If you don’t have one, how can you even say you have a belief?
Suppose someone offers you what’s either an experience machine or an omnipotence machine. As much fun as an experience machine is, you know other people need you enough that it’s important not to enter it. An omnipotence machine will let you help these people much more efficiently, so it would be very important to enter. Your anticipated experiences are the same either way, yet you do not value each possibility the same. If you use the machine, you clearly believe it’s an omnipotence machine. If not, you believe it’s an experience machine.
I enter the omnipotence machine and experience omnipotence with expected experience of saving the human race versus entering the experience machine and… what exactly? Dreaming I saved the human race? I expect to save the human race. Are you saying I should say expected consequences? Or what?
If I can’t tell the difference, I don’t know how this applies. At that point, we’re back at solipsism. If my experiences are false, then any attempt to steer my future is doomed.
If I can’t tell the difference, I don’t know how this applies. At that point, we’re back at solipsism. If my experiences are false, then any attempt to steer my future is doomed.
Any attempt to experiment is doomed. You have to make a decision under uncertainty. You’d have to do that anyway. It’s just that now “experiment” isn’t one of the options.
Suppose someone offers you what’s either an experience machine or an omnipotence machine. As much fun as an experience machine is, you know other people need you enough that it’s important not to enter it. An omnipotence machine will let you help these people much more efficiently, so it would be very important to enter. Your anticipated experiences are the same either way, yet you do not value each possibility the same. If you use the machine, you clearly believe it’s an omnipotence machine. If not, you believe it’s an experience machine.
I’m not sure I understand the hypothetical.
I enter the omnipotence machine and experience omnipotence with expected experience of saving the human race versus entering the experience machine and… what exactly? Dreaming I saved the human race? I expect to save the human race. Are you saying I should say expected consequences? Or what?
If I can’t tell the difference, I don’t know how this applies. At that point, we’re back at solipsism. If my experiences are false, then any attempt to steer my future is doomed.
Yes.
Any attempt to experiment is doomed. You have to make a decision under uncertainty. You’d have to do that anyway. It’s just that now “experiment” isn’t one of the options.