Something like this is true in a sense, I think. But you could unwind past assumptions that imply you have to “have a prior”. I mean, you’re not evading any law of course; you’ll just be incoherent (e.g. thrash around, or be dutch-bookable). But it’s a way you could be.
In a sense, yes- of course you can construct something without any given characteristic of a mind, such as an inert rock or a pair of dice.
That said, I’d argue the presence of something like a simplicity prior- not necessarily something that fits the formal definition of a prior, but some sort of tendency for simple beliefs over complicated ones- is a necessity of having beliefs of any kind at all.
For instance- you might have no prior belief, but whenever you generate a belief of any kind, assign it 50% probability. This isn’t a prior(it’s more like a change in how you update from your prior) and you end up with very stupid beliefs; but the ‘generate a belief of any kind’ step necessarily encodes a simplicity tendency, weakly in the sense that more complicated beliefs broadly require more of a prompt to pick out in the first place, and also strongly in the sense that your beliefs cannot be of infinite length, and any finite belief encodes a simplicity tendency over the far-more-numerous versions that are twice as complex. To generate even a single belief requires something at least resembling a simplicity prior.
You can dispense with having beliefs at all as well, but by that point we’re essentially dispensing with being a mind at all,[1] and that means you can no longer have a self-ratifying state of a mind for lack of a mind;[2] and if you have to unwind to a rock to avoid having a simplicity-tendency then that’s about as far from it being optional as is possible.[3]
I think for the purposes of this discussion many types of thoughts can be thought of as either being a type of belief or implying a belief, in that they follow the same rules of requiring some sort of preference for simplicity… either directly or just because they’re produced through a sequential process that takes finite time to reach a stopping point.
...I think I may have somewhat lost the thread here. The original argument here is something like ‘perhaps the reason the world seems orderly and not blotzmany, is just that we’re sneaking in that assumption by using reasoning that assumes an orderly world’, right? I guess this is somewhat true, in the sense that anthropically we can’t perceive something no mind perceives and you need a certain amount of order for a mind.[4] But it doesn’t seem to be true in a way that would work to avoid blotzman brains, and if we’re sneaking in that assumption anywhere I think it’s located inside our definition of ‘mind’ rather than how we reason about that definition.
(I actually expect- Insofar as we can draw any conclusions from this kind of subjective observation at all, which is not obviously the case- a stronger version of this where, ie, my subjective observations don’t draw from the pool of insect observations or even those of any other person, and so it’s not surprising that I don’t find myself being a fly even if there are a lot of flies, because anyone who finds themself a fly is a fly and not me, but that’s besides the point because blotzman brains can still match that criteria.)
You can dispense with having beliefs at all as well, but by that point we’re essentially dispensing with being a mind at all
To some extent yeah, but for example, think of a corporation or a state government or something. In some narrow-ish senses it has greater power / knowledge / ability / skill / capability compared to an individual human; and that’s not entirely just due to having collected several humans, but also partly due to some narrow usefulness of the corporate structures themselves, so this entity has some degree of its own reality if you see what I mean. In many important ways it’s incoherent, doesn’t have beliefs, isn’t a mind, is very inefficient, etc.; but it’s definitely some type of thingy, if you know what I mean, so such things aren’t necessarily uninteresting.
Something like this is true in a sense, I think. But you could unwind past assumptions that imply you have to “have a prior”. I mean, you’re not evading any law of course; you’ll just be incoherent (e.g. thrash around, or be dutch-bookable). But it’s a way you could be.
In a sense, yes- of course you can construct something without any given characteristic of a mind, such as an inert rock or a pair of dice.
That said, I’d argue the presence of something like a simplicity prior- not necessarily something that fits the formal definition of a prior, but some sort of tendency for simple beliefs over complicated ones- is a necessity of having beliefs of any kind at all.
For instance- you might have no prior belief, but whenever you generate a belief of any kind, assign it 50% probability. This isn’t a prior(it’s more like a change in how you update from your prior) and you end up with very stupid beliefs; but the ‘generate a belief of any kind’ step necessarily encodes a simplicity tendency, weakly in the sense that more complicated beliefs broadly require more of a prompt to pick out in the first place, and also strongly in the sense that your beliefs cannot be of infinite length, and any finite belief encodes a simplicity tendency over the far-more-numerous versions that are twice as complex. To generate even a single belief requires something at least resembling a simplicity prior.
You can dispense with having beliefs at all as well, but by that point we’re essentially dispensing with being a mind at all,[1] and that means you can no longer have a self-ratifying state of a mind for lack of a mind;[2] and if you have to unwind to a rock to avoid having a simplicity-tendency then that’s about as far from it being optional as is possible.[3]
I think for the purposes of this discussion many types of thoughts can be thought of as either being a type of belief or implying a belief, in that they follow the same rules of requiring some sort of preference for simplicity… either directly or just because they’re produced through a sequential process that takes finite time to reach a stopping point.
and also because ‘this state of mind is more correct’ is a belief.
...I think I may have somewhat lost the thread here. The original argument here is something like ‘perhaps the reason the world seems orderly and not blotzmany, is just that we’re sneaking in that assumption by using reasoning that assumes an orderly world’, right? I guess this is somewhat true, in the sense that anthropically we can’t perceive something no mind perceives and you need a certain amount of order for a mind.[4] But it doesn’t seem to be true in a way that would work to avoid blotzman brains, and if we’re sneaking in that assumption anywhere I think it’s located inside our definition of ‘mind’ rather than how we reason about that definition.
(I actually expect- Insofar as we can draw any conclusions from this kind of subjective observation at all, which is not obviously the case- a stronger version of this where, ie, my subjective observations don’t draw from the pool of insect observations or even those of any other person, and so it’s not surprising that I don’t find myself being a fly even if there are a lot of flies, because anyone who finds themself a fly is a fly and not me, but that’s besides the point because blotzman brains can still match that criteria.)
To some extent yeah, but for example, think of a corporation or a state government or something. In some narrow-ish senses it has greater power / knowledge / ability / skill / capability compared to an individual human; and that’s not entirely just due to having collected several humans, but also partly due to some narrow usefulness of the corporate structures themselves, so this entity has some degree of its own reality if you see what I mean. In many important ways it’s incoherent, doesn’t have beliefs, isn’t a mind, is very inefficient, etc.; but it’s definitely some type of thingy, if you know what I mean, so such things aren’t necessarily uninteresting.