JBlack

Karma: 2,345

JBlack 4 Sep 2025 3:24 UTC
2 points
1
on: All Exponentials are Eventually S-Curves
Some curves that start exponential are actual unimodal, in the long run. Some are oscillatory. Some are chaotic, some have undefined behaviour because the thing being plotted ceases to make sense.
Why do you think all of them are eventually S curves in particular?

JBlack 3 Sep 2025 6:12 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: CstineSublime’s comment on: CstineSublime’s Shortform
There are ancient texts on this matter, such as
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line
Short answer: once you know that you are listening to someone who wrote the bottom line first, then anything they wrote (or said) above the bottom line is worthless toward determining whether the bottom line is true.
It is still possible that they present information that is of some use in other respects, but only to the extent that it is not correlated with the truth or falsity of the bottom line.
Now, in some world it may be that if the bottom line were false, then fewer people would argue for it and such arguments would be less likely to appear on daytime television. That does not appear to be the world we live in.

JBlack 3 Sep 2025 5:32 UTC
8 points
0
on: The Cats are On To Something
But, I do think that we should prepare to have initiating the catpocalypse as a contingency.
I prefer the term “cataclysm”. Though perhaps tiling the lightcone with some fraction of cats should be called a “catastrophe” given both the textual similarity and its intended meaning being related to some form of “cat-astrophysics”.

JBlack 3 Sep 2025 5:15 UTC
4 points
−2
in reply to: quetzal_rainbow’s comment on: Help me understand: how do multiverse acausal trades work?
My post is almost entirely about the enormous hidden assumptions in the word “finding” within your description “finding suitable trading partner in multiverse”. The search space isn’t just so large that you need galaxies full of computronium, because that’s not even remotely close to enough. It’s almost certainly not even within an order of magnitude of the number of orders of magnitude that it takes. It’s not enough to just find one, because you need to average expected value over all of them to get any value at all.
The expected gains from every such trade are correspondingly small, even if you find some.

JBlack 2 Sep 2025 1:06 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Avi Parrack’s comment on: Avi Parrack’s Shortform
Just as a minor note (to other readers, mostly) decoherence doesn’t really have “number of branches” in any physically real sense. It is an artifact of a person doing the modelling choosing to approximate a system that way. You do address this further down, though. On the whole, great post.

JBlack 2 Sep 2025 0:09 UTC
3 points
−4
on: Help me understand: how do multiverse acausal trades work?
Acausal trades almost certainly don’t work.
There are more possible agents than atom-femtoseconds in the universe (to put it mildly), so if you devote even one femtosecond of one atom to modelling the desires of any given acausal agent then you are massively over-representing that agent.
The best that is possible is some sort of averaged distribution, and even then it’s only worth modelling agents capable of conducting acausal trade with you—but not you in particular. Just you in the sense of an enormously broad reference class in which you might be placed by agents like them.
Given even an extremely weak form of orthogonality thesis, the net contribution of your entire reference class will be as close to zero as makes no difference—not even enough to affect one atom (or some other insignificantly small equivalent in other physics). If orthogonality doesn’t hold even slightly, then you already know that your desires are reflected in the other reference classes and acausal trade is irrelevant.
So the only case that is left is one in which you know that orthogonality almost completely fails, and there are only (say) 10^1 to 10^30 or so reasonably plausible sets of preferences for sufficiently intelligent agents instead of the more intuitively expected 10^10000000000000000000 or more. This is an extraordinarily specific set of circumstances! Then you need that ridiculously specific set to include a reasonably broad but not too broad set of preferences for acausal trade in particular, along with an almost certain expectation that they actually exist in any meaningful sense that matters for your own preferences and likewise that they consider your preference class to meaningfully exist for theirs.
Then, to the extent that you believe that all of these hold and that all of the agents that you consider to meaningfully exist outside your causal influence also hold these beliefs, you can start to consider what you would like to expect in their universes more than anything you could have done with those resources in your own. The answer will almost certainly be “nothing”.

JBlack 28 Aug 2025 3:17 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: AdamLacerdo’s comment on: Would you sell your soul to save it? ( I am NOT a Christian)
Then there’s a HUGE hole in the scenario right where all the load-bearing assumptions are.
What sort of evidence convinced the person in the scenario that Christianity is actually with probability greater than 0.99 correct, and definitely less than 1% chance of every other scenario combined? How do you distinguish this from the whims of a powerful being who can read minds and do lots of other stuff, forcing people to accept that it is correct on pain of eternal death or torture? The only difference here from literal Christianity seems to be the idea that the powerful being is good and just in doing that, so what evidence made the person accept that?
I’m assuming that the powerful being can’t (or won’t) write minds as well, since being mind-probed into belief is not really that interesting.

JBlack 26 Aug 2025 1:43 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Heighn’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
Why do you believe that I believe that this is a scenario in which you are definitely not in a simulation? I do not.
I am saying that in general, FDT does not require that the agent must reason about whether they are in a simulation. In the published Bomb scenario in particular it is not stated whether the agent may be in a simulation, and it is also not stated whether the agent knows or believes that they may be in a simulation. In principle, all these combinations of cases must be considered separately.
Since the scenario does not make any statement in this respect, I do believe that it was not intended by the scenario author that the agent should reason as if they may be in a simulation. That would be just one of infinitely many unstated possibilities that might affect the analysis if they were considered, all of which would complicate and detract from the issue they intended to discuss.
So I do believe that the analysis described in the original scenario was carried out for an agent that does not consider whether or not they may be in a simulation, as distinct from them actually being definitely not in a simulation.
After all, the fact of the matter is that they are in a simulation. We are simulating what such an agent should do, and there is no “real” agent in this case.

JBlack 25 Aug 2025 0:45 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Arjun Panickssery’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
Partly for the reasons outlined in my comment here. Mainly the following section:
Even under the most hardcore determinism and assuming immutable agents, they can be classified into those that would and those that wouldn’t have performed that act and so there is definitely some sort of distinction to be made.
In another comment (that I’m not finding after some minutes of search) I outline why this distinction is one that should be (and is) called moral culpability for all practical and most philosophical purposes. The few exceptions aren’t relevant here, since even one counterexample renders the argument invalid.

JBlack 25 Aug 2025 0:31 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: David_Bates’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
It’s a separate issue entirely. Scenarios in which you could be in a temporary simulation (especially in which the simulation outcome may be used to determine something for another instance of your decision process) are different and should be analysed differently from those in which you are definitely not.

JBlack 24 Aug 2025 1:32 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: David_Bates’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
No, it does not. However MacAskill did not correctly perform the FDT analysis.

JBlack 24 Aug 2025 1:28 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
What you’re missing is the F in FDT: the agent is assumed to have a function that maps their available information to a decision. In a note-less scenario, every possible agent has the same information available, and so there are only two possible functions: one that maps to Left, and one that maps to Right. FDT then says that Left performs better.
Once you introduce the possibility of a note, there are now (at least) three values in the domain: no note, a note saying the prediction was Left, and a note saying the prediction was Right. MacAskill assumed that this doesn’t change the FDT decision, but of course it does: there are now at least 8 (and possibly infinitely many) such functions to compare, not just 2, and unstated distributions over the mapping between inputs and outputs. In almost all of the distributions, FDT will in these new and different scenarios recommend picking Right.

JBlack 24 Aug 2025 1:17 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
In my scenario there is probability pT that the note is truthful (and the value of pT is assumed known to the agent making the decision). It is possible that pT = 1, but only for pN < 10^-24 so as to preserve the maximum 10^-24 probability of the predictor being incorrect.

JBlack 24 Aug 2025 1:15 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
In my scenario, there is a probability pN that the predictor leaves a note, regardless of what prediction the predictor makes. The note (when present) is always of the form “I predicted that you will pick the <right|left> box, and therefore <did|did not> put a bomb in the left box.” That is, the note is about what the predictor thinks you will do, which more closely matches your second paragraph. Your first paragraph concerns a prediction about what you counterfactually would have done in some other situations and is not relevant in this scenario.
However, your decision process should consider the probability 1-pT that the note is lying about the predictor’s actual prediction (and therefore bomb-placing).

JBlack 23 Aug 2025 11:26 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
That would have been a different set of example scenarios. In this one, I chose one in which the predictor had fixed probabilities. I am not assuming any particular means by which the predictor arrives at the prediction (such as simulation), and don’t care about anything to do with self-locating uncertainty (such as being a conscious entity created by such a simulation).
Feel free to follow up with FDT analysis of a different scenario, if you prefer it.
Though I will note that in a scenario where the agent is uncertain of the actual constraints of the scenario, the conclusion is almost always simpler: take the right box every time, because even a tiny fraction of uncertainty makes the left box too unsafe to be worth taking. The more moving parts you introduce into a scenario with this basic premise, the more likely it is that “always take the right box” is the correct decision, which is boring.

JBlack 22 Aug 2025 3:12 UTC
2 points
1
in reply to: Richard Korzekwa ’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
Yes, an obvious flaw is that 1 is obviously false. Though also 2 is false depending upon exactly how you view the term “a person”.

JBlack 22 Aug 2025 2:11 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: J Bostock’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
Example scenario extended to allow notes
Suppose that when the agent enters the room, a note is either Absent, states that the Left box was predicted (and there’s no bomb in it), or that the Right box was predicted (and therefore there’s a bomb in Left). There is probability pN of the note being present in both prediction cases, and probability pT of it being truthful in both cases where it is present. (A more complete analysis would have these be different probabilities, and a consideration that they may be adversarially selected to extract the most damage from participants or to minimise the recorded rates of error of the predictor)
For simplicity, the probabilities of incorrect prediction in every combination of functional inputs and outputs are all B, which according to the scenario is very small, less than 10^-24. Again, in a more complete analysis one should consider different rates of error under different decision scenarios and possible optimization pressures.
The simplest decision function then maps type of note one sees mapped to which box to take, although a more complete analysis would permit mixed strategies. There are eight such functions instead of the two in the no-note scenario.
In particular, there is a possible function F(A) = L, F(L) = R, F(R) = L. In this case, the predictor leaves a truthful note with probability pN pT, and the prediction was wrong because the agent does the opposite. By the scenario constraint B < 10^-24, we know that the product pN pT < 10^-24.
So it is inconsistent with the scenario that the predictor always leaves a truthful note. The predictor can either be forced into error with probability very much greater than 10^-24 which violates the scenario premises, or almost always does not leave a truthful note. It is also possible that the predictor could arrange that the agent is unable to decide in this way, but that’s very much outside the bounds of decision theory.
It is still possible that pT is close to 1, but less than 1 - U(-$100)/U(death). In this case, pN ~= 10^-24 and your optimal decision function is F(A) = L, F(L) = R, F(R) = R. That is, take the left box unless you see a note saying Right, in which case you should pick Right. If you see no note then with probability at least 0.999999999999999999999999 you will save $100 and not burn to death. In the extremely unlikely case that you see a note, you pick the right box even if it says Left, because you can’t be sufficiently confident that it’s true.
If pT >= 1 - U(-$100) / U(death), then the optimum is F(A) = L, F(L) = L, F(R) = R because now you have near certainty that the note is truthful and the risk of picking the left box based on the note is now worth it.

JBlack 22 Aug 2025 0:20 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: J Bostock’s comment on: Critiques of FDT Often Stem From Confusion About Newcomblike Problems
Yes, this is very much correct. It is invalid reasoning to carry out an FDT decision analysis on a different scenario (without the possibility of a note), claim that you should use the result of that on this one (with the note), and then claim that FDT is a bad decision theory as a result.
The possible inclusion of a note and its contents adds an unknown number of bits of information to the input of the function in FDT, which obviously changes the analysis.
The agent would need extraordinarily strong information about when a note appears and the bounds on its probability of truthfulness in order to decide to take the left box under FDT here (and almost certainly not burn to death because the note is almost certainly lying). Otherwise FDT dictates that you must take the right box.
The exact bounds depend upon the conditions under which a note can appear and what its content can be. If they are not specified then you would need to apply some prior distribution, which unless you are an extremely bizarre person with extremely bizarre priors or utility function, will lead to FDT recommending that you take the right box.

JBlack 21 Aug 2025 0:40 UTC
5 points
1
in reply to: Alex_Altair’s comment on: Alex_Altair’s Shortform
Yes, pretty much it. Concern with path-connectedness is equivalent to considering the transitive closure of the relation.

JBlack 14 Aug 2025 1:35 UTC
6 points
2
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: Enlightenment AMA
That said, I’ve never heard of someone being born into this condition.
How would they, and therefore you, know?

JBlack

Example scenario extended to allow notes