[ExI] Probability is in the Mind
Lee Corbin
lcorbin at rawbw.com
Wed Mar 12 15:21:28 UTC 2008
Jef writes
> Another excellent and highly applicable post by Eliezer on the
> Overcoming Bias blog.
>
> <http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/03/mind-probabilit.html>
>
> Internalize this, and you're prepared to see how silly it is to argue
> about personal identity on an ontological basis of what is, rather
> than in epistemological terms of perceived agency.
Yes, I liked very much that essay too, for a number of reasons.
But as I said recently in the thread "The Many Dimensional Sculpture..."
(paraphrased slightly)
One ultimate purpose of philosophy, and I argue the most important
one, is be prescriptive. Philosophy most vitally---for me and for many
others---should instruct us about what actions to take and what
decisions to make.
and
Ultimately, again, I want to know what actions I should take and
what I can expect the different outcomes to be like.
And so I prefer to pose situations that call for decisions, for
actions. Only those test whether two people are really agreeing
or not. Otherwise, the terminological confusions and irreconcilable
philosophies may be simply moot.
By "copies" in these and similar threads, we always meant copies
of a version-of-you in a tiny branch of the overall multiverse.
* Action Item: Should I dare teleport?
My analysis: the remote version-of-you is well
within the fuzzy sphere (I haven't figured out how
to translate this answer into Rafal's language)
My answer is YES!
* Action Item: Do I benefit from the replication of copies that
become a tiny bit different almost at once, and then have
different thoughts as they go off and explore many different
planets? Should I pay for that?
Analysis: Either on Rafal's analysis or mine, the answer is
"YES". He'd say one's tree of life is enriched, I'd say one
get more runtime.
If I recall correctly, you don't have a lot of patience with
these kinds of real decisions because all that matters is
whether the world as a result more increasingly subscribes
to and implements increasing awareness and ever
increasingly better approaches to progress, or some such.
(Am I warm? :-)
But unless you delineate very exact, sharp *decisions* and
*actions* in scenarios that serve to distinguish your beliefs
from everyone else---and put less emphasis on the abstract
hard-to-follow verbiage---then you won't be facing up to
the true challenge, namely, prescribing courses of action.
Lee
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