tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post594703141508484245..comments2024-03-28T19:14:33.619-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: How to Disregard Extremely Remote PossibilitiesEric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-55995125791531070722015-05-08T18:02:52.807-07:002015-05-08T18:02:52.807-07:00Came across this and it might be of interest for t...Came across this and it might be of interest for the whole possibility theory thing: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/07/roko_s_basilisk_the_most_terrifying_thought_experiment_of_all_time.htmlCallan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-11475707520106832912015-04-21T08:44:03.817-07:002015-04-21T08:44:03.817-07:00Yes, I agree with all that, Callan! In the dimini...Yes, I agree with all that, Callan! In the diminishing returns argument, I meant to rely on declining credences as the payoffs become larger, though looking again at it now, that assumption was somewhat cryptically buried in there!Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-65005266825203677452015-04-21T01:00:33.075-07:002015-04-21T01:00:33.075-07:00Hi Eric,
But don't the benefits - get less of...Hi Eric,<br /><br />But don't the benefits - get less of a chance of existing the more there is? Thus countering the size of the return? Or if they don't, I have this thing called a ponzi scheme I'd like to talk about...<br /><br />On the Pascal example - I'd say it really depends on whether you can afford to speculate. Every day people give up money (sometimes the contents of their wallet) on lotteries - of which they have a better chance of being hit by lightning than winning.<br /><br />It's not just a matter of return, but current need. A guy dying of thirst in the desert needs to keep that bottle of water rather than give it up for a 100% chance of a return of three...in three days time. As he'll be dead by then.<br /><br />But if you're fat with assets, then the crazy mugger might be an amusing speculation to take.<br /><br />Callan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-79456159835492392182015-04-20T11:15:30.346-07:002015-04-20T11:15:30.346-07:00Callan -- Sorry about your previous comment being ...Callan -- Sorry about your previous comment being lost! The Splintered Mind is now on pre-approval for comments on an experimental basis.<br /><br />Yes, the chance is extremely remote! But the possible problem (which I am trying to avoid) is that if the benefits are enough, standard application of decision theory would recommend that you act on the basis of it. For an engaging discussion of one example, check out "Pascal's Mugging": http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/pascal.pdf<br /><br />I do think we tend to think mostly in terms of one (or two) possibilities at a time -- but of course that's a simplification of the options.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-30416673775694089652015-04-19T03:36:51.032-07:002015-04-19T03:36:51.032-07:00I can't decide what happened to my post - did ...I can't decide what happened to my post - did it get lost (I did this once before on another forum - kept posting thinking the system swollowed it. Took me some time to figure the blog owner was deleting me over and over)?<br /><br />Anyway, here it is again (it's fairly uncontroversial so I'm guessing the system ate it)<br /><br />Took me a moment or three, but I realised I had a skepticism failure - I mean, why am I taking it that "10^50 lifetimes' worth of pleasure" is available? What is the likelyhood of that? It is its own extremely remote chance - or one could estimate it that way if one applies skepticism to it.<br /><br />Somehow it avoided my skepticism radar, initially. Interesting. Perhaps I'm mostly aligned to generally only deal with one probability at a time? Maybe because I stayed up late playing a FPS? Quite a hiccup and a curious one at that.Callan S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/15373053356095440571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-32539627271878458592015-04-18T14:52:25.369-07:002015-04-18T14:52:25.369-07:00If only decision theory weren't so cool and us...If only decision theory weren't so cool and useful!Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-65265137937299689952015-04-18T11:47:58.969-07:002015-04-18T11:47:58.969-07:00I think a challenge arises during the seemingly in...I think a challenge arises during the seemingly innocuous act of conceding a number.<br />Using tools like Bayes - if you can fasten on a number to start with - you can arrive at the most magnificent and ridiculous conclusions.<br />As an engineer - I would never allow a bootstrap assumption unless it is grounded in something - and then only maybe.Pilot Guyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15485522498959976328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-74206165835407219552015-04-17T07:34:33.497-07:002015-04-17T07:34:33.497-07:00chinaphil: Thanks for that thoughtful comment! I ...chinaphil: Thanks for that thoughtful comment! I agree that we are bad with very small and very large numbers, and assessments like 10^20 vs. 10^50 vs. 10^10^100 are very difficult to make -- so that's another argument to add to my quiver here. On unmotivated possibilities: Well, in connection with your first point, zero is also a very small number in a certain sense! My hunch is that although we can often simplify to 0s and 1s in practical reasoning, in another sense assigning a 0 credence is like saying that the event is vastly less likely than 1 in 10^10^100 -- and maybe one doesn't need much positive motivation to assign a tiny sliver as much as a large negative motivation to refuse to do so. So then it's nice to have the arguments in the post to justify nonetheless ignoring such remote chances anyway.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-5686123833212770442015-04-16T21:56:57.132-07:002015-04-16T21:56:57.132-07:00I think a more important point to bear in mind at ...I think a more important point to bear in mind at all times is that humans can't do big numbers. I have no intuitive conception of what 10^50 is, and in general I would submit that once we get above 1000, everything's just big; and once we get smaller than 1/1000, everything's just small. So one reason to disregard small possibilities is that unless you've worked them out in a rigorous way, you don't know what they are.<br /><br />In connection with this - I went through the calculations for the million monkeys, million typewriters and million years thing a while ago. What's interesting is that they wouldn't just fail to produce Shakespeare, they wouldn't even produce one line, not by more than a dozen orders of magnitude. The numbers you offer in the post are out by an unimaginably long way: the probability of one line of Shakespeare is one in 10^50. The probability of many lifetimes of pleasure (which might include reading a lot of Shakespeare) are probably more like 10^10^10^50. The relative sizes of these numbers matter.<br /><br />I also think there's a difference between motivated small possibilities and unmotivated possibilities. There doesn't seem to be any reason to believe in that deity. So it's hard to imagine why a probability should be assigned to it. That would seem to be giving too much weight to my imagination - after all, I can only assign a probability to something I've thought of, but I can't see any principled difference between the set of things I've thought of and the set of all things which could be thought of (but haven't been).chinaphilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14572591745611690731noreply@blogger.com