This is a question similar to “am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”. Both statements are incompatible with any other empirical or logical belief, or with making any predictions about future experiences. Therefore, the questions and belief-propositions are in some sense meaningless. (I’m curious whether this is a theorem in some formalized belief structure.)
For example, there’s an argument about B-brains that goes: simple fluctuations are vastly more likely than complex ones; therefore almost all B-brains that fluctuate into existence will exist for only a brief moment and will then chaotically dissolve in a kind of time-reverse of their fluctuating into existence.
Should a B-brain expect a chaotic dissolution in its near future? No, because its very concepts of physics and thermodynamics that cause it to make such predictions are themselves the results of random fluctuations. It remembers reading arguments and seeing evidence for Boltzmann’s theorem of enthropy, but those memories are false, the result of random fluctuations.
So a B-brain shouldn’t expect anything at all (conditioning on its own subjective probability of being a B-brain). That means a belief in being a B-brain isn’t something that can be tied to other beliefs and questioned.
This is a question similar to “am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”. Both statements are incompatible with any other empirical or logical belief, or with making any predictions about future experiences. Therefore, the questions and belief-propositions are in some sense meaningless. (I’m curious whether this is a theorem in some formalized belief structure.)
For example, there’s an argument about B-brains that goes: simple fluctuations are vastly more likely than complex ones; therefore almost all B-brains that fluctuate into existence will exist for only a brief moment and will then chaotically dissolve in a kind of time-reverse of their fluctuating into existence.
Should a B-brain expect a chaotic dissolution in its near future? No, because its very concepts of physics and thermodynamics that cause it to make such predictions are themselves the results of random fluctuations. It remembers reading arguments and seeing evidence for Boltzmann’s theorem of enthropy, but those memories are false, the result of random fluctuations.
So a B-brain shouldn’t expect anything at all (conditioning on its own subjective probability of being a B-brain). That means a belief in being a B-brain isn’t something that can be tied to other beliefs and questioned.