In your section “complexity of conditioning”, if I am understanding correctly, you compare the amount of information required to produce consequentialists with the amount of information in the observations we are conditioning on. This, however, is not apples to oranges: the consequentialists are competing against the “true” explanation of the data, the one that specifies the universe and where to find the data within it, they are not competing against the raw data itself. In an ordered universe, the “true” explanation would be shorter than the raw observation data, that’s the whole point of using Solomonoff induction after all.
So, there are two advantages the consequentialists can exploit to “win” and be the shorter explanation. This exploitation must be enough to overcome those 10-1000 bits. One is that, since the decision which is being made is very important, they can find the data within the universe without adding any further complexity. This, to me, seems quite malign, as the “true” explanation is being penalized simply because we cannot read data directly from the program which produces the universe, not because this universe is complicated.
The second possible advantage is that these consequentialists may value our universe for some intrinsic reason, such as the life in it, so that they prioritize it over other universes and therefore it takes less bits to specify their simulation of it. However, if you could argue that the consequentialists actually had an advantage here which outweighed their own complexity, this would just sound to me like an argument that we are living in a simulation, because it would essentially be saying that our universe is unduly tuned to be valuable for consequentialists, to such a degree that the existence of these consequentialists is less of a coincidence than it just happening to be that valuable.
In your section “complexity of conditioning”, if I am understanding correctly, you compare the amount of information required to produce consequentialists with the amount of information in the observations we are conditioning on. This, however, is not apples to oranges: the consequentialists are competing against the “true” explanation of the data, the one that specifies the universe and where to find the data within it, they are not competing against the raw data itself. In an ordered universe, the “true” explanation would be shorter than the raw observation data, that’s the whole point of using Solomonoff induction after all.
The data we’re conditioning on has K-complexity of one megabyte. Maybe I didn’t make this clear.
So, there are two advantages the consequentialists can exploit to “win” and be the shorter explanation. This exploitation must be enough to overcome those 10-1000 bits. One is that, since the decision which is being made is very important, they can find the data within the universe without adding any further complexity. This, to me, seems quite malign, as the “true” explanation is being penalized simply because we cannot read data directly from the program which produces the universe, not because this universe is complicated.
I don’t think I agree with this. Thinking in terms of consequentialists competing against “true” explanations doesn’t make that much sense to me. It seems similar to making the exec hello world “compete” against the “true” print hello world.
The “complexity of consequentialists” section answers the question of “how long is the exec function?” where the “interpreter” exec calls is a universe filled with consequentialists.
However, if you could argue that the consequentialists actually had an advantage here which outweighed their own complexity, this would just sound to me like an argument that we are living in a simulation, because it would essentially be saying that our universe is unduly tuned to be valuable for consequentialists, to such a degree that the existence of these consequentialists is less of a coincidence than it just happening to be that valuable.
I do not understand what this is saying. I claim that consequentialists can reason about our universe by thinking about TMs because our universe is computable. Given that our universe supports life, it might thus be valuable to some consequentialists in other universes. I don’t think the argument takes a stance on whether this universe is a simulation; it merely claims that this universe could be simulated.
In your section “complexity of conditioning”, if I am understanding correctly, you compare the amount of information required to produce consequentialists with the amount of information in the observations we are conditioning on. This, however, is not apples to oranges: the consequentialists are competing against the “true” explanation of the data, the one that specifies the universe and where to find the data within it, they are not competing against the raw data itself. In an ordered universe, the “true” explanation would be shorter than the raw observation data, that’s the whole point of using Solomonoff induction after all.
So, there are two advantages the consequentialists can exploit to “win” and be the shorter explanation. This exploitation must be enough to overcome those 10-1000 bits. One is that, since the decision which is being made is very important, they can find the data within the universe without adding any further complexity. This, to me, seems quite malign, as the “true” explanation is being penalized simply because we cannot read data directly from the program which produces the universe, not because this universe is complicated.
The second possible advantage is that these consequentialists may value our universe for some intrinsic reason, such as the life in it, so that they prioritize it over other universes and therefore it takes less bits to specify their simulation of it. However, if you could argue that the consequentialists actually had an advantage here which outweighed their own complexity, this would just sound to me like an argument that we are living in a simulation, because it would essentially be saying that our universe is unduly tuned to be valuable for consequentialists, to such a degree that the existence of these consequentialists is less of a coincidence than it just happening to be that valuable.
The data we’re conditioning on has K-complexity of one megabyte. Maybe I didn’t make this clear.
I don’t think I agree with this. Thinking in terms of consequentialists competing against “true” explanations doesn’t make that much sense to me. It seems similar to making the
exechello world “compete” against the “true”printhello world.The “complexity of consequentialists” section answers the question of “how long is the
execfunction?” where the “interpreter”execcalls is a universe filled with consequentialists.I do not understand what this is saying. I claim that consequentialists can reason about our universe by thinking about TMs because our universe is computable. Given that our universe supports life, it might thus be valuable to some consequentialists in other universes. I don’t think the argument takes a stance on whether this universe is a simulation; it merely claims that this universe could be simulated.