If I assume Solomonoff induction, then it is in a way reasonable to care less about people running on convoluted physics, because then I would have to assign less “measure” to them. But you rejected this kind of reasoning in your post, and I can’t exactly come to grips with the “physics racism” that seem to logically follow from that.
Suppose I wanted to be fair to all, i.e., avoid “physics racism” and care about everyone equally, how would I go about that? It seems that I can only care about dynamical processes, since I can’t influence static objects, and to a first approximation dynamical processes are equivalent to computations (i.e., ignoring uncomputable things for now). But how do I care about all computations equally, if there’s an infinite number of them? The most obvious answer is to use the uniform distribution: take an appropriate universal Turing machine, and divide my “care” in half between programs (input tapes) that start with 0 and those that start with 1, then divide my “care” in half again based on the second bit, and so on. With some further filling in the details (how does one translate this idea into a formal utility function?), it seems plausible it could “add up to normality” (i.e., be roughly equivalent to the continuous version of Solomonoff Induction).
It sounds like this solution is (a) a version of Solomonoff Induction, and (b) similarly suffering from the arbitrary language problem—depending on which language you use to code up the programs. Right?
To clarify my point, I meant that Solomonoff induction can justify caring less about some agents (and I’m largely aware of the scheme you described), but simultaneously rejecting Solomonoff and caring less about agents running on more complex physics is not justified.
I think I understood your point, but maybe didn’t make my own clear. What I’m saying is that to recover “normality” you don’t have to care about some agents less, but can instead care about everyone equally, and just consider that there are more copies of some than others. I.e., in the continuous version of Solomonoff Induction, programs are infinite binary strings, and you could say there are more copies of simple/lawful universes because a bigger fraction of all possible infinite binary strings compute them. And this may be more palatable for some than saying that some universes have more magical reality fluid than others or that we should care about some agents more than others.
I agree with this, but I am not sure if you are trying to make this argument within my hypothesis that existence is meaningless. I use the same justification within my system, but I would not use phrases like “there are more copies,” because there is no such measure besides the one I that I assign.
Yeah, I think what I said isn’t strictly within your system. In your system, where does “the measure that I assign” come from? I mean, if I was already a UDT agent, I would already have such a measure, but I’m not already a UDT agent so I’d have to come up with a measure if I want to become a UDT agent (assuming that’s the right thing to do). But what do I based it on, and why? BTW, have you read my post http://lesswrong.com/lw/1iy/what_are_probabilities_anyway/ where option 4 is similar to your system? I wasn’t sure option 4 is the right answer back then, and I’m still in the same basic position now.
Well in mind space, there will be many agents basing their measures on different things. For me, it is based my intuition about “caring about everyone equally,” and looking at programs as infinite binary strings as you describe. That does not feel like a satisfactory answer to me, but it seems just as good as any answer I have seen to the question “Where does your utility function come from?”
I have read that post, and of course, I agree with your reasons to prefer 4.
Suppose I wanted to be fair to all, i.e., avoid “physics racism” and care about everyone equally, how would I go about that? It seems that I can only care about dynamical processes, since I can’t influence static objects, and to a first approximation dynamical processes are equivalent to computations (i.e., ignoring uncomputable things for now). But how do I care about all computations equally, if there’s an infinite number of them? The most obvious answer is to use the uniform distribution: take an appropriate universal Turing machine, and divide my “care” in half between programs (input tapes) that start with 0 and those that start with 1, then divide my “care” in half again based on the second bit, and so on. With some further filling in the details (how does one translate this idea into a formal utility function?), it seems plausible it could “add up to normality” (i.e., be roughly equivalent to the continuous version of Solomonoff Induction).
It sounds like this solution is (a) a version of Solomonoff Induction, and (b) similarly suffering from the arbitrary language problem—depending on which language you use to code up the programs. Right?
To clarify my point, I meant that Solomonoff induction can justify caring less about some agents (and I’m largely aware of the scheme you described), but simultaneously rejecting Solomonoff and caring less about agents running on more complex physics is not justified.
I think I understood your point, but maybe didn’t make my own clear. What I’m saying is that to recover “normality” you don’t have to care about some agents less, but can instead care about everyone equally, and just consider that there are more copies of some than others. I.e., in the continuous version of Solomonoff Induction, programs are infinite binary strings, and you could say there are more copies of simple/lawful universes because a bigger fraction of all possible infinite binary strings compute them. And this may be more palatable for some than saying that some universes have more magical reality fluid than others or that we should care about some agents more than others.
I agree with this, but I am not sure if you are trying to make this argument within my hypothesis that existence is meaningless. I use the same justification within my system, but I would not use phrases like “there are more copies,” because there is no such measure besides the one I that I assign.
Yeah, I think what I said isn’t strictly within your system. In your system, where does “the measure that I assign” come from? I mean, if I was already a UDT agent, I would already have such a measure, but I’m not already a UDT agent so I’d have to come up with a measure if I want to become a UDT agent (assuming that’s the right thing to do). But what do I based it on, and why? BTW, have you read my post http://lesswrong.com/lw/1iy/what_are_probabilities_anyway/ where option 4 is similar to your system? I wasn’t sure option 4 is the right answer back then, and I’m still in the same basic position now.
Well in mind space, there will be many agents basing their measures on different things. For me, it is based my intuition about “caring about everyone equally,” and looking at programs as infinite binary strings as you describe. That does not feel like a satisfactory answer to me, but it seems just as good as any answer I have seen to the question “Where does your utility function come from?”
I have read that post, and of course, I agree with your reasons to prefer 4.