If I understand correctly, under MW you anticipate the experience of surviving with probability 1, and under C with probability 0.5. I don't think that's justified.
In both cases the probability should be either conditional on "being there to experience anything" (and equal 1), OR unconditional (equal the "external" probability of survival, 0.5). This is something in between. You take the external probability in C, but condition on the surviving branches in MW.
I have no familiarity with Reddit/Lesswrong codebase, but isn't this (r2/r2/models/subreddit.py) the only relevant place?
elif self == Subreddit._by_name(g.default_sr) and user.safe_karma >= g.karma_to_post:
So it's a matter of changing that g.karma_to_post (which apparently is a global configuration variable) into a subreddit's option (like the ones defines on top of the file).
(And, of course, applying that change to the database, which I have no idea about, but this also shouldn't be hard...)
ETA: Or, if I understand the code correctly, one could just...
There are some theories about continuation of subjective experience "after" objective death - quantum immortality, or extension of quantum immortality to Tegmark's multiverse (see this Moravec's essay). I'm not sure if taking them seriously is a good idea, though.
I considered the existence of Santa a definitive proof that the paranormal/magic exists and not everything in the world is in the domain of science (and was slightly puzzled that the adults don't see it that way).
No conspiracies, but for a long time I've been very prone to wishful thinking. I'm not really sure if believing in Santa actually influenced that. I don't remember finding out the truth as a big revelation, though - no influence on my worldview or on trust for my parents.
(I've been raised without religion.)
Is there a link to an online explanation of this? When are the consequences of breaking an oath worse than a destroyed world? What did "world" mean when he said it? Humans? Earth? Humans on Earth? Energy in the Multiverse?
...Suppose someone comes to a rationalist Confessor and says: "You know, tomorrow I'm planning to wipe out the human species using this neat biotech concoction I cooked up in my lab." What then? Should you break the seal of the confessional to save humanity?
It appears obvious to me that the issue
So you're saying that the knowledge "I survive X with probability 1" can in no way be translated into objective rule without losing some information?
I assume the rules speak about subjective experience, not about "some Everett branch existing" (so if I flip a coin, P(I observe heads) = 0.5, not 1). (What do probabilities of possible, mutually exclusive outcomes of given action sum to in your system?)
Isn't the translation a matter of applying conditional probability? i.e. (P(survives(me, X) = 1 <=> P(survives(joe, X) | joe's experience continues = 1)
Sorry, now I have no idea what we're talking about. If your experiment involves killing yourself after seeing the wrong string, this is close to the standard quantum suicide.
If not, I would have to see the probabilities to understand. My analysis is like this: P(I observe string S | MWI) = P(I observe string S | Copenhagen) = 2^-30, regardless of whether the string S is specified beforehand or not. MWI doesn't mean that my next Everett branch must be S because I say so.
What if Tegmark's multiverse is true? All the equivalent formulations of reality would "exist" as mathematical structures, and if there's nothing to differentiate between them, it seems that all we can do is point to appropriate equivalence class in which "we" exist.
However, the unreachable tortured man scenario suggests that it may be useful to split that class anyway. I don't know much about Solomonoff prior - does it make sense now to build a probability distribution over the equivalence class and say what is the probability mass of its part that contains the man?
The reason why this doesn't work (for coins) is that (when MWI is true) A="my observation is heads" implies B="some Y observes heads", but not the other way around. So P(B|A)=1, but P(A|B) = p, and after plugging that into the Bayes formula we have P(MWI|A) = P(Copenhagen|A).
Can you translate that to the quantum suicide case?
First, I'm gonna clarify some terms to make this more precise. Let Y be a person psychologically continuous with your present self. P(there is some Y that observes surviving a suicide attempt|Quantum immortality) = 1. Note MWI != QI. But QI entails MWI. P(there is some Y that observes surviving a suicide attempt| ~QI) = p.
It follows from this that P(~(there is some Y that observes surviving a suicide attempt)|~QI) = 1-p.
I don't see a confusion of levels (whatever that means).
I still see a problem here. Substitute quantum suicide -> quantum coinflip, ...
The probability that there exists an Everett branch in which I continue making that observation is 1. I'm not sure if jumping straight to subjective experience from that is justified:
If P(I survive|MWI) = 1, and P(I survive|Copenhagen) = p, then what is the rest of that probability mass in Copenhagen interpretation? Why is P(~(I survive)|Copenhagen) = 1-p and what does it really describe? It seems to me that calling it "I don't make any observation" is jumping from subjective experiences back to objective. This looks like a confusion of levels.
ET...
Flip a quantum coin.
The observation that you survived 1000 good suicide attempts is much more likely under MWI than under Copenhagen.
Isn't that like saying "Under MWI, the observation that the coin came up heads, and the observation that it came up tails, both have probability of 1"?
The observation that I survive 1000 good suicide attempts has a probability of 1, but only if I condition on my being capable of making any observation at all (i.e. alive). In which case it's the same under Copenhagen.
Sure, people in your branch might believe you
The problem I have with that is that from my perspective as an external observer it looks no different than someone flipping a coin (appropriately weighted) a thousand times and getting thousand heads. It's quite improbable, but the fact that someone's life depends on the coin shouldn't make any difference for me - the universe doesn't care.
Of course it also doesn't convince me that the coin will fall heads for the 1001-st time.
(That's only if I consider MWI and Copenhagen here. In reality after 1000 coin fli...
That's the problem - it shouldn't really convince him. If he shares all the data and priors with external observers, his posterior probability of MWI being true should end up the same as theirs.
It's not very different from surviving thousand classical Russian roulettes in a row.
ETA: If the chance of survival is p, then in both cases P(I survive) = p, P(I survive | I'm there to observe it) = 1. I think you should use the second one in appraising the MWI...
ETA2: Ok maybe not.
PDFs are pretty much write-only, and in my experience (with Adobe Acrobat-based devices) reflow never works very well. As long as you use a sane text-based ebook format, Calibre can handle conversion to other formats.
So I recommend converting into - if not EPUB, then maybe just a clean HTML (with all the links retained - readers that support HTML should have no problems with links between file sections).
Your "strong/weak scientific" distinction sounds like it's more about determinism than reductionism.
According to your definitions, I'm a "strong ontological reductionist", and "weak scientific reductionist" because I have no problem with quantum mechanics and MWI being true.
Since there is no handy toll to create polls on LW
I often see polls in comments - "upvote this comment if you choose A", "upvote this if you choose B", "downvote this for karma balance". Asking for replies probably gives you less answers but more accuracy.
I was refering to the idea that complex propositions should have lower prior probability.
Of course you don't have to make use of it, you can use any numbers you want, but you can't assign a prior of 0.5 to any proposition without ending up with inconsistency. To take an example that is more detached from reality - there is a natural number N you know nothing about. You can construct whatever prior probability distribution you want for it. However, you can't just assign 0.5 for any possible property of N (for example, P(N10)=0.5).
Prior probability is what you can infer from what you know before considering a given piece of data.
If your overall information is I, and new data is D, then P(H|I) is your prior probability and P(H|DI) posterior probability for hypothesis H.
No one says you have to put exactly 0.5 as prior (this would be especially absurd for absurd-sounding hypotheses like "the lady next door is a witch, she did it".)
I'm actually a MoR fan, and I've found it both entertaining and (at times) enlightening.
But I think a "beginning rationalist"s time is much better spent if they're studying philosophy, critical thinking, probability theory, etc. than on writing fanfiction (even if it would be useful in small doses).
To me this distinction is what makes consciousness distinct and special. I think it is a fascinating consequence of a certain pattern of interacting systems. Implying that conscious feelings occur all over the place, perhaps every feedback system is feeling something.
This sounds like the point Pinker makes in How the Mind Works - that apart from the problem of consciousness, concepts like "thinking" and "knowing" and "talking" are actually very simple:
...(...) Ryle and other philosophers argued that mentalistic terms such as
Badly formulated question. I think "consciousness" as subjective experience/ability of introspection/etc. is a concept we all intuitively know (from one example, but still...) and more or less agree on. Do you believe in the color red?
What's under discussion is whether that intuitive concept is possible to be mapped to a specific property, and on what level. Assuming that is the question, I believe a mathematical structure (algorithm?) could be meaningfully called conscious or not conscious.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if it could be "d...
AFAIK some people subvocalize while reading, some don't. Is this preventing you from reading quickly?
(I've heard claims that eliminating subvocalization it is the first step to faster reading, although Wikipedia doesn't agree. I, as far as I can tell, don't subvocalize while reading (especially when reading English text, in which I don't link strongly words to pronunciation), and although I have some problems with concentration, I still read at about 300 WPM. One of my friends claims ve's unable to read faster than speech due to subvocalization).
I don't know how we could overcome the boundary of subjective first-person experience with natural language here. If it is the case that human differ fundamentally in their perception of outside reality and inside imagination, then we might simply misunderstand each others definition and descriptions of certain concepts and eventually come up with the wrong conclusions.
While it does sound dangerously close to the "is my red like your red" problem, I think there is much that can be done before you leave the issue as hopelessly subjective. Your ...
I suspect such visualisation is not a binary ability but a spectrum of "realness", a skill you can be better or worse at. I don't identify with your description fully, I wouldn't call what my imagination does "entering the Matrix", but in some ways it's like actual sensory input, just much less intense.
I also observed this spectrum in my dreams - some are more vivid and detailed, some more like the waking level of imagination, and some remain mostly on the conceptual level.
I would very be interested to know if it's possible to improve your imagination's vividness by training.
"In the 5617525 times this simulation has run, players have won $664073 And by won I mean they have won back $664073 of the $5617525 they spent (11%)."
Either it's buggy or there is some tampering with data going on.
Also, several Redditors claim to have won - maybe the simulator is just poorly programmed.
I'm not sure if non-interference is really the best thing to precommit to - if we encounter a pre-AI civilization that still has various problems, death etc., maybe what {the AI they would have build} would have liked more is for us to help them (in a way preserving their values).
If a superintelligence discovers a concept of value-preserving help (or something like CEV?) that is likely to be universal, shouldn't it precommit to applying it to all encountered aliens?
For example, you might have some herb combination that "restores HP", but whenever you use it, you strangely lose HP that more than cancels what it gave you.
What if instead of being useless (by having an additional cancelling effect), magical potions etc. had no effect at all? If HP isn't explicitly stated, you can make the player feel like he's regaining health (e.g. by some visual cues), but in reality he'd die just as often.
How do you even make a quantum coin with 1/googolplex chance?