1. Omega predictors are impossible
They are unstable/impossible not just in practice but in theory as well. It’s theoretically not possible for Omega to exist because the decision of 1-2 box is recursive. You’re essentially invoking a magical agent that somehow isn’t affected by infinite recursion.
“Omega can ‘snap’ through the infinite recursive loop.” No it can’t. And if you claim it can you’re essentially dropping a nuke inside your logical system that can probably produce all sorts of irrational true=false theorems.
2. Writing on whiteboards, acausal control is just superdeterminism
Brain in a box perfect duplication just implies determinism is true. We are all pure functions of our inputs, if you can perfectly duplicate the context and the function then the outputs will be the same(barring quantum randomness, but I’m assuming we claim that quantum randomness is also not actually random so superdeterministic physics or smth).
It indicates that the experience of choice is illusory. Neither of ‘you’ are deciding to do anything. You are just running the same computation in multiple duplicated physical locations. See
3. Determinism has 0 informational content. It is meaningless and you shouldn’t care about it
Let’s say you are faced with a choice: eat a burger or stick to your diet. Well the universe is pre-determined so you might as well eat the burger. Well the universe is pre-determined so you might as well not eat the burger.
There is no informational content in determinism. It’s illusory that we make choices… But so what? We can’t get an outside perspective over the 4D crystal of the universe we are a part of.
If it helps the wave function of your self to exist happier then just assume that it’s predetermined you’ll make all the correct, virtuous choices and then obviously you’ll make them and that’s that.
Good points! I didn’t get into ‘How do you really calculate the net-societal utility outcome of your actions, including second+ order effects?’ since I think even the 1st order immediate consequence calculation is intractable.
In practice you shouldn’t … help people that will do harm with your help. I think this is one of the limits of pacifism(with Kaladin’s dad being an example of that, incidentally) at some point passive obedience to an unjust opressor has the same consequences for the other people they harm as active cooperation. It is a moral duty to actually do something to harm or at least minimally help a person or institution or government from doing bad things. Just saying I don’t like what this Hitler guy is doing with my tax money isn’t really acceptable once the harm he’s causing becomes really monstrous. So if I’m really calculating paying 2 personal utility to generate 4 utility for Bob, I should take into account what Bob’s actually gonna do with his 4 utility. But again that becomes computationally impossible almost immediately, hence we use heuristics(aka moral principles) to dictate how we should behave.
By politics I mean governance, collective action via voluntary organisations and state action.
The connection seems clear to me: I want to pool resources with others in a way that makes all of us better off. Increasingly elaborate and large scale systems of social coordination is how we do that and that’s what modern states are. (for better or for worse and as hijacked by niche, elite special interests as they can seem to be and/or actually are)
As … disappointing as contemporary western governments are, I still think most ‘charity’ or utility redistribution in modern societies is done by government via schools, healthcare, pensions, police and other security systems and relatively cheap/free infrastructure. These are all things that were privileges or luxuries in the past that are now baseline and we all pay for them together.
The modern idea is that politics is dirty and gross. And pretty much any politician I can think of off the top of my head is at best disappointing, at worst vile. However, developed societies went from feudal serfdom or slavery or highly unequal large underclass early industrial society to modern social democratic welfare states with a historically relatively high standard of living even for the worst off(or at least for the almost worst off, the really lumpenproletariat among us aren’t doing that great, but the people at the bottom 15% threshold are, relatively speaking).
This transformation happened because people, not necessarily professional politicians but some were that as well, pushed for change in an intentional, organised and persistent way. And they got it.
The grossness of modern politicians is a problem that will either be solved by better politicians emerging or will destroy our societies. Crap elites kill civilizations.
Without organised, collective action towards the goal of improving our lives in specific ways, with specific policies … we won’t get the things we want. Society doesn’t get better randomly, it gets better because groups of people agitate in a direction they think will make it better and sometimes they get what they want and sometimes what they wanted actually was a good idea.