[ExI] Probability is "subjectively objective".

[Jef Allbright]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 12:27 PM, John K Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> "Jef Allbright" <jef at jefallbright.net>
>
>> If you can change something by thinking differently, it's
>> subjective; if you can't change it by anything you do strictly inside your
>> head, it's objective

Actually, Eliezer wrote that.  I quoted it as usefully highlighting
the direction of an opportunity for improved coherence.

Did you read my subsequent comments?


> Yes, but is determining if something is happening inside or outside your
> head a strictly objective or subjective process?


The point is that it's subjective turtles **all** the way down with
regard to any observation, experience, description, theory,
probabilities -- any statement about reality.



> You say that mind creates probability,

Actually, I wouldn't agree with that.

But I do say that any meaningful statement of probability necessarily
necessarily entails a subjective mind.

[Did you read Eliezer's post to which my email referred]



> and I think you could
> very well be right; or it could very well be that probability creates mind.

Hey!  You mixed your ontology with my epistemology!


> I suspect Darwin would have been more comfortable with the second
> possibility, but nobody really knows. All I know is that if Copenhagen is
> right then a event
> is frequent because it is probable and if Many Worlds is right
> then a event is probable because it is frequent.

And maybe if you look underneath the teeniest turtle of all, there you
(a subjective agent) might see and know ontologically pure
probability?

- Jef