What is “real”? I think about myself as a computation embedded in some other computation (i.e. a universe-history). I think “real” describes hypotheses about the environment where my computation lives. What should I think is real? That which an “ideal embedded reasoner” would assign high credence. However that works.
This sensibly suggests that Gimli-in-actual-Ea (LOTR) should believe he lives in Ea, and that Ea is real, even though it isn’t our universe’s Earth. Also, the notion accounts for indexical uncertainty by punting it to how embedded reasoning should work (a la radical probabilism), without being tautological. Also, it supports both the subjective nature of what one should call “real”, and the notion of an actual out-there-somewhere shared reality (multiple computations can be embedded within the same universe-history).
What is “real”? I think about myself as a computation embedded in some other computation (i.e. a universe-history). I think “real” describes hypotheses about the environment where my computation lives. What should I think is real? That which an “ideal embedded reasoner” would assign high credence. However that works.
This sensibly suggests that Gimli-in-actual-Ea (LOTR) should believe he lives in Ea, and that Ea is real, even though it isn’t our universe’s Earth. Also, the notion accounts for indexical uncertainty by punting it to how embedded reasoning should work (a la radical probabilism), without being tautological. Also, it supports both the subjective nature of what one should call “real”, and the notion of an actual out-there-somewhere shared reality (multiple computations can be embedded within the same universe-history).