And this sort of belief can have behavioral consequences!
If I understand it correctly, (and I am not sure, feel free to correct me.) it occurs to me that belief may have a very unusual consequence indeed, which seems to be believing that “The photon continues to exist, heading off to nowhere.” is true implies that you should also believe the Probability of world P1 is greater than Probability of world P2 below.
P1: “You are being simulated on a supercomputer which does not delete anything past your cosmological horizon.”
P2: “You are being simulated on a supercomputer which deletes anything past your cosmological horizon.”
Which sounds like a very odd consequence of believing “The photon continues to exist, heading off to nowhere.” is true, but as far as I can tell, it appears to be the case.
Non-conditional probabilities are not the sole determinants of conditional probabilities. You’re conflating P(photon exists) with P(photon exists|simulated universe).
Your conclusion does not logically follow from your premise. You need to separate out your conditional probabilities.
I’m also not sure the belief is particularly odd: why should you be at the center of the simulation? What makes your horizon more special than someone else’s, or the union of all observer’s horizons?
Thanks, I suspected that idea needed more processing.
Non-conditional probabilities are not the sole determinants of conditional probabilities. You’re conflating P(photon exists) with P(photon exists|simulated universe).
Your conclusion does not logically follow from your premise. You need to separate out your conditional probabilities.
I’m going to be honest and admit that I do not actually know how to write in a P(photon exists|simulated universe) style manner, and when I tried to find out how, I failed that as well because didn’t know the name and it didn’t appear under any of the names I guessed. Otherwise, I would try to rewrite my idea in that format and doublecheck the notation.
I’m also not sure the belief is particularly odd: why should you be at the center of the simulation? What makes your horizon more special than someone else’s, or the union of all observer’s horizons?
To unpack what I meant when I said the belief was odd/very unusual, It might have been more clear to say “This isn’t necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t seem to be an answer I would expect, and this thing I thought of just now appears to be my only justification for it, even though I haven’t yet seen anything wrong.
And as for why I picked that particular horizon, I think I was thinking of it primarily as a “Eliezer said this was true. If that is the case, what would make it false? Well, if I was living in a simulated world and things were getting deleted when I could never interact with them again, then it would be false.” but as you pointed out, I need to fix the thought anyway.
P(A|B) should be read as “the probability of A, given that B is true” or, more concisely, “P of A given B”. Search terms like [conditional probability(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_probability) should get you started. You’ll probably also want to read about Bayes’ Theorem.
If I understand it correctly, (and I am not sure, feel free to correct me.) it occurs to me that belief may have a very unusual consequence indeed, which seems to be believing that “The photon continues to exist, heading off to nowhere.” is true implies that you should also believe the Probability of world P1 is greater than Probability of world P2 below.
P1: “You are being simulated on a supercomputer which does not delete anything past your cosmological horizon.”
P2: “You are being simulated on a supercomputer which deletes anything past your cosmological horizon.”
Which sounds like a very odd consequence of believing “The photon continues to exist, heading off to nowhere.” is true, but as far as I can tell, it appears to be the case.
Non-conditional probabilities are not the sole determinants of conditional probabilities. You’re conflating P(photon exists) with P(photon exists|simulated universe).
Your conclusion does not logically follow from your premise. You need to separate out your conditional probabilities.
I’m also not sure the belief is particularly odd: why should you be at the center of the simulation? What makes your horizon more special than someone else’s, or the union of all observer’s horizons?
Thanks, I suspected that idea needed more processing.
I’m going to be honest and admit that I do not actually know how to write in a P(photon exists|simulated universe) style manner, and when I tried to find out how, I failed that as well because didn’t know the name and it didn’t appear under any of the names I guessed. Otherwise, I would try to rewrite my idea in that format and doublecheck the notation.
To unpack what I meant when I said the belief was odd/very unusual, It might have been more clear to say “This isn’t necessarily wrong, but it doesn’t seem to be an answer I would expect, and this thing I thought of just now appears to be my only justification for it, even though I haven’t yet seen anything wrong.
And as for why I picked that particular horizon, I think I was thinking of it primarily as a “Eliezer said this was true. If that is the case, what would make it false? Well, if I was living in a simulated world and things were getting deleted when I could never interact with them again, then it would be false.” but as you pointed out, I need to fix the thought anyway.
P(A|B) should be read as “the probability of A, given that B is true” or, more concisely, “P of A given B”. Search terms like [conditional probability(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_probability) should get you started. You’ll probably also want to read about Bayes’ Theorem.