Paperclipper has an optimizing power. Let it enter your solar system, and soon you will see a lot of paperclips. Watch how it makes them. Then create some simple obstacles to this process. Wait for a while, and see even more paperclips after your obstacles were removed or circumvented.
Doesn’t happen with a rock. I can’t quite imagine what an anti-inductive mind would do… probably random actions most likely leading to a soon self-destruction (at which point it stops being a mind).
Measuring optimization power requires a prior over environments. Anti-inductive minds optimize effectively in anti-inductive worlds.
(Yes, this partially contradicts my previous comment. And yes, the idea of a world or a proper probability distribution that’s anti-inductive in the long run doesn’t make sense as far as I can tell; but you can still define a prior/measure that orders any finite set of hypotheses/worlds however you like.)
You left out the stage of the argument where it is explained that optimising power is rationality.
Obsessively, and even efficiently, pursuing completely arbitrary goals isn’t unusually seen as a pinacle.of sanity and rationality. It tends to get called names like “monomania”, “OCD”, and so on.
Motivation counts. The fact that intelligent people with no interest in maths can’t per persuaded by mathematical arguments is no argument against the objectivity of mathematics.
As others have pointed out: taboo “sane/intelligent”.
If a rock, or a mind that doesn’t implement modus ponens, or a mind with anti-inductive priors don’t count, why does a paperclipper?
Paperclipper has an optimizing power. Let it enter your solar system, and soon you will see a lot of paperclips. Watch how it makes them. Then create some simple obstacles to this process. Wait for a while, and see even more paperclips after your obstacles were removed or circumvented.
Doesn’t happen with a rock. I can’t quite imagine what an anti-inductive mind would do… probably random actions most likely leading to a soon self-destruction (at which point it stops being a mind).
Measuring optimization power requires a prior over environments. Anti-inductive minds optimize effectively in anti-inductive worlds.
(Yes, this partially contradicts my previous comment. And yes, the idea of a world or a proper probability distribution that’s anti-inductive in the long run doesn’t make sense as far as I can tell; but you can still define a prior/measure that orders any finite set of hypotheses/worlds however you like.)
You left out the stage of the argument where it is explained that optimising power is rationality.
Obsessively, and even efficiently, pursuing completely arbitrary goals isn’t unusually seen as a pinacle.of sanity and rationality. It tends to get called names like “monomania”, “OCD”, and so on.
Motivation counts. The fact that intelligent people with no interest in maths can’t per persuaded by mathematical arguments is no argument against the objectivity of mathematics.