Does your proposal also violate #1 because the simplicity of an observer-situated-in-a-world is a holistic property of the the observer-situated-in-a-world rather than a local one?
Yes (assuming by #1 you mean Period Independence), but it’s not clear to what extent. For example there are at least two kinds of programs that can output a human brain. A) simulate a world and output the object at some space-time location. B) simulate a world and scan for an object matching some criteria, then output such an object. If a time period gets repeated exactly, people’s algorithmic probability from A gets doubled, but algorithmic probability from B doesn’t. I’m not sure at this point whether A dominates B or vice versa.
Also, it’s not clear to me that strict Period Independence is a good thing. It seems reasonable to not value a time period as much if you knew it was an exact repetition of a previous time period. I wrote a post that’s related to this.
Also, it’s not clear to me that strict Period Independence is a good thing. It seems reasonable to not value a time period as much if you knew it was an exact repetition of a previous time period. I wrote a post that’s related to this.
I agree that Period Independence may break in the kind of case you describe, though I’m not sure. I don’t think that the kind of case you are describing here is a strong consideration against using Period Independence in cases that don’t involve exact repetition. I think your main example in the post is excellent.
I don’t think that the kind of case you are describing here is a strong consideration against using Period Independence in cases that don’t involve exact repetition.
What if we assume Period Independence except for exact repetitions, where the value of extra repetitions eventually go to zero? Perhaps this could be a way to be “timid” while making the downsides of “timidity” seem not so bad or even reasonable? For example in section 6.3.2, such a person would only choose deal 1 over deal 2 if the years of happy lives offered in deal 1 are such that he would already have repeated all possible happy time periods so many times that he values more repetitions very little.
BTW what do you think about my suggestion to do a sequence of blog posts based on your thesis? Or maybe you can at least do one post as a trial run? Also as an unrelated comment, the font in your thesis seems to be such that it’s pretty uncomfortable to read in Adobe Acrobat, unless I zoom in to make the text much larger than I usually have to. Not sure if it’s something you can easily fix. If not, I can try to help if you email me the source of the PDF.
What if we assume Period Independence except for exact repetitions, where the value of extra repetitions eventually go to zero? Perhaps this could be a way to be “timid” while making the downsides of “timidity” seem not so bad or even reasonable? For example in section 6.3.2, such a person would only choose deal 1 over deal 2 if the years of happy lives offered in deal 1 are such that he would already have repeated all possible happy time periods so many times that he values more repetitions very little.
I think it would be interesting if you could show that the space of possible periods-of-lives is structured in such a way that, when combined with a reasonable rule for discounting repetitions, yields a bounded utility function. I don’t have fully developed views on the repetition issue and can imagine that the view has some weird consequences, but if you could do this I would count it as a significant mark in favor of the perspective.
BTW what do you think about my suggestion to do a sequence of blog posts based on your thesis?
I think this would have some value but isn’t at the top of my list right now.
Also as an unrelated comment, the font in your thesis seems to be such that it’s pretty uncomfortable to read in Adobe Acrobat, unless I zoom in to make the text much larger than I usually have to. Not sure if it’s something you can easily fix. If not, I can try to help if you email me the source of the PDF.
I think I’ll keep with the current format for citation consistency for now. But I have added a larger font version here.
Yes (assuming by #1 you mean Period Independence), but it’s not clear to what extent. For example there are at least two kinds of programs that can output a human brain. A) simulate a world and output the object at some space-time location. B) simulate a world and scan for an object matching some criteria, then output such an object. If a time period gets repeated exactly, people’s algorithmic probability from A gets doubled, but algorithmic probability from B doesn’t. I’m not sure at this point whether A dominates B or vice versa.
Also, it’s not clear to me that strict Period Independence is a good thing. It seems reasonable to not value a time period as much if you knew it was an exact repetition of a previous time period. I wrote a post that’s related to this.
I agree that Period Independence may break in the kind of case you describe, though I’m not sure. I don’t think that the kind of case you are describing here is a strong consideration against using Period Independence in cases that don’t involve exact repetition. I think your main example in the post is excellent.
What if we assume Period Independence except for exact repetitions, where the value of extra repetitions eventually go to zero? Perhaps this could be a way to be “timid” while making the downsides of “timidity” seem not so bad or even reasonable? For example in section 6.3.2, such a person would only choose deal 1 over deal 2 if the years of happy lives offered in deal 1 are such that he would already have repeated all possible happy time periods so many times that he values more repetitions very little.
BTW what do you think about my suggestion to do a sequence of blog posts based on your thesis? Or maybe you can at least do one post as a trial run? Also as an unrelated comment, the font in your thesis seems to be such that it’s pretty uncomfortable to read in Adobe Acrobat, unless I zoom in to make the text much larger than I usually have to. Not sure if it’s something you can easily fix. If not, I can try to help if you email me the source of the PDF.
I think it would be interesting if you could show that the space of possible periods-of-lives is structured in such a way that, when combined with a reasonable rule for discounting repetitions, yields a bounded utility function. I don’t have fully developed views on the repetition issue and can imagine that the view has some weird consequences, but if you could do this I would count it as a significant mark in favor of the perspective.
I think this would have some value but isn’t at the top of my list right now.
I think I’ll keep with the current format for citation consistency for now. But I have added a larger font version here.