All of agai's Comments + Replies

Now, to restate the original "thing" we were trying to honestly say we had a prior for:

Suppose you know that there are a certain number of planets, N. You are unsure about the truth of a statement Q. If Q is true, you put a high probability on life forming on a given arbitrary planet. If Q is false, you put a low probability on this. You have a prior probability for Q.

Does this work, given this and our response?

We do not actually have a prior for Q, but we have a rough prior for a highly related question Q', which can be transformed likely fairly easil

am maybe too enthusiastic in general for things being 'well organized'.

I don't think so. :)

Yes. Although Moloch is "kind of" all powerful, there are also different levels of "all powerful" so there can be "more all powerful" things. :)

Would you be able to expand on those? I thought they were quite apt.

They both exist in different realms, however Elua's is bigger so by default Elua would win, but only if people care to live more in Elua's realm than Moloch's. Getting the map-territory distinction right is pretty important I think.

Accidents, if not too damaging, are net positive because they allow you to learn more & cause you to slow down. If you are wrong about what is good/right/whatever, and you think you are a good person, then you'd want to be corrected. So if you're having a lot of really damaging accidents in situations where you could reasonably be expected to control, that's probably not too good, but "reasonably be expected to control" is a very high standard. What I'm very explicitly not saying here is that the "just-world" hypothesis is true in any way; accidents *are* accidents, it's just that they can be net positive.

It's more effective to retain more values since physics is basically unitary (at least up to the point we know) so you'll have more people on your side if you retain the values of past people. So we'd be able to defeat this Moloch if we're careful.

Yeah, so, this is a complex issue. It is actually true IMO that we want fewer people in the world so that we can focus on giving them better lives and more meaningful lives. Unfortunately this would mean that people have to die, but yeah... I also think that cryogenics doesn't really make it much easier/hard to revive people, I would say either way you pretty much have to do the work of re-raising them by giving them the same experiences...

Although now I think about it there was a problem about that recently where I thought of a way to just "skip... (read more)

My response to this would be:

1. This is a very good argument/summary of arguments/questions
2. I would analyse this in sequence (like, taking quotes in order) and then recursively go back to relook at the initial state of understanding to see if it's at least consistent. If it isn't, serious updates to worldview might have to occur.
3. These can be deferred and interleaved concurrently with other either more-interesting or higher-priority updates. Deferral can work by "virtualising" the argument as a "suppose (this: ... )" question.

From 2: (now 2 layers of indi

I have two default questions when attempting to choose between potential actions: I ask both "why" and "why not?".

Okay, because I'm bored and have nothing to do, and I'm not going to be doing serious work today, I'll explain my reasoning more fully on this problem. As stated:

You face two open boxes, Left and Right, and you must take one of them. In the Left box, there is a live bomb; taking this box will set off the bomb, setting you ablaze, and you certainly will burn slowly to death. The Right box is empty, but you have to pay $100 in order to be able to take it. 

A long-dead predictor predicted whether you would choose Left or Right, by runn

So, this is an interesting one. I could make the argument that UDT would actually suggest taking the opposite of the one you like currently.

It depends on how far you think the future (and yourself) will extend. You can reason that if you were to like both hummus and avocado, you should take both. The problem as stated doesn't appear to exclude this.

If you know the information observed about humans that we tend to get used to what we do repeatedly as part of your prior, then you can predict that you will come to like (whichever of avocado or hummus that you

Look, I never said it wasn't a serious attempt to engage with the subject, and I respect that, and I respect the author(s).

Let me put it this way. If someone writes something unintentionally funny, are you laughing at them or at what they wrote? To me there is a clear separation between author and written text.

If you've heard of the TV show "America's Funniest Home Videos", that is an example of something I don't laugh at, because it seems to be all people getting hurt.

If someone was truly hurt by my comment then I apologise. I did not mean it that way.

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