dadadarren

Karma: 696

dadadarren Nov 28, 2022, 3:08 PM
1 point
on: We need a theory of anthropic measure binding
The more I think about anthropics the more I realize there is no rational theory for anthropic binding. For the question “what is the probability that I am the heavy brain?” there really isn’t a rational answer.

dadadarren Nov 3, 2022, 3:56 PM
1 point
0
on: Quantum Suicide and Aumann’s Agreement Theorem
This experimental outcome will not produce a disagreement between Alice and Bob. As long as they are following the same anthropic logic.
When saying Bob’s chance of survival is 100% according to MWI, the statement is made from a god’s eye view discussing all post-experiment worlds: Bob will for sure survive: in one/some of the branches.
By the same logic, from the same god’s eye view, we can say, Alice will meet Bob for sure: in one/some of the branches, if the MWI is correct.
By saying Alice shall see Bob with a 0.1% chance no matter if MWI is correct, you are talking about the specific Alice’s first-person perspective, which is a self-locating probability according to MWI. As in “what is the probability I am the Alice who’s in the branch where Bob survives?”.
By taking the specific subject’s perspective, Bob’s chance of survival is also 0.1% according to MWI. As in “what is the probability that I am actually in the branches where Bob survives?”
As long as their reasonings are held at the same level, their answers would be the same.
The real kicker is whether or not they should actually increase their confidence in MWI after the experiment ends (especially in the case where Bob survives). The popular anthropic camps such as SIA seem to say yes. But that would mean any quantum event, no matter the outcome would be evidence favouring MWI. So an armchair philosopher could say with categorical confidence that MWI is correct. (This is essentially the same problem as Nick Bostrom’s Presumptuous Philosopher but in the quantum worlds) So SIA supporters and Thirders have been trying to argue their positions do not necessarily lead to such an update (which they called the naive confirmation of the MWI). Whether or not that defence is successful is up for debate. For more information, I recommend the papers by Darren Bradley and Alastar Wilson.
On the other hand, if you think finding oneself exist is a logical truth, thus has 100% probability, then it is possible to produce disagreement against Aumann’s Agreement Theorem. And the disagreement is valid and can be logically explained. I have discussed it here. I think this is the correct anthropic reasoning. However, this idea does not recognize self-locating probability thus fundamentally incompatible with the MWI. Therefore if Alice and Bob both favour this type of anthropic reasoning, they would still have the same confidence in the validity of MWI, 0%.

dadadarren Oct 7, 2022, 8:26 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: the gears to ascension’s comment on: How does anthropic reasoning and illusionism/eliminitivism interact?
Try this for practice, reasoning purely objectively and physically, can you recreate the anthropic paradoxes such as the Sleeping Beauty Problem?
That means without resorting to any particular first-person perspective, nor using words such as “I” “now” “here”, or putting them in a unique logical position.

dadadarren Oct 7, 2022, 8:19 PM
4 points
1
in reply to: JBlack’s comment on: How does anthropic reasoning and illusionism/eliminitivism interact?
One way to understand the anthropic debate is to consider them as different ways of interpreting the indexicals (such as “I” “now” “today” “our generation” etc) in probability calculation. And they are based on the first-person perspective. Furthermore, there is the looming question of “what should be considered observers?”. Which lacks any logical indicator, unless we bring in the concept of consciousness.
We can easily make the sleeping beauty problem more undefined. For example, by asking “Is the day Monday?”. Before attempting to answer it one would have to ask: “which day exactly are we talking about?”. Compare that question to “is today Monday?”, the latter is obviously more defined. Even though by using “now” or “today” no physical feature is used, we inherently think the latter question is clear because we can imagine being in Beauty’s perspective as she wakes up during the experiment: “today” is the one most closely connected to the first-person experience.

dadadarren Oct 6, 2022, 8:12 PM
7 points
−2
on: How does anthropic reasoning and illusionism/eliminitivism interact?
The two are incompatible. Anthropic reasoning makes explicit use of first-person experience in their question formulation. E.g. in the sleeping beauty problem, “what is the probability that now is the first awakening?” or “today is Monday?” The meaning of “now”, and “today” is considered to be apparent, it is based on their immediacy to the subjective experience. Just like which person “I” am is inherently obvious based on a first-person experience. Denying first-person experience would make anthropic problems undefined.
Another example is the doomsday argument. Which says my birth rank, or the current generation’s birth rank, is evidence for doom-soon. Without a first-person experience who “me” or “the current generation” refers to would be unclear.

dadadarren Sep 10, 2022, 8:59 PM
3 points
0
on: ethics and anthropics of homomorphically encrypted computations
Whether computer-simulated minds or people from other universes (or beyond the event horizon in this post) have subjective experiences is essentially the reference class problem, a category of observers that “I could be” in anthropic arguments: Whether the reference class should include them.
I have a major problem with this “observation selection” type of anthropic reasoning, which pretty much is all that ever gets discussed such as SSA, SIA and their variants. In my opinion, there isn’t any valid reference class. Each person’s perspective, e.g. who I am, when is now etc, is primitive. Not something to be explained by reasoning. There is no logical explanation or deduction for it. The first-person is unique, and subjective experience is intrinsic to the first-person perspective only.
We can all imagine thinking from other people’s perspectives. Do you think it is ethically relevant to reason from the perspective of a simulated mind? If so, then you should consider them conscious. Otherwise they are not. But as perspectives are primitive, these types of questions can only be answered by stipulations. Not as a conclusion from some carefully conducted reasoning. Rationality cannot provide any answer here.

dadadarren Jul 26, 2022, 2:14 PM
4 points
3
in reply to: NickGabs’s comment on: Cognitive Instability, Physicalism, and Free Will
For what it’s worth I think there needs to be some clarification.
I didn’t say our model is deterministic nor should it be or not. And my argument is not about whether the correct definition of knowledge should be “justified true belief”. And unless I have had the wrong impression, I don’t think Sean Carrol’s focus is on the definition of knowledge either. Instead, it’s about what should be considered “true”.
The usual idea of a theory being true if it faithfully describes an underlying objective physical reality (deterministic or not) is problematic. It suffers the same pitfall of believing I am a Boltzmann brain. It is due to the dilemma that theories are produced and evaluated by worldly objects while their truth ought to be judged with “a view from nowhere”, a fundamentally objective perspective.
Start reasoning by recognizing I am a particular agent, then you will not have this problem. I don’t deny that. In fact, I think that is the solution to many paradoxes. But the majority of people would start reasoning from the “view from nowhere” and regard that as the only way. I think that is what has led people astray in many problems. Like decision paradoxes such as Newcomb, anthropics and to a degree, quantum interpretations.

dadadarren Jul 18, 2022, 12:06 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: 1a3orn’s comment on: Cognitive Instability, Physicalism, and Free Will
Not intentional, but didn’t expect it to be a novel argument either. I suspect everyone has thought about it sometime during their life, likely while learning physics in secondary school. I just think “cognitive instability” is a nice handle for the discussion.

dadadarren Jul 18, 2022, 11:57 AM
3 points
0
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Cognitive Instability, Physicalism, and Free Will
I really like “starting with being an agent”. In fact, I strongly argued for it. But the reality is people often would forgo this and regard “view from nowhere” as the foundation and attempt to draw the map with that perspective. (Anthropics being the prime example, IMO) Allowing this switch of viewpoints, there is no way to say if “the internal model for decision-making” really “reflects the universe”. E.g. the debate if quantum states are just epistemological or ontological.
Even the idea of “decision” is challenged when the decision-maker is physically analyzed. We won’t say water decides to flow toward lower places. Looking at a decision-maker physically, where is the sense of decision in his actions? I think that’s why “decision-making” problems like Newcomb and Twin Prison Dilemma are paradoxical. It asks what would the decision-maker do using the introspecting sense while also made sure physically analyzing the decision-maker is part of the problem.

Cognitive Instability, Physicalism, and Free Will

dadadarrenJul 16, 2022, 1:13 PM

5 points

27 comments2 min readLW link

(www.sleepingbeautyproblem.com)

dadadarren Jul 3, 2022, 2:34 PM
2 points
in reply to: MSRayne’s comment on: Consciousness, Free Will and Scientific Objectivity in Perspective-Based Reasoning
That’s quite alright, none taken. All I was getting at was a uniquely “physically real” analysis is actually an additional assumption.

dadadarren Jul 3, 2022, 11:24 AM
2 points
in reply to: MSRayne’s comment on: Consciousness, Free Will and Scientific Objectivity in Perspective-Based Reasoning
Do you think there is a causal reason why you are MSRayne? Meaning why you are experiencing the world from that particular physical person’s perspective? Instead of you being Bill Gates, or an astroid, or a quark?

dadadarren Jul 1, 2022, 3:33 PM
1 point
in reply to: MSRayne’s comment on: Consciousness, Free Will and Scientific Objectivity in Perspective-Based Reasoning
“There can be only one true explanation for any given event” is actually what I am challenging. PBR supposes reasoning and physical descriptions have to be based on a prespecified perspective. And there is no one “true explanation” that transcends all perspectives.
By PBR’s logic, the perspective center being not physically describable is to be expected. That’s what I meant by “why quantum physics does not cover the observer” because physics actually shouldn’t. I am not claiming I know more than physicists. If you are interested in quantum interpretations proposed by actual physicists, that work well with the idea of PBR, I suggest RQM by Carlo Rovelli.
Btw, the steelmaning portion is not my argument. “whenever two conscious minds interact” is ontologically impossible per PBR. The “conscious mind” is inherent to the first-person, or more generally inherent to the thing at the perspective center. There cannot be two conscious minds in any given analysis. For example, reasoning from my first-person perspective and conducting physical analysis would not conclude or infer that you are conscious. You are just a complicated machine in this analysis. Whatever your actions are, they can be physically deduced. Alternatively, we can conduct the analysis from your perspective instead of mine. But then you will be the conscious self, and I will just be the complex, yet physically-reducible machine.
We can also conduct the analysis from the perspective of some other thing, then neither you nor I would be conscious. However, we shouldn’t conduct the analysis with “a view from nowhere” or “god’s eye view” that transcends all perspectives that think in terms of the “true nature” or “absolute reality” of things.

dadadarren Jun 30, 2022, 1:46 PM
1 point
in reply to: MSRayne’s comment on: Consciousness, Free Will and Scientific Objectivity in Perspective-Based Reasoning
PBR suggests physics reasoning has to be conducted from something’s perspective, instead of a “god’s eye view” or “view from nowhere”.
Call this thing at the perspective center “self”. From this perspective, the world around can be physically described/analyzed based on the interactions with the self. This means to physically analyze something we have to reason from the perspective of something else that interacts with it. It cannot be done from its own perspective. This is the reason why “observers” are not covered by quantum physic btw.
The self is not within the scope of physics. Instead, the reason behind its actions can be interpreted as conscious choices. This is what I meant by “free will”.
E.g. if we take an outsider’s perspective and physically analyze Bill Gate’s body, brain included, we can in theory analyze it as a machine to deduce its output. The concept of “free will” or “conscious choice” never applies. If we reason from our natural first-person perspective, then the reason behind our decisions is our choices.
Human bodies are nothing special. If we reason from the perspective of a Galton board, how it arranged the balls shall be interpreted as conscious choices too. Even though physically analyzing it, from another perspective, would reveal nothing of that nature.
To summarize, PBR suggests consciousness and free will are inherent properties to the thing at the perspective center. Or the first-person perspective presupposes them. (first-”person” is a misnomer here, doesn’t has to be a human being.)

dadadarren Jun 29, 2022, 2:12 PM
1 point
in reply to: mikbp’s comment on: An Alternative Interpretation of Physics
You can say even when neither of them can compare the descriptions it still means their descriptions are the same. But from what perspective is this statement made? It is from a god’s eye view that directly thinks in terms of reality.
A self-consistent theory only means from any perspective, analyzing the interactions affected by an object cannot give conflicting descriptions of said object. If the only interaction upon you from the camera is an infra-red photo of the bottle, and from your direct interaction with the bottle you concluded it’s red, and from the infra-red photo you concluded it is green, then there’s something wrong with your theory that needs rectifying.
Besides, applying the same theories from the cameras’ perspective does not necessarily mean an infrared camera and a normal camera would give different (macro-scale) descriptions of the bottle. Sure the cameras give different photos. But the interactions they receive from the bottle are not that different. The infrared camera still gets bombarded by photons of all energy levels. They don’t just pass through the camera unaffected without interacting with it. And physical descriptions are based on them. If instead there is an infrared camera that let photons of higher energy levels pass through without interacting, as if they don’t exist to the camera, then it would give different descriptions.
Look, what I am arguing is that a foundational “absolute reality” is an additional assumption based on our intuition formed in the daily environment. Thinking directly in terms of this absolute reality is problematic outside of our intuitive environment, e.g. high speed or microscopic so we should get rid of this assumption however convenient it proved to be in the past.
I remembered Thomas Nagel said we get the idea of scientific objectivity through 3 steps.
1. Realize (or postulate) that my experiences are caused by actions upon me from the environment.
2. Realize (or postulate) that what causes actions upon me can also act on other things. They can exist on their own.
3. Realize (or postulate) an “true nature” that is independent of any perspective.
People in general regard science as the study of this “true nature” using “a view from nowhere”. I am simply arguing Postulate 3 is taking it too far.
Postulate 1 expands the scope from subjective experiences to actions, i.e. subjective experiences are not special. Postulate 2 expands the scope from my first-person perspective to anything’s perspective, i.e. my perspective is not special. Using only these two is not only more parsimonious, it also fits very well with the increasingly observer/perspective-dependent trend of physical discoveries.

dadadarren Jun 28, 2022, 1:28 PM
1 point
in reply to: mikbp’s comment on: An Alternative Interpretation of Physics
Perspectives here do not just mean spatiotemporal locations. More importantly, it means which thing you are. e.g. you are experiencing the universe from the perspective of a particular human being named mikbp.
Treating perspectives to be axiomatic means any physical description has to be based on the perspective of something. We cannot think from a god’s eye view, and directly describe the world as it is. As in think directly in terms of the “absolute reality”.
If there are no interactions between two observers, then how can either of them say they are giving the same descriptions for an object? To each of them, the existence of the other observer is physically moot. There is ontologically no comparison at all, let alone saying their description are the same or different.

dadadarren Jun 27, 2022, 2:44 PM
1 point
in reply to: mikbp’s comment on: An Alternative Interpretation of Physics
“Absolute objectivity” is treating physical objects as the foundation. I.e. Observers 1 and 2 should give the same depiction of the bottle, on pain of being wrong, because they are describing the same physical object. It attempts to get rid of perspectives and reason directly in terms of this physical objective reality by taking a “view from nowhere”. It fits our usual intuition of scientific objectivity: “think about how things really are instead of how they appear to be from various viewpoints”.
If we treat perspectives to be axiomatic then the underlying reason for the same depiction by distinct observers is different. For example, some of my interactions with the environment are affected by some cause. By analyzing these interactions using some theories, I conceptualize this cause as an object: “the bottle”. Note, that not all of the affected interactions are directly between me and the bottle. I could also have interactions from the camera that are affected by the bottle. (reflections from the lens, etc) As long as the theories I used are self-consistent, analyzing the direct interactions and indirect interactions should give non-conflicting depictions of the cause (i.e. the object). For objects that affect lots of interactions, i.e. macroscopic, rough depictions from direct and indirect interactions would effectively be the same. Therefore if we imagine using the same theories from the camera’s perspective, it would, effectively, give the same description of the bottle.
So the bottom reason for why Observers 1 and 2 must give the same physical depiction is:
1. Correct physical theories ought to be self-consistent and could work from different perspectives. (uncontroversial)
2. Observers 1 and 2 are interacting with each other, and these interactions are affected by the object they are describing.
No2. holds up pretty well in our daily life. That’s what gives us the intuition of an invariant absolute reality. But if there are no interactions between the observers; if the cause(object) has no effect on these interactions; or even if the effect is too insignificant to carry enough information, then the physical descriptions from different observers have no reason to be the same. There is simply no way to say.

dadadarren Jun 22, 2022, 2:29 PM
1 point
on: Why don’t we think we’re in the simplest universe with intelligent life?
Questions like this highlight how misguided the current state of anthropic reasoning is.
When one spends enough time thinking about the anthropic principle it would seem quite reasonable to raise this question. But take a step back, and consider it a physical/scientific statement: “The universe is likely in the simplest form that could support intelligent life”. It is oddly specific. Why not say “the universe is likely the simplest that could support black holes?”, or hydrogen atoms, or Very large-scale integrations? Each hypothesis results in vastly different predictions of what the universe is like. Why favor “intelligent life” above anything else?
People may provide different justifications for this preferential treatment. But it always boils down to this: We are intelligent lives. And it is intuitively obvious that the physical existence of oneself is important for their reasoning about the universe. But the Copernican science paradigm has no place for the first-person perspective. It requires one to “Zoom-Out” and think from an impartial outsider’s view. This conflict leads to awkward attempts to mix the outsider’s impartiality and the first-person self-focus. It gives rise to teleological conclusions like the fine-tuned universe which is often used as proof of God’s existence. And less jarringly but far more deceivingly, regarding oneself as equivalent to the result of imaginary random sampling. It is perhaps unsurprising that anthropic problems often end up as paradoxes.
To resolve the paradoxes we have to at least be aware of which viewpoint we are taking in reasoning and make a conscious effort not to mix first-person perspective with the impartial outsider’s view. To lay all the debate to rest we perhaps need to develop a framework incorporating the first-person perspective into the scientific paradigm.

dadadarren Jun 17, 2022, 7:23 PM
7 points
on: Humans are very reliable agents
I see it as less of “Humans are more reliable than AI” but more of “Humans and AI do not tend to make the same kind of mistakes”. And the everyday jobs we encounter have been designed/evolved around human mistake patterns so we are less likely to cause catastrophic failures. Keeping the job constant and replacing humans with AI would obviously lead to problems.
For well-defined simple jobs like arithmetic, AI has a definite accuracy edge compared to human beings. Even for complex jobs, I am still unsure if human beings have the reliability edge. We had quite a few human errors leading to catastrophic failures in earlier stages of complex projects like space explorations, nuclear power plants, etc. But as time passes on we rectify the job so human errors are less likely to cause failure.

dadadarren Jun 16, 2022, 4:09 PM
3 points
on: Is there a worked example of Georgian taxes?
Interested in this too. The idea of taxing on the value of the land, not on the improvements seems impractical. Even if we do not consider the buildings/infrastructures on a particular parcel, the land’s value is heavily influnced by its location. e.g. its accessibility to nearby services and improvements. So the tax would either still be influenced by improvements or we tax downtown at the same rate as a removed desolate farm. Then the tax rate would be too low.

dadadarren

Cog­ni­tive In­sta­bil­ity, Phys­i­cal­ism, and Free Will

Cognitive Instability, Physicalism, and Free Will