Ah, I see. I’m not sure I would describe SI as ‘solving’ those puzzles, rather than recasting them in a clearer light
The claim has been made , even if you don’t believe it.
Beliefs should pay rent in anticipated experiences, which feels like a very SI position to have
Rationalists don’t consistently believe that, because if they did , they would be indfferent about MW versus Copenhagen , since all interpretations make the same predictions. Lesswrongian epistemology isn’t even consistent.
But I think the actual productive path, once you’re moderately confident Zeus isn’t on Olympus, is not trying to figure out if invisi-Zeus is in causally-disconnected-Olympus, but looking at humans to figure out why they would have thought Zeus was intuitively likely in the first place; this is the dissolving the question approach
If you can have a non empirical reason to believe in non interacting branches of the universal wave function, your theist opponents can have a non empirical reason to believe in non interacting gods.
With regard to QM, when I read through this post, it is relying pretty heavily on Occam’s Razor, which (for Eliezer at least) I assume is backed by SI
Of course not. SI can’t tell you why simplicity matters, epistemologically. At the same time. It is clear that simplicity is no additional help in making predictions. Once you have filtered out the non predictive order programmes, the remaining ones are all equally predictive … so whatever simpliciy is supplying, it isn’t extra productiveness. The obvious answer is that it’s some ability to show that, out of N equally predictive theories, one corresponds to reality.
That’s a standard defence of Occam’s razor. It isn’t given by SI, as we have seen. SI just needs the simplicity criterion in order to be able to spit something out.
But there are other defenses of Occam’s razor.
And the traditional versions don’t settle everything in favour of MWI and against (sophisticated versions of) God..those are open questions.
And SI isnt a new improved version of Occam’s razor. In fact , it is unable to relate simplicity to truth.
But a thing that I hadn’t noticed before this conversation, which seems pretty interesting to me, is that whether you prefer MWI might depend on whether you use the simplicity prior or the speed prior, a
These old problems are open problems because we can’t agree on which kind of simplicity is relevant. SI doesn’t help because it introduces yet another simplicity measure. Or maybe two,the speed prior and the space prior.
I think the real argument for MWI rests more on the arguments here
Wrongly conflates Copenhagen with Objective Reduction.
Wrongly assumes MW is the only alternative to “Copenhagen”.
The claim has been made , even if you don’t believe it.
Rationalists don’t consistently believe that, because if they did , they would be indfferent about MW versus Copenhagen , since all interpretations make the same predictions. Lesswrongian epistemology isn’t even consistent.
If you can have a non empirical reason to believe in non interacting branches of the universal wave function, your theist opponents can have a non empirical reason to believe in non interacting gods.
Of course not. SI can’t tell you why simplicity matters, epistemologically. At the same time. It is clear that simplicity is no additional help in making predictions. Once you have filtered out the non predictive order programmes, the remaining ones are all equally predictive … so whatever simpliciy is supplying, it isn’t extra productiveness. The obvious answer is that it’s some ability to show that, out of N equally predictive theories, one corresponds to reality.
That’s a standard defence of Occam’s razor. It isn’t given by SI, as we have seen. SI just needs the simplicity criterion in order to be able to spit something out.
But there are other defenses of Occam’s razor.
And the traditional versions don’t settle everything in favour of MWI and against (sophisticated versions of) God..those are open questions.
And SI isnt a new improved version of Occam’s razor. In fact , it is unable to relate simplicity to truth.
These old problems are open problems because we can’t agree on which kind of simplicity is relevant. SI doesn’t help because it introduces yet another simplicity measure. Or maybe two,the speed prior and the space prior.
Wrongly conflates Copenhagen with Objective Reduction.
Wrongly assumes MW is the only alternative to “Copenhagen”.