[extropy-chat] the structure of randomness

[Jeff Medina]

On 12/31/05, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I (Jeff) said:
> > No matter what the actual number of particles or power required, it
> > would be EXACTLY as "small" a target. Pulling "13" out of a bag filled
> > with all the positive integers is precisely as unlikely as pulling
> > "10^10^89".
>
>  But "much less than 10^10^89" and "much more than 10^10^89" are much bigger
> targets than "just about exactly 10^10^89", and my argument requires only
> those three categories.

And less than 99^ 10 and more than 99^10 are much better targets than
99^10. And >n and <n are better targets than n, where n is any integer
greater than 2 (or where n is any integer at all, if you take ">n and
<n" as a union to which we're comparing the likelihood of n being the
value). Your argument would apply equally no matter what the
dimensions of the universe were, however you want to measure it
(computational capacity, power requiring to run the sim, bits of
information involved, number of particles observed or inferred, etc.).
That makes it a non-argument.

--
Jeff Medina
http://www.painfullyclear.com/

Community Director
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/

Relationships & Community Fellow
Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies
http://www.ieet.org/

School of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/