In a sense, yes- of course you can construct something without any given characteristic of a mind, such as an inert rock or a pair of dice.
That said, I'd argue the presence of something like a simplicity prior- not necessarily something that fits the formal definition of a prior, but some sort of tendency for simple beliefs over complicated ones- is a necessity of having beliefs of any kind at all.
For instance- you might have no prior belief, but whenever you generate a belief of any kind, assign it 50% probability. This isn't a prior(it's more like a chan...
On the topic of unwinding to some state of mind besides the simplicity prior- are the alternatives not uncomputable as a class?
That is: There is a finite number of theories below a certain level of complexity, so the simplicity prior allocates a finitely-small-amount-of its expectation to a finite number of outcomes. For the opposite of the simplicity prior, a complexity prior- where you prefer a theory more the more complicated it is- any theory you consider has an infinite number of even more complicated counterparts, because you can always make the theo...
cecie: You can’t buy the sovereignty on the land. Even if you had a lot of money, any country poor enough and desperate enough to consider your offer might just steal your stuff after you moved in.
Negotiating the right to bring in weapons to defend yourself in this kind of scenario would be even more unthinkable, and would spark international outrage that could prevent you from trading with other countries.
To be clear, it’s not that there’s a global dictator who prevents new countries from popping up; but every potentially useful part of every land is und...
On the topic of distinguishing between Counsel and Manipulation, without going directly through whether the resulting beliefs are accurate or not (Because that's adequately covered and I think the observation that you can manipulate through selective truths somewhat defeats it- given someone who's already wrong or who has underspecified preferences, you can probably manipulate their actions while only making their beliefs more correct.), I propose: That one(and maybe the) distinction between Counsel and Manipulation is whether the outcome of the action dep... (read more)