[extropy-chat] silent night

[Kevin Freels]

Question. Whose point of view are you using for this? If Robin dies in the
evening, does the sun still rise?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eliezer Yudkowsky" <sentience at pobox.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 12:47 PM
Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] silent night


> Hal Finney wrote:
> > Robin wrote:
> > : I predict the sun will come up tomorrow.  I will keep making this
> > : prediction everyday for the next year.  Go ahead, collect stats on
> > : how well I do.  Betcha I'm right more often than not.
> >
> > Eliezer wrote:
> >
> >>What exact probability do you assign?  Now you've got me curious.
> >
> > Robin wrote:
> > : Well for the purposes of the above discussion all I needed was p/(1-p)
>> 1
> > : But if I have to pick a number I'd say p/(1-p) ~ 10^4 to 10^5
> >
> > Eliezer wrote:
> >
> >>Interesting.  That was just about exactly my own answer - 99.98% to
> >>99.999%.  Though as we may only make a single bet to sum up our
> >>uncertainty, I would say 99.99%.
> >
> > Okay, so let me offer this bet to Eliezer: my $10,000 to your $1,
> > that the sun will rise tomorrow.  Here is how I propose to do it.
> > I will send you a check for $10,000.  I will trust you not to cash it
> > unless the sun doesn't rise tomorrow.  If the sun does rise as usual,
> > you will send me back the uncashed check along with a one dollar bill.
> >
> > Or, if you want, you can decide to continue the bet each day and then,
> > once a week, you can send me $7 if the sun has continued to rise on
> > schedule.  The series of bets can be terminated by either party.
>
> A problem is that the probability of my surviving a win, is significantly
> lower than the probability of a win.  Furthermore, if I survive winning
> this bet, the money has less utility to my purpose afterward.
>
> -- 
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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