Yes. But there are people on LW seriously claiming to assign a nonzero (or non-zero-plus-epsilon) probability of Omega—a philosophical abstraction for the purpose of thought experiments on edge cases—manifesting in the real world. At that point, they’ve arguably thought themselves less instrumentally functional.
there are people on LW seriously claiming to assign a nonzero probability of Omega—a philosophical abstraction for the purpose of thought experiments on edge cases—manifesting in the real world.
Being charitable, they assign a non-zero probability to the possibility of something coming into existence that is powerful enough to have the kinds of powers that our fictional Omega has. This is subtly different from believing the abstraction itself will come to life.
Yes. But there are people on LW seriously claiming to assign a nonzero (or non-zero-plus-epsilon) probability of Omega—a philosophical abstraction for the purpose of thought experiments on edge cases—manifesting in the real world. At that point, they’ve arguably thought themselves less instrumentally functional.
Being charitable, they assign a non-zero probability to the possibility of something coming into existence that is powerful enough to have the kinds of powers that our fictional Omega has. This is subtly different from believing the abstraction itself will come to life.