Untermensch

If I am given a thing, like a mug, I now have one more mug than I had before. My need for mugs has therefore decreased. If I am to sell the mug, I must examine how much I will need the mug after it is gone and place a price on that loss of utility. If I am buying a mug I must set a price on how much I need it after I have it and place a price on that increase of utility. If the experiment is not worded carefully then the thought process could go along the lines of...

I have 2 mugs, and often take a tea break... (read more)

I have a couple of questions about this subject...

Does it still count if the AI "believes" that it needs humans when it, in fact, does not?

For example does it count if you code into the AI the belief that it is being run in a "virtual sandbox," watched by a smarter "overseer" and that if it takes out the human race in any way, then it will be shut down/tortured/highly negative utilitied by said overseer?

Just because an AI needs humans to exist, does that really mean that it won't kill them anyway?

This argument seems to be contingent on the AI wishing to live. Wishing to live is not a function... (read more)

Sorry, I am having difficulty explaining as I am not sure what it is I am trying to get across, I lack the words. I am having trouble with the use of the word predict, as it could imply any number of methods of prediction, and some of those methods change the answer you should give.

For example if it was predicting by the colour of the player's shoes it may have a micron over 50% chance of being right, and just happened to have been correct the 100 times you heard of. In that case one should take a and b, if, on the other hand, it was a visitor from a... (read more)

Thank you. By depersonalising the question it makes it easier for me to think about. If do you take one box or two becomes should one take one box or two... I am still confused. I'm confident that just box B should be taken, but I think that I need information that is implied to exist but is not presented in the problem to be able to give a correct answer. Namely the nature of the predictions Omega has made.

With the problem as stated I do not see how one could tell if Omega got lucky 100 times with a flawed system, or if it has a deterministic or causality breaking... (read more)

Thanks, that does help a little, though I should say that I am pretty sure I hold a number of irrational beliefs that I am yet to excise. Assuming that Omega literally implanted the idea into my head is a different thought experiment to Omega turned out to be predicting is different to Omega saying that it predicted the result etc. Until I know how and why I know it is predicting the result I am not sure how I would act in the real case. How Omega told me that I was only allowed to pick box a and b or just b may or may not be helpful but either... (read more)

The difficulty I am having here is not so much that the stated nature of the problem is not real so much that it is asking one to assume they are irrational. With a .999999999c spaceship it is not irrational to assume one is in a trolley on a space ship if one is in a trolley on a space ship. There is not enough information in the Omega puzzle as it assumes you, the person it drops the boxes in front of, know that omega is predicting, but does not tell you how you know that. As the mental state 'knowing it is predicting' is fundamental to the puzzle, not knowing... (read more)

Sorry, I'm new here, I am having trouble with the Idea that anyone would consider taking both boxes in a real world situation. How would this puzzle be modeled differently, versus how would it look differently if it were Penn and Teller flying Omega?

If Penn and Teller were flying Omega then they would have been able to produce exactly the same results as seen, without violating causality or time travelling or perfectly predicting people by just cheating and emptying the box after you choose to take both.

Given that "it's cheating" is a significantly more rational idea than "it's smart enough to predict 100 people" in terms of simplicity and results seen, why... (read more)

I agree with the terms, for the sake of explanation by magical thinker I was thinking along the lines of young non science trained children, or people who have either no knowledge of or no interest in the scientific method. Ancient Greek philosophers could come under this label if they never experimented to test their ideas. The essence is that they theorise without testing their theory.

In terms of the task, my first idea was the marshmallow test from a Ted lecture, "make the highest tower you can that will support a marshmallow on top from dry spaghetti, a yard of string, and a yard of tape."

Essentially a situation where the results... (read more)