This article addresses Pascal's Mugging, for information about this scenario see here. I am going to attack the problem by breaking it up into two separate cases, one in which the mugger claims to be from a meta-world with large but finite resources, and one in which the mugger claims...
Justification Through Pragmatism In this article, I propose a new method of justifying fundamental philosophical assumptions. The fundamental assumptions on which we base our thinking cannot ever be proven to be true, as such a proof must rely on our own thinking and be circular as a result. The proposed...
You can do it first or you can do it best, usually both are different artists and each is well known. I think there's plenty of examples of both in all fields. Rachmaninov for instance is another classical (in the broad sense) composer in the "do it well" rather than "do it first" camp, he was widely criticised as behind the times in his own era, but listening now no-one cares that his writing music sounds like it's ~150 years old but written only ~100.
That's the result of compulsory voting not of preference voting.
As an Australian I can say I'm constantly baffled over the shoddy systems used in other countries. People seem to throw around Arrow's impossibility theorem to justify hanging on to whatever terrible system they have, but there's a big difference between obvious strategic voting problems that affect everyone, and a system where problems occur in only fairly extreme circumstances. The only real reason I can see why the USA system persists is that both major parties benefit from it and the system is so good at preventing third parties from having a say that even as a whole they can't generate the will to fix it.
In more direct answer to your question,... (read more)
(meta) Well, I'm quite relieved because I think we're actually converging rather than diverging finally.
No. Low complexity is not the same thing as symmetry.
Yes sorry symmetry was just how I pictured it in my head, but it's not the right word. My point was that the particles aren't acting independently, they're constrained.
Mostly correct. However, given a low-complexity program that uses a large random input, you can make a low-complexity program that simulates it by iterating through all possible inputs, and running the program on all of them.
By the same token you can write a low complexity program to iteratively generate every number. That doesn't mean all numbers have low complexity. It needs... (read 515 more words →)
there are large objects computed by short programs with short input or even no input, so your overall argument is still incorrect.
I have to say, this caused me a fair bit of thought.
Firstly, I just want to confirm that you agree a universe as we know it has complexity of the order of its size. I agree that an equivalently "large" universe with low complexity could be imagined, but its laws would have to be quite different to ours. Such a universe, while large, would be locked in symmetry to preserve its low complexity.
Just an aside on randomness, you might consider a relatively small program generating even this universe, by simply simulating... (read 630 more words →)
Well, you'd need a method of handling infinite values in your calculations. Some methods exist, such as taking limits of finite cases (though much care needs to be taken), using a number system like the Hyperreals or the Surreals if appropriate, or comparing infinite cardinals, it would depend a little on the details of how such an infinite threat was made plausible. I think in most cases my argument about the threat being dominated by other factors would not hold in this case.
While my point about specific other actions dominating may not hold in this case, I think the overall point that infinite resources cause problems far more fundamental than the mugging is if anything strengthened by your example. As is the general point that large numbers on their own are not the problem.
Sorry, but I don't know which section of my reply this is addressing and I can't make complete sense of it.
an explicit assumption of finite resources - an assumption which would ordinarily have a probability far less than 1 - (1/3^^^^3)
The OP is broken into two main sections, one assuming finite resources and one assuming infinite.
Our universe has finite resources, why would an assumption of finite resources in an alternative universe be vanishingly unlikely? Personally I would expect finite resources with probability ~=1. I'm not including time as a "resource" here by the way, because infinite future time can be dealt with by geometric discounting and so isn't interesting.
... (read more)What you have now
This argument relies on a misunderstanding of what Kolmogorov complexity is. The complexity of an object is the length of the source code of the shortest program that generates it, not the amount of memory used by that program.
I know that.
The point about memory is the memory required to store the program data, not the memory required to run the program. The program data is part of the program, thus part of the complexity. A mistake I maybe made though was to talk about the current state rather than the initial conditions, since the initial conditions are what give the complexity of the program (though initialising with the current state is possible... (read 696 more words →)
No, it isn't. It can't be used against agents with bounded utility functions.
Ok fully general counterargument is probably an exaggeration but it does have some similar undesirable properties:
Your argument does not actually address the argument it's countering in any way. If 1/n is the correct prior to assign to this scenario surely that's something we want to know? Surely I'm adding value by showing this?
If your argument is accepted then it makes too broad a class of statements into muggings. In fact I can't see why "arglebargle 3^^^^3 banana" isn't a mugging according to your argument. If I've reduced the risk of factual uncertainty in the original problem to a logical uncertainty,
This article addresses Pascal's Mugging, for information about this scenario see here.
I am going to attack the problem by breaking it up into two separate cases, one in which the mugger claims to be from a meta-world with large but finite resources, and one in which the mugger claims to be from a meta-world with unbounded resources. I will demonstrate that in both cases the mugging fails, for different reasons, and argue that much of the appeal of the mugging comes from the conflation of these two cases.
In this case, the mugger claims to be from a world with a bounded number of resources, but still large enough to... (read 2461 more words →)
Justification Through Pragmatism
In this article, I propose a new method of justifying fundamental philosophical assumptions.
The fundamental assumptions on which we base our thinking cannot ever be proven to be true, as such a proof must rely on our own thinking and be circular as a result. The proposed alternative is that rather than even worry about whether these assumptions are true at all, instead demonstrate that regardless of their truth, there is no conceivable benefit to negating them. This article demonstrates this point by way of a number of examples of such assumptions.
0. Basic Capacity for Reason
Assumption: That one has the most basic ability to understand anything correctly.
Negation: One has no ability... (read 1130 more words →)
I think the standard for accuracy would be very different. If Watson gets something right you think "Wow that was so clever", if it's wrong you're fairly forgiving. On that other hand, I feel like if an automated fact checker got even 1/10 things wrong it would be subject to insatiable rage for doing so. I think specifically correcting others is the situation in which people would have the highest standard for accuracy.
And that's before you get into the levels of subjectivity and technicality in the subject matter which something like Watson would never be subjected to.