some focus on the 'Ending', some focus on the 'Journey', some sees no value at all... Therefore, I'm looking for a way to objectively measure the value of a person's life. (not sure if that is even possible)
Try watching Daniel Kahneman's TED talk The riddle of experience vs memory, it's nice and seems relevant to your question.
Sam Harris also has a really good TED talk on "the Sience of Morality"
If it is true that we live in a universe in which every possible future exists, then world destroying events don't matter at all.
Yes they do!
I don't want to live in one of the worlds that are going to die, so I'm going to do my best to make this world not be one of those (though I know that's not quite how it works ).
Knowing that the world is deterministic does not change anything from our perspective, or relieve us of moral responsibility. It all ads up to normality!
Ian, there's nothing wrong with reductionism.
Overly simplistic reductionism is wrong, e.g., if you divide a computer into individual bits, each of which can be in one of two states, then you can't explain the operation of the computer in just the states of its bits. However, that reduction omitted an important part, the interconnections of the bits--how each affects the others. When you reduce a computer to individual bits and their immediate relationships with other bits, you can indeed explain the whole computer's operation, completely. (It just becomes unwieldy to do so.)
"I mean if you list all the actions that it's parts can do alone, the combined thing can have actions that aren't in that list."
What are these "actions that aren't in that list"? They are still aggregations of interactions that take place at a lower level, but we assign meaning to them. The extra "actions" are in our interpretations of the whole, not in the parts or the whole itself.
A car without its engine isn't very good for driving, and neather is the engine all by itself. But that doesn't mean anything magical happens when you put them together. But that doesn't mean you can put them together any which way.
Also, knowing that the book I'm reading is of a deterministic nature, doesn't make me any less interested in knowing how it ends.
Imagine a ball rolling down a pipe. Att one point the pipe forks, and at that point there is a simple mecanical device that sorts the balls according to size: all balls larger than 4 cm in diameter go left, all smaller ones go right. Let this be the definition of a "choice" (with the device as the agent) for the following argument, and let "you" define a certain arangement of atoms in Eliezers block-universe-with-glue. Then "you" will be what "decides" every time you make a choice; trivially so, given those definitions.
My question is, what other definitions could we use to reach a different conclution?
I mean, if you define "free" in "free will" as "not goverend by physics", or "you" as different from the (or some part of the) structure of your atoms, we are having a different debate here.
Or a mathematician.
No worries! I think it kind of illustrates what bias is quite nicely though. I haven't been so "exposed" to it personally but I guess that's because I'm not from a English speaking country, I'll try to think of quote that would actually add something to the list next time. Thanks for stating your reason for downvoting!
Cheers!
I've never heard it...
From the first episode of Dexter, season 6:
Batista: "...it's all about faith..."
Dexter: "Mmm..."
Batista: "It's something you feel, not something you can explain. It's very hard to put into words."
Dexter smiles politely, while thinking to himself: Because it makes no sense.
Dexter is atheist? Maybe I should see that show after all...
I recently stumbled on this realization, when I was talking with friends about the myriad of problems, inconsistencies, and annoyances of the Star Wars universe. After the umteenth conflict was brought up, agreed upon, then given a plausible-sounding explanation, I was a little bit shocked at how amazingly easy Lucas' Advocacy came to me. It wasn't a big extrapolation to see that Devil's Advocacy was nearly as easy.
I think I've come to enjoy role playing games less since stumbling upon Less Wrong. Aside from being a communal activity, I find diminished value in obsessing over a map that is only as detailed as the players and DM construct. Maybe if the other players were as interested in models of reality as me it would be different. But in a game where you just Use The Force to fix all problems, clever tricks are largely unrewarded and thus unsatisfying.
Far more interesting to try and figure out this Bayes stuff. For instance, I saw the results of a study in a newscientist article. The article claimed that of 108 women, 75 claimed to have intuitive knowledge of their baby's sex, and of them, 60% were correct. I was trying to figure out the probability of a woman being intuitive, given that she was correct. It was a failure, since they did not say how correct the women who did not have intuitions were. But it was fun, and deeply satisfying to apply knowledge to a problem. I just realized the article linked to some press release, which seems like a bunch of woowoo. Now I really want to know how accurate the women who didn't profess magical intuition dream powers were.
I find roleplaying even more satisfying after finding LW! It's all in how you play though, lately my group and I have gone more and more freeform, bored with all the inconsistent and arbitrary rules much like what you are expressing, but don't let the rules stop you! if you want a more complex game than the system allows for, drop the system, not the game!
This is seriously of-topic though...
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Eliezer's discussion of evolution as an "alien god". That is, if you absolutely have to have a "god" figure, then evolution itself fits the bill pretty perfectly. Unfortunately for the Judeo-Christian types, it's less Jehovah and more Azathoth (H.P. Lovecraft's god of chaos) in nature. See Alien God.
I think you hit the nail on the head regarding /ehj2.
But...That's not... Yeah. If absolutely have to have a "god" figure, then you might as well grossly misinterpret EY's explanation to make it fit your own beliefs.
Thank you! I'm slowly beginning to learn this rationality thing it would seem :-)