Unknown: of course it would make a difference, just as my behavior would be different if I had billions of dollars rather than next to nothing or if I were immortal rather than mortal. It doesn't have anything to do with "morality" though.

For example, if I had the power of invisibility (and immateriality) and were able to plant a listening device in the oval office with no chance of getting caught, I would do it in order to publicly expose the lies and manipulations of the Bush administration and give proof of the willful stupidity and rampant dishonesty that many of his former administration have stated they witnessed daily -- not because I think there is some objective code of morality that they violate but because I think the world would be a better place if their lies were exposed and such people did not have such power. (Note: I don't think it would be a better place in anything like an objective sense: that is just my personal preference, and if I had the power to make it so, I would.)

(Hello, NSA: this is all purely fictional, of course.)

On the topic of vegetarianism, I originally became a vegetarian 15 years ago because I thought it was "wrong" to cause unnecessary pain and suffering of conscious beings, but I am still a vegetarian even though I no longer think it is "wrong" (in anything like the ordinary sense).

Now that I no longer think that the concept of "morality" makes much sense at all (except as a fancy and unnecessary name for certain evolved tendencies that are purely a result of what worked for my ancestors in their environments (as they have expressed themselves and changed over the course of my lifetime)), I remain a vegetarian for the reason that I still prefer there to be less unnecessary pain and suffering rather than more. I don't think my preference is demanded or sanctioned by some objective moral law; it is merely my preference.

I recognize now that the reason I thought it was "wrong" is that I had the underlying preference all along and that I recognized that my behavior was inconsistent with my fundamental preferences (and that I desired to act more consistently with my fundamental beliefs).

Would I prefer that more people were vegetarians? Yes. Is it because I think unnecessary pain and suffering are "wrong"? No. I just don't like unnecessary pain and suffering and would prefer for there to be less rather than more. If you take the person who says it is "wrong", and keep probing them for more fundamental reasons that they have this feeling of "wrongness", asking them "why do you believe that?" again and again, eventually you come to a point where they say "I just believe this".

As Wittgenstein said:

If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.”

Believers in morality try to convince us that there is a bedrock that justifies everything else but needs no justification itself, but there is no uncaused cause and there can be no infinite regress. Our evolved tendencies as they express themselves as a result of our life experience are the bedrock, and nothing else is necessary. Morality is just a fairy tale that we build upon the bedrock in order to convince ourselves that reality or nature (or God) cares about what we do and that we are absolved of responsibility for our behavior as long as we were "trying to do the right thing" (which is a more subtle version of the "I was just following orders" defense).

One might argue that I believe in "morality" but have merely substituted "preferences" for "moral beliefs", but the difference is that I don't think any of my preferences are different in kind from any others, so there is no justification for picking a subset of them and calling that subset "the moral preferences" and arguing that they are fundamentally different from any other preference I have.

Ah, I'm rambling ... Too much coffee.

Like many others here, I don't believe that there is anything like a moral truth that exists independently of thinking beings (or even dependently on thinking beings in anything like an objective sense), so I already live in something like that hypothetical. Thus my behavior would not be altered in the slightest.

@Richard: I think that's a valid reduction. It explains non-negative integers reductively in terms of an isomorphism between two groups of things without appealing to numbers or number concepts.

@constant: regardless of the label, you still have 2 sets of things, those which it is possible to label fizzbin (following the rules) and those which it is not. Possibility is still there. So what does it mean that it is possible to label a node fizzbin? Does that mean that in order to understand the algorithm, which relies on possibility of labelling nodes "fizzbin" or not, we now must set up a different search space, make an preliminary assumption about which nodes in that space we think it is possible to label fizzbin (following the rules), and then start searching and changing labels? How does this process terminate? It terminates in something other than the search algorithm, a primitive sense of possibility that is more fundamental than the concept of "can label fizzbin".

To be clear, there are two different but related points that I've tried to make here in the last few posts.

Point 1 is a minor point about the Rationalist's Taboo game:

With regard to this point, as I've stated already, the task was to give a reductive explanation of the concept of possibility by explaining it in terms of more fundamental concepts (i.e., concepts which have nothing to do with possibility or associated concepts, even implicitly). I think that Eliezer failed that by sneaking the concept of "possibile to be reached" (i.e., "reachable") into his explanation (note that what we call that concept is irrelevant, reachable or fizzbin or whatever).

Point 2 is a related but slightly different point about whether state-space searching is a helpful way of thinking about possibility and whether it actually explains anything.

I think I should summarize what I think Eliezer's thesis is first so that other people can correct me (Eliezer said he is "done explaining" anything to me, so perhaps others who think they understand him well would speak up if they understand his thesis differently).

Thesis: regarding some phenomenon as possible is nothing other than the inner perception a person experiences (and probably also the memory of such a perception in the past) after mentally running something like the search algorithm and determining that the phenomenon is reachable.

Is this substantially correct?

The problem I have with that position is that when we dig a little deeper and ask what it means for a state to be reachable, the answer circularly depends on the concept of possibility, which is what we are supposedly explaining. A reachable state is just a state that it is possible to reach. If you don't want to talk about reaching, call it transitioning or changing or whatever. The key point is that the algorithm divides the states (or whatever) into two disjoint sets: the ones it's possible to get to and the ones it is not possible to get to. What distinguishes these two sets except possibility?

You might say that there is no problem, this possibility is again to be explained in terms of a search (or the result of a search), recursively. But you can't have an infinite regress, so there must be a base case. The base case might be something hardwired into us, but then that would mean that the thing that is hardwired into us is what possibility really is, and that the sensation of possibility that arises from the search algorithm is just something that depends on our primitive notion of possibility. If the base case isn't something hardwired into us, it is still necessarily something other than the search algorithm, so again, the search algorithm is not what possibility is.

Cyan: I think your quibble misses the point. Eliezer's directions were to play the rationality taboo game and talk about possibility without using any of the forbidden concepts. His explanation failed that task, regardless of whether either he or Brandon were referring to the map or the territory. (Note: this point is completely unrelated to the specifics of the planning algorithm.)

I'll summarize my other points later. (But to reiterate the point that Eliezer doesn't get and pre-empt anybody else telling me yet again that the label is irrelevant, I realize the label is irrelevant, and I am not talking about character strings or labels at all.)

Eliezer, my point was that you dedicated an entire follow-up post to chiding Brandon, in part for using realizable in his explanation since it implicitly refers to the same concept as could, and that you committed the same mistake in using reachable.

Anyway, I guess I misunderstood the purpose of this post. I thought you were trying to give a reductive explanation of possibility without using concepts such a "can", "could", and "able". If I've understood you correctly now, that wasn't the purpose at all: you were just trying to describe what people generally mean by possibility.

Can you talk about "could" without using synonyms like "can" and "possible"? .... Can you describe the corresponding state of the world without "could", "possible", "choose", "free", "will", "decide", "can", "able", or "alternative"?

My point being that you set out to explain "could" without "able" and you do it by way of elaboration on a state being "able to be reached".

What you decide to label the concept does not change the fact that the concept you've decided upon is a composite concept that is made up of two more fundamental concepts: reaching (or transitioning to) and possibility.

You've provided 1 sense of possibility (in terms of reachability), but possibility is a more fundamental concept than "possible to be reached".

bump

I don't think reachable is permissible in the game, since reach-able means able to be reached, or possible to be reached.

Possibility is synonymous with to be able, so any term suffixed with -able should be forbidden.

The reachability explanation of possibility is also just one instance of possibility among many. to be able (without specifying in what manner) is the general type, and able to be reached is one particular (sub-) type of possibility. The more traditional understanding of possibility is able to exist, but others have been used too, such as able to be conceived, able to be done, able to be caused to exist, etc.