p.s. please note that the field is VERY full of impossibility proofs (derived from Halting Problem) which are of the form ‘this does not resolve” (and full of “even if you postulate that this resolves, then something else doesn’t resolve”) and I do not look very hard indeed into the possibility that the associated subtleties resolve. Please also note that the subtlety of ‘the output must begin with data’ is not the kind of subtlety that resolves in any way. I can sometimes be very certain that a subtlety does not resolve; most of the time I am not certain (this field is outside my field of expertise) and I seldom if ever comment on those points (e.g. I refrained from commenting on Solomonoff induction here in the beginning of my post history) and I do not comment negatively on those.
The Solomonoff induction is a very complicated topic and it requires very careful consideration before the speculations. Due to it’s high difficulty the probability of subtleties resolving is considerably less than in the less complicated topics.
The subtleties I first had in mind were the ones that should have (but didn’t) come up in the original earlier dicussion of MWI, having to do with the different numbers of bits in different parts of an observation-predicting program based on a physical theory, and which of those parts should have their bits be charged against the prior or likelihood of the physical theory itself and which of the parts should have their bits be taken for granted as intrinsic parts of the anthropic reasoning that any agent would need to be capable of (even if some physical theories didn’t use part of that anthropic reasoning “software”).
(I didn’t specify what the subtleties were, and you seem to have picked a reading of which subtleties I must have been referring to and what I must have meant by “resolve” that together made what I was saying make no sense at all. This might be another example of the proposed tendency of “not looking very hard to see whether other people could have reasonably supposed” etc. (whether or not other people in the same reference class from your point of view as me weren’t signaling that they understood the point either).)
Well, taking for granted some particular class of bits is very problematic when you have brute force search over values of those bits. You can have a reasonably short program (that can be shorter than physics) which would iterate all theories of physics and run them for a very very long time. Then if you are allowed to just search for the observers, this program will be the simplest theory, and you are effectively back to the square one; you don’t get anything useful (you got solomonoff induction inside solomonoff induction). Sorry I still can’t make sense out of it.
I also don’t see why I should have searched for possible resolutions, and assume that other party has good reason to expect such resolution, if I reasonably believe that such resolution would have a good chance at Fields medal (or even a good reason to expect such resolution would).
I also don’t like speculative conjectures via lack of counter argument as combined with posts like this (and all posts inspired by it’s style), and feel very disinclined to run the highly computationally expensive search for possible solutions by a person that would not have such considerations about the entire majority of scientists that he thinks believe in something other than MWI. (in so much as MWI is part of CI every CI endorser believes in MWI in a way, they just believe that it is invalid to believe in extra worlds that can’t be observed, or other philosophical stance that is a matter of opinion).
edit: that is to say, the stance often expressed on MWI here is normative: if you don’t believe in MWI you are wrong, and not just that, but the scientific community is wrong for not believing in MWI. That is the backgrounder. I do believe many worlds are a possibility, but I do not believe the above argument to be valid. And as you yourself have eloquently explained, one should not proclaim those believing in MWI to be stupid on basis of unresolved problems not being resolved (I do not do that). But this also goes with CI, and I am not the community that is being normative about what is rational and judges by MWI belief status whenever one’s rational. edit2: and I do not see how this strong-pro-MWI stance is compatible with awareness of the subtleties. Furthermore, at the point when you make so many implicit assumptions about subtleties resolving in your favour, you could as well say Occam’s razor; it is not appropriate to use specific term (Solomonoff induction) to refer to something fuzzy.
p.s. please note that the field is VERY full of impossibility proofs (derived from Halting Problem) which are of the form ‘this does not resolve” (and full of “even if you postulate that this resolves, then something else doesn’t resolve”) and I do not look very hard indeed into the possibility that the associated subtleties resolve. Please also note that the subtlety of ‘the output must begin with data’ is not the kind of subtlety that resolves in any way. I can sometimes be very certain that a subtlety does not resolve; most of the time I am not certain (this field is outside my field of expertise) and I seldom if ever comment on those points (e.g. I refrained from commenting on Solomonoff induction here in the beginning of my post history) and I do not comment negatively on those.
The Solomonoff induction is a very complicated topic and it requires very careful consideration before the speculations. Due to it’s high difficulty the probability of subtleties resolving is considerably less than in the less complicated topics.
The subtleties I first had in mind were the ones that should have (but didn’t) come up in the original earlier dicussion of MWI, having to do with the different numbers of bits in different parts of an observation-predicting program based on a physical theory, and which of those parts should have their bits be charged against the prior or likelihood of the physical theory itself and which of the parts should have their bits be taken for granted as intrinsic parts of the anthropic reasoning that any agent would need to be capable of (even if some physical theories didn’t use part of that anthropic reasoning “software”).
(I didn’t specify what the subtleties were, and you seem to have picked a reading of which subtleties I must have been referring to and what I must have meant by “resolve” that together made what I was saying make no sense at all. This might be another example of the proposed tendency of “not looking very hard to see whether other people could have reasonably supposed” etc. (whether or not other people in the same reference class from your point of view as me weren’t signaling that they understood the point either).)
Well, taking for granted some particular class of bits is very problematic when you have brute force search over values of those bits. You can have a reasonably short program (that can be shorter than physics) which would iterate all theories of physics and run them for a very very long time. Then if you are allowed to just search for the observers, this program will be the simplest theory, and you are effectively back to the square one; you don’t get anything useful (you got solomonoff induction inside solomonoff induction). Sorry I still can’t make sense out of it.
I also don’t see why I should have searched for possible resolutions, and assume that other party has good reason to expect such resolution, if I reasonably believe that such resolution would have a good chance at Fields medal (or even a good reason to expect such resolution would).
I also don’t like speculative conjectures via lack of counter argument as combined with posts like this (and all posts inspired by it’s style), and feel very disinclined to run the highly computationally expensive search for possible solutions by a person that would not have such considerations about the entire majority of scientists that he thinks believe in something other than MWI. (in so much as MWI is part of CI every CI endorser believes in MWI in a way, they just believe that it is invalid to believe in extra worlds that can’t be observed, or other philosophical stance that is a matter of opinion).
edit: that is to say, the stance often expressed on MWI here is normative: if you don’t believe in MWI you are wrong, and not just that, but the scientific community is wrong for not believing in MWI. That is the backgrounder. I do believe many worlds are a possibility, but I do not believe the above argument to be valid. And as you yourself have eloquently explained, one should not proclaim those believing in MWI to be stupid on basis of unresolved problems not being resolved (I do not do that). But this also goes with CI, and I am not the community that is being normative about what is rational and judges by MWI belief status whenever one’s rational. edit2: and I do not see how this strong-pro-MWI stance is compatible with awareness of the subtleties. Furthermore, at the point when you make so many implicit assumptions about subtleties resolving in your favour, you could as well say Occam’s razor; it is not appropriate to use specific term (Solomonoff induction) to refer to something fuzzy.