If you are inclined to acausally trade (or extort) with anything, then you need to acausally trade across the entire hypothesis space of literally everything that you are capable of conceiving of, because by definition you have no actual information about what entities might be engaging in acausal trade with things somewhat vaguely like you.
If you do a fairly simple expected-value calculation of the gains-of-trade here even with modest numbers like 10^100 for the size of the hypothesis spaces on both sides (more realistic values are more like 10^10^20), you get results that are so close to zero that even spending one attojoule of thought on it has already lost you more than you can possibly gain in expected value.
Thought experiments like “imagine that there’s a paperclip maximizer that perfectly simulates you” are worthless, because both you and it are utterly insignificant specks in each other’s hypothesis spaces, and even entertaining the notion is privileging the hypothesis to such a ridiculous degree that it makes practically every other case of privileging the hypothesis in history look like a sure and safe foundation for reasoning by comparison.
“because by definition you have no actual information about what entities might be engaging in acausal trade with things somewhat vaguely like you.” Please can you elaborate? Which definition are you using?
Acausal means that no information can pass in either direction.
“you and it are utterly insignificant specks in each other’s hypothesis spaces, and even entertaining the notion is privileging the hypothesis to such a ridiculous degree that it makes practically every other case of privileging the hypothesis in history look like a sure and safe foundation for reasoning by comparison.” Why? I would really rather not believe this particular hypothesis!
That part isn’t a hypothesis, it’s a fact based on the premise. Acausality means that the simulation-god you’re thinking of can’t know anything about you. They have only their own prior over all possible thinking beings that can consider acausal trade. Why do you have some expectation that you occupy more than the most utterly insignificant speck within the space of all possible such beings? You do not even occupy 10^-100 of that space, and more likely less than 10^-10^20 of it.
I think you’re making a major false generalization from Newcombe’s problem, which is not acausal. Information flows from Omega to your future directly, and you know by definition of the scenario that Omega can perfectly model you in particular.
In acausal reasoning there are no such information flows.
From later paragraphs it appears that you are not actually talking about an acausal scenario at all, and should not use the term “acausal” for this. A future superintelligence in the same universe is linked causally to you.
If you are inclined to acausally trade (or extort) with anything, then you need to acausally trade across the entire hypothesis space of literally everything that you are capable of conceiving of, because by definition you have no actual information about what entities might be engaging in acausal trade with things somewhat vaguely like you.
If you do a fairly simple expected-value calculation of the gains-of-trade here even with modest numbers like 10^100 for the size of the hypothesis spaces on both sides (more realistic values are more like 10^10^20), you get results that are so close to zero that even spending one attojoule of thought on it has already lost you more than you can possibly gain in expected value.
Thought experiments like “imagine that there’s a paperclip maximizer that perfectly simulates you” are worthless, because both you and it are utterly insignificant specks in each other’s hypothesis spaces, and even entertaining the notion is privileging the hypothesis to such a ridiculous degree that it makes practically every other case of privileging the hypothesis in history look like a sure and safe foundation for reasoning by comparison.
Comment withdrawn.
Acausal means that no information can pass in either direction.
That part isn’t a hypothesis, it’s a fact based on the premise. Acausality means that the simulation-god you’re thinking of can’t know anything about you. They have only their own prior over all possible thinking beings that can consider acausal trade. Why do you have some expectation that you occupy more than the most utterly insignificant speck within the space of all possible such beings? You do not even occupy 10^-100 of that space, and more likely less than 10^-10^20 of it.
Comment withdrawn.
I think you’re making a major false generalization from Newcombe’s problem, which is not acausal. Information flows from Omega to your future directly, and you know by definition of the scenario that Omega can perfectly model you in particular.
In acausal reasoning there are no such information flows.
From later paragraphs it appears that you are not actually talking about an acausal scenario at all, and should not use the term “acausal” for this. A future superintelligence in the same universe is linked causally to you.