I’m confused by the framing of the Anvil problem. For humans, a lot of learning is learning from observing others, seeing their mistakes and their consequences. We can predict various events that will result in other’s deaths based on previous observation of what happened to yet other people. If we’re above a certain level of solipsism, we can extrapolate to ourselves.
Does the AIXI not have the ability to observe other agents? Is it correct to be a solipsist? Seems like a tough learning environment if you have to discover all consequences yourself.
It’s still possible to extrapolate from stubbing your toe, burning your fingers on the stove, and mashing your thumb with a hammer. Is there some reason to expect that AIXI will start out its interactions with the world by picking up an anvil rather than playing with rocks and eggs?
Here is the problem as I understand it: It’s not that it can’t predict it will die. It’s that it can’t predict what it will observe when it dies. It is trying to predict it’s observations in the future, even if it doesn’t exist in the future. What does a non-existing being observe?
I’m confused by the framing of the Anvil problem. For humans, a lot of learning is learning from observing others, seeing their mistakes and their consequences. We can predict various events that will result in other’s deaths based on previous observation of what happened to yet other people. If we’re above a certain level of solipsism, we can extrapolate to ourselves.
Does the AIXI not have the ability to observe other agents? Is it correct to be a solipsist? Seems like a tough learning environment if you have to discover all consequences yourself.
It’s still possible to extrapolate from stubbing your toe, burning your fingers on the stove, and mashing your thumb with a hammer. Is there some reason to expect that AIXI will start out its interactions with the world by picking up an anvil rather than playing with rocks and eggs?
Here is the problem as I understand it: It’s not that it can’t predict it will die. It’s that it can’t predict what it will observe when it dies. It is trying to predict it’s observations in the future, even if it doesn’t exist in the future. What does a non-existing being observe?