= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
So you are saying that statement "0 and 1 are not probabilities" has probability of 1?
In response to
0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities
Nope. He's saying that based on his best analysis, it appears to be the case.
In response to
Counterfactual Mugging
Does this particular thought experiment really have any practical application?
I can think of plenty of similar scenarios that are genuinely useful and worth considering, but all of them can be expressed with much simpler and more intuitive scenarios - eg when the offer will/might be repeated, or when you get to choose in advance whether to flip the coin and win 10000/lose 100. But with the scenario as stated - what real phenomenon is there that would reward you for being willing to counterfactually take an otherwise-detrimental action for no reason other than qualifying for the counterfactual reward? Even if we decide the best course of action in this contrived scenario - therefore what?
The disanalogy here is that you have a long term social relationship with Bob that you don't have with Omega, and the $100 are an investment into that relationship.
Also, there is the possibility of future scenarios arising in which Bob could choose to take comparable actions, and we want to encourage him in doing so. I agree that the cases are not exactly analogous.
Strict honest Bayesians? ZERO. (Not even LW contains a single true honest Bayesian.)
Approximations of honest Bayesians? Better than you might think. Certainly LW is full of reasonably good approximations, and in studies about 80% of people are honest (though most people assume that only 50% of people are honest, a phenomenon known as the Trust Gap). The Bayesian part is harder, since people who are say, religious, or superstitious, or believe in various other obviously false things, clearly don't qualify.
people who are say, religious, or superstitious, or believe in various other obviously false things
Why do you think you know this?
In response to
Universal Law
But the new law doesn't look like the old law plus a special clause exempting the exception. It looks like a single, universal, mathematically simple, coherent statement, and it is then very clear that the old law was simply the approximate behavior of the new law under certain special conditions, the way that Newton's old laws of motion are simply the approximate behavior of Special Relativity under conditions in which the relative motion of particles is very slow compared to lightspeed.
The universality of the law is not a sophistry; the universe really does look that way.
A while ago, I came across a mathematics problem involving the calculation of the length of one side of a triangle, given the internal angles and the lengths of the other two sides. Eventually, after working through the trigonometry of it (which I have now forgotten, but could re-derive if I had to), I realised that it incorporated Pythagoras' Theorem, but with an extra term based on the cosine of one of the angles. The cosine of 90 degrees is zero, so in a right-angled triangle, this extra term disappears, leaving Pythagoras' Theorem as usual.
The older law that I knew turned out to be a special case of the more general law.
Okay, well let's apply exactly the technique discussed above:
If the hypothetical Omega tells you that they're is indeed a maximum value for happiness, and you will certainly be maximally happy inside the box: do you step into the box then?
Note: I'm asking that in order to give another example of the technique in action. But still feel free to give a real answer if you'd choose to.
Side you didn't answer the question one way or another, I can't apply the second technique here. I can't ask what would have to change in order for you to change your answer.
If the hypothetical Omega tells you that they're is indeed a maximum value for happiness, and you will certainly be maximally happy inside the box: do you step into the box then?
This would depend on my level of trust in Omega (why would I believe it? Because Omega said so. Why believe Omega? That depends on how much Omega has demonstrated near-omniscience and honesty). And in the absence of Omega telling me so, I'm rather skeptical of the idea.
In response to
Guardians of the Truth
If you believe in G-d then you believe in a being that can change reality just by willing it. So therefore you believe it's possible for consciousness to change/control existence.
So that could explain why Guardians fear too many non-believers: they feel threatened by what they perceive as the power of other people's consciousness. They fear that if there are too many non-believers that it might change the truth somehow.
But scientists (Seekers) know that reality is what it is regardless of what other people think, so they don't ascribe so much power to their fellow beings, and therefore don't feel as threatened by them.
If you believe in G-d then you believe in a being that can change reality just by willing it
OK, so by that definition...if you instead believe in a perfect rationalist that has achieved immortality, lived longer than we can meaningfully express, and now operates technology that is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic, including being involved in the formation of planets, then - what label should you use instead of 'G-d'?
In response to
Mere Messiahs
Why throughout all of your posts do you continue to speak of altruistic action as good or praiseworthy? Evolutionary psychology disproves ethical cognitivism... Just as there's no invisible dragon in my garage, there's also no such as thing as a value or a moral obligation.
Really? I know what a garage would behave like if it contained an invisible dragon - we'd be able to measure the exhaled carbon dioxide, see footprints appearing in the ground, outline it by throwing flour into the air, etc. I know what a garage would behave like if it contained a benevolent God; it would cure the cancer of people placed inside, etc. Can you tell me what a garage would look like if it contains a moral obligation?
It's not that we looked in the morality garage and found that it was empty, but that, rather, morality isn't the sort of thing you find in a garage in the first place.
I know what a garage would behave like if it contained a benevolent God
Do you, though? What if that God was vastly more intelligent than us; would you understand all of His reasons and agree with all of His policy decisions? Is there not a risk that you would conclude, on balance, "There should be no 'banned products shops'", while a more knowledgeable entity might decide that they are worth keeping open?
In response to
Mere Messiahs
I do not believe this myself, but in the interest of fairness:
There are some Christians who believe that the crucifixion was only the most visible outward agony that Jesus suffered. The more significant agony was that he experienced being cut off from God the father. (Hence the famous Aramaic exclamation.) Some Christians have hypotheses that this agony was equivalent to all the weight of all the misery caused by all the sin and guilt ever.
I do not believe you will find direct textual support for this in the Bible, but it is an extant item of faith for some Christians, and it changes the equation somewhat, no?
An important point in this is that God chose to inflict on himself (or his son, or another part of himself) exactly as much anguish as human beings have ever inflicted on themselves and each other. This makes an interesting retort to the theodicy problem: Why does God allow such suffering? We don't know, but he must have a good reason, in that he was willing to experience exactly that much suffering himself.
Other Christians, by the way, differ in saying that Jesus suffered only enough anguish, guilt and misery to equal the harm done by those who will eventually be saved, so his sacrifice was only sufficient to atone for them. This is a point of contention among different Christian sects.
And of course some Christian sects do not believe either of these two alternatives.
In either case, it goes way beyond the physical suffering, and it greatly changes the "facts" in your "case study".
it greatly changes the "facts" in your "case study".
Actually, does it not add another level of putting Jesus on a pedestal above everyone else?
It changes the equation when comparing Jesus to John Perry (indicating that Jesus' suffering was greatly heroic after all), but perhaps intensifies the "Alas, somehow it seems greater for a hero to have steel skin and godlike powers."
(Btw I'm one of the abovementioned Christians. Just thought I'd point out that the article's point is not greatly changed.)
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Probabilities of 0 and 1 are perhaps more like the perfectly massless, perfectly inelastic rods we learn about in high school physics - they are useful as part of an idealized model which is often sufficient to accurately predict real-world events, but we know that they are idealizations that will never be seen in real life.
However, I think we can assign the primeness of 7 a value of "so close to 1 that there's no point in worrying about it".
Perhaps the only appropriate uses for probability 0 and 1 are to refer to logical contradictions (eg P & !P) and tautologies (P -> P), rather than real-world probabilities?