So why haven’t you tried walking into a casino and caring really hard about winning? I’m not just being a prick here, this is the most concise way I could think to frame my core objection to your thesis.
This is an incorrect interpretation of Coscott’s philosophy. “Caring really hard about winning” = preferring winning to losing. The correct analogy would be “Caring about [whatever] only in case I win”. The losing scenarios are not necessarily assigned low utilities: they are assigned similar utilities. This philosophy is not saying: “I will win because I want to win”. It is saying: “If I lose, all the stuff I normally care about becomes unimportant, so when I’m optimizing this stuff I might just as well assume I’m going to win”. More precisely, it is saying “I will both lose and win but only the winning universe contains stuff that can be optimized”.
That question is equivalent to asking “Why have you not tried just changing your values to be satisfied with whatever the truth is?”
I could possibly reprogram myself to have different beliefs, but I do not want to do that. Even if I replace myself with someone else who has different beliefs, I still will not be happy in the future worlds that the present me cares more about. (the simple ones)
I guess I’m a little confused. Would you be less happy because your knowledge that you possess reality manipulation magic would make you disillusioned about the simplicity of your universe? You think you would be less happy with millions of dollars because you knew that you won it through reality manipulation magic, plus verification that you have reality manipulation magic, than you would be persisting in a universe indistinguishable from one which obeys causal laws?
Regardless of this misunderstanding, I think you have simply expressed a definition of existence which is meaningless. Or rather, your subjective expectations have nothing at all to do with the quantity that you are describing, but you are conflating them under the same concept-label of “existence.”
You can’t steer your subjective experience into preferred branches of existence merely by wishing it, because you’re embedded in a causal universe that just goes on being causal around you without too much regard for your preferences. If you put in a lot of work changing the universe around you to be more suitable to your needs, only then can you steer your subjective experiences toward desirable outcomes. At no point does this look like the future automatically shaping up to be more the way you prefer.
My point is that I do not change my beliefs to believe I will win the lottery for the same reason that you under your model of the multiverse do not change your preferences to make yourself happy with the world as is. I was trying to communicate that reason, but instead, let me just say that my model does not add any extra issues that you did not already have with the question “Why don’t you just try really hard to not care about the things that bother you?” in everyone else’s model.
I am not understanding the rest of your post either.
I am not trying to put anything under the concept-label of “existence.” I am trying to say that “existence” is a meaningless concept in the first place.
I can’t steer my subjective experience, because there is no one future subjective experience. However I can steer the experience of my future self within the simple universes, which is exactly what I want to do.
So why haven’t you tried walking into a casino and caring really hard about winning? I’m not just being a prick here, this is the most concise way I could think to frame my core objection to your thesis.
This is an incorrect interpretation of Coscott’s philosophy. “Caring really hard about winning” = preferring winning to losing. The correct analogy would be “Caring about [whatever] only in case I win”. The losing scenarios are not necessarily assigned low utilities: they are assigned similar utilities. This philosophy is not saying: “I will win because I want to win”. It is saying: “If I lose, all the stuff I normally care about becomes unimportant, so when I’m optimizing this stuff I might just as well assume I’m going to win”. More precisely, it is saying “I will both lose and win but only the winning universe contains stuff that can be optimized”.
I agree with this comment. Thanks.
That question is equivalent to asking “Why have you not tried just changing your values to be satisfied with whatever the truth is?”
I could possibly reprogram myself to have different beliefs, but I do not want to do that. Even if I replace myself with someone else who has different beliefs, I still will not be happy in the future worlds that the present me cares more about. (the simple ones)
I guess I’m a little confused. Would you be less happy because your knowledge that you possess reality manipulation magic would make you disillusioned about the simplicity of your universe? You think you would be less happy with millions of dollars because you knew that you won it through reality manipulation magic, plus verification that you have reality manipulation magic, than you would be persisting in a universe indistinguishable from one which obeys causal laws?
Regardless of this misunderstanding, I think you have simply expressed a definition of existence which is meaningless. Or rather, your subjective expectations have nothing at all to do with the quantity that you are describing, but you are conflating them under the same concept-label of “existence.”
You can’t steer your subjective experience into preferred branches of existence merely by wishing it, because you’re embedded in a causal universe that just goes on being causal around you without too much regard for your preferences. If you put in a lot of work changing the universe around you to be more suitable to your needs, only then can you steer your subjective experiences toward desirable outcomes. At no point does this look like the future automatically shaping up to be more the way you prefer.
My point is that I do not change my beliefs to believe I will win the lottery for the same reason that you under your model of the multiverse do not change your preferences to make yourself happy with the world as is. I was trying to communicate that reason, but instead, let me just say that my model does not add any extra issues that you did not already have with the question “Why don’t you just try really hard to not care about the things that bother you?” in everyone else’s model.
I am not understanding the rest of your post either.
I am not trying to put anything under the concept-label of “existence.” I am trying to say that “existence” is a meaningless concept in the first place.
I can’t steer my subjective experience, because there is no one future subjective experience. However I can steer the experience of my future self within the simple universes, which is exactly what I want to do.