If the hypothesis “this world is a holodeck” is normatively assigned a calibrated confidence well above 10⁻⁸, the lottery winner now has incommunicable good reason to believe they are in a holodeck. (I.e. to believe that the universe is such that most conscious observers observe ridiculously improbable positive events.)
It isn’t clear to me that I’m that much more likely to win the lottery if the world is a holodeck. Of all possible holodecks, why one in which I win the lottery? The world doesn’t look like I’d expect it to if “most conscious observers observe ridiculously improbable positive events”; unless they just happened to start the simulation shortly before I won the lottery, and give people memories of a past that doesn’t look like the future. And that in turn seems vastly unlikely even conditioning on “the world is a holodeck”.
If volcano lairs with cat girls have diminishing returns on utility, and we have a lot of time, it’s plausible we end up simulating winning the lottery.
The question is, how much more probable is that than that we end up simulating losing the lottery?
I almost agreed and answered “7 times more” before noticing that this is not quite a right question. We shouldn’t be asking “how much more probable” when it can actually be less probable than ending up simulating losing the lottery and have the “win” observation still be evidence in favor of simulation.
An actual “how much more probable” question that fits—and is the one I was initially trying to answer—seems to be:
How much more probable is it that a given world selected from the expected simulated worlds gives a win than that I would win the real lottery?
It’s hard to specify the question more simply than that (and even that specification is borderline). The language gets ambiguous or misleading when it comes to “but we’ll simulate both!” scenarios.
How much more probable is it that a given world selected from the expected simulated worlds gives a win than that I would win the real lottery?
Yes, very good… I suppose I’m not sure. My heuristic is to imagine that simulations are probable roughly in proportion to the length of their English descriptions, whereas “real worlds” are probable in proportion to physical probability (ie, descriptions in the language of physics). According to that heuristic, the question is how probable the phrase “winning the lottery” is as compared to 10^-8 (which I assume is a sufficiently good estimate of the physical probability of winning the lottery, conditioned on experiences so far). I don’t have a good estimate of this phrase’s frequency. (Anyone have suggestions for how to find one?)
It isn’t clear to me that I’m that much more likely to win the lottery if the world is a holodeck. Of all possible holodecks, why one in which I win the lottery? The world doesn’t look like I’d expect it to if “most conscious observers observe ridiculously improbable positive events”; unless they just happened to start the simulation shortly before I won the lottery, and give people memories of a past that doesn’t look like the future. And that in turn seems vastly unlikely even conditioning on “the world is a holodeck”.
Yeah, who cares about winning the lottery. I want my volcano lair filled with catgirls.
If volcano lairs with cat girls have diminishing returns on utility, and we have a lot of time, it’s plausible we end up simulating winning the lottery.
The question is, how much more probable is that than that we end up simulating losing the lottery?
I almost agreed and answered “7 times more” before noticing that this is not quite a right question. We shouldn’t be asking “how much more probable” when it can actually be less probable than ending up simulating losing the lottery and have the “win” observation still be evidence in favor of simulation.
An actual “how much more probable” question that fits—and is the one I was initially trying to answer—seems to be:
How much more probable is it that a given world selected from the expected simulated worlds gives a win than that I would win the real lottery?
It’s hard to specify the question more simply than that (and even that specification is borderline). The language gets ambiguous or misleading when it comes to “but we’ll simulate both!” scenarios.
I’ve missed you!
Agreed with all of this.
Yes, very good… I suppose I’m not sure. My heuristic is to imagine that simulations are probable roughly in proportion to the length of their English descriptions, whereas “real worlds” are probable in proportion to physical probability (ie, descriptions in the language of physics). According to that heuristic, the question is how probable the phrase “winning the lottery” is as compared to 10^-8 (which I assume is a sufficiently good estimate of the physical probability of winning the lottery, conditioned on experiences so far). I don’t have a good estimate of this phrase’s frequency. (Anyone have suggestions for how to find one?)