ok that’s a fair point, I’ll take a look but I am still skeptical about being able to do this in practice because in practice the universe is messy.
e.g. if you’re looking for an optimal practical babysitter and you really do start a search over all possible combinations of matter that fit inside a 2x2x2 cube and start futzing with the results of that search I think it will go wrong.
But if you adopt some constructive approach with some empirically grounded heuristics I expect it will work much better. E.g. start with a human. Exclude all males (sorry bros!). Exclude based on certain other demographics which I will not mention on LW. Exclude based on nationality. Do interviews. Do drug tests. Etc.
Your set of states of a 2x2x2 cube of matter will contain all kinds of things that are bad in ways you don’t understand.
ok that’s a fair point, I’ll take a look but I am still skeptical about being able to do this in practice because in practice the universe is messy.
e.g. if you’re looking for an optimal practical babysitter and you really do start a search over all possible combinations of matter that fit inside a 2x2x2 cube and start futzing with the results of that search I think it will go wrong.
But if you adopt some constructive approach with some empirically grounded heuristics I expect it will work much better. E.g. start with a human. Exclude all males (sorry bros!). Exclude based on certain other demographics which I will not mention on LW. Exclude based on nationality. Do interviews. Do drug tests. Etc.
Your set of states of a 2x2x2 cube of matter will contain all kinds of things that are bad in ways you don’t understand.