're in a generalized scenario where anyone has and uses that kind of power, the vast majority of mind-instantiations are in leaves rather than roots.
This seems to me to go right to the root of the problem, not a full-fledged formal answer but it feels right as a starting point. Any objections?
Is that a general solution? What about this: "Give me five dollars or I will perform an action, the disutility of which will be equal to twice that of you giving me five dollars, multiplied by the reciprocal of the probability of this statement being true."