Today I came across an article in the Telegraph that states that an average man has 9 sexual partners in his lifetime, whilst a woman has only 4. Let's assume for a moment that in fact all these men and women are heterosexuals. In that case, each partnership contains one...
I have a question on Boltzmann brains which I'd like to hear your opinions on - mostly because I don't know the answer to this.... First of all - a Boltzmann brain is the idea that - in a sufficiently large and long-lived universe, a brain just like mine or...
And of course you can throw black holes into black holes as well, and extract even more energy. The end game is when you have just one big black hole, and nothing left to throw in it. At that point you then have to change strategy and wait for the black hole to give off Hawking radiation until it completely evaporates.
But all these things can happen later - there's no reason for not going through a paperclip maximization step first, if you're that way inclined...
If your definition of "truth" is such that any method is as good as any other of finding it, then the scientific method really is no better than anything else at finding it. Of course most of the "truths" won't bear much resemblance to what you'd get if you only used the scientific method.
My own definition - proto-science is something put forward by someone who knows the scientific orthodoxy in the field, suggesting that some idea might be true. Pseudo-science is something put forward by someone who doesn't know the scientific orthodoxy, asserting that something is true.
Testing which category any particular claim falls into is in my experience relatively straightforward if you know the scientific orthodoxy already - as a pseudoscientist's idea will normally be considered absolutely false in certain aspects by those who know the orthodoxy. A genuine challenger to the orthodoxy will at least tell you that they know they are being unorthodox, and why - a pseudoscientist will simply assert something else... (read more)
In cases like this where we want to drive the probability that something is true as high as possible, you are always left with an incomputable bit.
The bit that can't be computed is - am I sane? The fundamental problem is that there are (we presume) two kinds of people, sane people, and mad people who only think that they are sane. Those mad ones of course come up with mad arguments which show that their sanity is just fine. They may even have supporters who tell them they are perfectly normal - or even hallucinatory ones. How can I show which category I am in? Perhaps instead I am mad, and... (read more)
I suppose we all came across Bayesianism from different points of view - my list is quite a bit different.
For me the biggest one is that the degree to which I should believe in something is basically determined entirely by the evidence, and IS NOT A MATTER OF CHOICE or personal belief. If I believe something with degree of probability X, and see Y happen that is evidence for X, then the degree of probability Z which which I then should believe is a mathematical matter, and not a "matter of opinion."
The prior seems to be a get-out clause here, but since all updates are in principle layered on top of the... (read more)
Congratulations - this is what it's like to go from the lowest level of knowledge (Knows nothing and knows not that he knows nothing.) to the second lowest level. (Knows nothing, but at least knows that he knows nothing.)
The practical solution to this problem is that, in any decent organisation there are people much more competent than these two levels, and it's been obvious to them that you know nothing for much longer than it's been obvious to you. Their expectations will be set accordingly, and they will probably help you out - if you're willing to take some advice.
Which leads to two possible futures. In one of them, the AI us destroyed, and nothing else happens. In the other, you receive a reply to your command thus.
The command did not. But your attitude - I shall have to make an example of you.
Obviously not a strategy to get you to let the AI out based on its friendliness - quite the reverse.
So you're sure I'm not out of the box already? IRC clients have bugs, you see.
Since you're trying to put numbers on something which many of us regard as being certainly true, I'll take the liberty of slightly rephrasing your question.
How much confidence do I place in the scientific theory that ordinary matter is not infinitely divisible? In other words, that it is not true that no matter how small an amount of water I have, I can make a smaller amount by dividing it?
I am (informally) quite certain that water is not infinitely subdivisible. I don't think it's that useful an activity for me to try to put numbers on it, though. The problem is that in many of the more plausible scenarios I can think... (read more)
Today I came across an article in the Telegraph that states that an average man has 9 sexual partners in his lifetime, whilst a woman has only 4.
Let's assume for a moment that in fact all these men and women are heterosexuals. In that case, each partnership contains one man and one woman. So, in total, the number of partnerships that women enter into is exactly the same as the number of partnerships that men enter into. Given a few other pretty well-known facts - that men are roughly as numerous as women, and live roughly as long, we deduce that on average men enter into roughly as many sexual partnerships... (read 164 more words →)
I have a question on Boltzmann brains which I'd like to hear your opinions on - mostly because I don't know the answer to this....
First of all - a Boltzmann brain is the idea that - in a sufficiently large and long-lived universe, a brain just like mine or yours will occasionally pop into existence by sheer fluke. It doesn't happen very often - in fact it happens very, very infrequently. The brain will go on to have an experience or two before ceasing to exist on the grounds that it's surrounded by vacuum and cold - which is not a very good place for a disembodied brain to be.
Such a brain... (read 514 more words →)
If an omnipotent being wants you to believe something that isn't true, and is willing to use its omnipotence to convince you of the truth of that untruth, then there is nothing you can do about it. There is no observation that suffices to prove that an omnipotent being is telling the truth, as a malevolent omnipotence could make you believe literally anything - that you observed any given observation - or didn't, or that impossible things make sense, or sensible things are impossible.
This is one of a larger class of questions where one answer means that you are unable to assume the truth of your own knowledge. There is nothing you can do with any of them except smile at your own limitedness, and make the assumption that the self-defeating answer is wrong.