Stating that the planet wants to minimize its action or whatever is as arbitrary as saying that it wants to be a whale. Silas Barta was asserting that “free energy” is the answer
No, I wasn’t, but I couldn’t even follow what your point was, once you started equating your own “shouldness” with the planet’s shouldness, as if that implied some kind of contradiction if they’re different. So, I didn’t follow up.
The point was, if indeed we are all fully deterministic, and planets are fully deterministic, and planets embody the laws of physics, the concept of “shouldness” must be equally applicable in both cases. (More generally, I can’t distinguish “agent” type algorithms from “non-agent” type algorithms, so I don’t know what the alternative is.)
You “could jump off that cliff, if you wanted to.” But as Eliezer_Yudkowsky notes in the link above, this statement is completely consistent with “It is physically impossible that you will jump off that cliff.” Because the “causal forces within physics that are you” cannot reach that state.
And there’s the kicker: that situation is no different from that of a planet: whatever it “wishes”, it’s physically impossible to do anything but follow the path dictated by physics.
My point about free energy was just to a) do a simple “reality check” (not the only check you can do) that would justify saying “the planet doesn’t want to be a whale”, and b) that every system will minimize its free energy with respect to a local domain of attraction. Just like how water will flow downhill spontaneously, but it won’t jump out of a basin, just because that can get it even further downhill.
Now, in the sense that people can “want the impossible”, then yes, I have no evidence that a planet doesn’t want to be a whale. What I perhaps should have said is, a planet has not identified being a whale as the goal or subgoal it is in pursuit of. Even taking this reasoning to the extreme, the very first steps toward becoming a whale, would immediately hit the hard limits of free energy minimization, and so the planet could never even begin such a path—not viewed as a single entity.
Now, in the sense that people can “want the impossible”, then yes, I have no evidence that a planet doesn’t want to be a whale.
Yup, that’s the case. This concept is meaningful because sometimes unexpected opportunities appear and the predictably impossible turns into an option. Or, more constructively, this concept is required to implement external “help” that is known in advance to be welcome.
No, I wasn’t, but I couldn’t even follow what your point was, once you started equating your own “shouldness” with the planet’s shouldness, as if that implied some kind of contradiction if they’re different. So, I didn’t follow up.
The point was, if indeed we are all fully deterministic, and planets are fully deterministic, and planets embody the laws of physics, the concept of “shouldness” must be equally applicable in both cases. (More generally, I can’t distinguish “agent” type algorithms from “non-agent” type algorithms, so I don’t know what the alternative is.)
You “could jump off that cliff, if you wanted to.” But as Eliezer_Yudkowsky notes in the link above, this statement is completely consistent with “It is physically impossible that you will jump off that cliff.” Because the “causal forces within physics that are you” cannot reach that state.
And there’s the kicker: that situation is no different from that of a planet: whatever it “wishes”, it’s physically impossible to do anything but follow the path dictated by physics.
My point about free energy was just to a) do a simple “reality check” (not the only check you can do) that would justify saying “the planet doesn’t want to be a whale”, and b) that every system will minimize its free energy with respect to a local domain of attraction. Just like how water will flow downhill spontaneously, but it won’t jump out of a basin, just because that can get it even further downhill.
Now, in the sense that people can “want the impossible”, then yes, I have no evidence that a planet doesn’t want to be a whale. What I perhaps should have said is, a planet has not identified being a whale as the goal or subgoal it is in pursuit of. Even taking this reasoning to the extreme, the very first steps toward becoming a whale, would immediately hit the hard limits of free energy minimization, and so the planet could never even begin such a path—not viewed as a single entity.
Yup, that’s the case. This concept is meaningful because sometimes unexpected opportunities appear and the predictably impossible turns into an option. Or, more constructively, this concept is required to implement external “help” that is known in advance to be welcome.