Right, we don’t know how to choose the best direction of inquiry under logical uncertainty. But unexamined gut instinct can lead you down a blind alley, as I tried to show in the post.
I spent way too much time trying to fix the current proof-theoretic algorithms and the effort has mostly failed. Maybe it failed because I wishfully thought that a good algorithm must exist without any good reason, like Eliezer with his failed disproof of Cantor’s theorem.
Now I’m asking, perhaps in a roundabout way, what directions of inquiry could have better odds of making things clearer. My current answer is to reallocate time to searching for impossibility proofs (like W/U/A but hopefully better) and studying multiplayer games (like dividing a cake by majority vote, or Stuart’s problem about uncertainty over utility functions). I’d like to hear others’ opinions, though. Especially yours. What direction does your gut instinct consider the most fruitful?
Right, we don’t know how to choose the best direction of inquiry under logical uncertainty. But unexamined gut instinct can lead you down a blind alley, as I tried to show in the post.
I spent way too much time trying to fix the current proof-theoretic algorithms and the effort has mostly failed. Maybe it failed because I wishfully thought that a good algorithm must exist without any good reason, like Eliezer with his failed disproof of Cantor’s theorem.
Now I’m asking, perhaps in a roundabout way, what directions of inquiry could have better odds of making things clearer. My current answer is to reallocate time to searching for impossibility proofs (like W/U/A but hopefully better) and studying multiplayer games (like dividing a cake by majority vote, or Stuart’s problem about uncertainty over utility functions). I’d like to hear others’ opinions, though. Especially yours. What direction does your gut instinct consider the most fruitful?
ETA: Wei has replied by private communication :-)