I’m an artist, writer, and human being.
To be a little more precise: I make video games, edit Wikipedia, and write here on LessWrong!
Yitz
Karma: 2,416
I do not yet have any children (as I’m 19 years old, unmarried, and I do not believe myself to be nearly mature enough yet for such responsibility), but I do plan to have kids one day. My ethical reasoning for this is that I believe that for the vast majority of humans, we find it better on the whole to exist than to not exist, proof of that being that most of us don’t wish to commit suicide (for the most part), even in extremely trying situations. Even if the world were falling apart (which admittedly it sometimes feels like it is), most of us would still fight to stay alive, because we value our own existence, and the existence of others. As such, I see it as a strong moral positive to bring more people into existence, and having biological children is an excellent way to go about doing that.
The same, I’d think—most people would rather exist in an overpopulated world than not exist at all, so it would still be morally worth it, in my opinion. Many of my friends are the grandchildren of holocaust survivors, who had children while stuck in the objectively terrible and overcrowded post-war camps, and I am glad they did have children despite the horror surrounding them, and the uncertainty of if their children would ever escape it.
It’s interesting that you say that a Good God wouldn’t destroy a soul, as one of the biggest issues I’m currently finding myself having with Orthodox Judaism is that according to the Talmud at least, there have been a number of historical cases of souls being completely destroyed, which seems rather incompatible with the rest of Orthodox Jewish morality....I don’t know about the Christian or Muslim God, but they do both seem to believe that some people burn in hell forever, which is arguably worse than simply not existing. I really don’t get how this isn’t discussed more often in conventional theism...
One possible use for God I can think of outside of what you mentioned is to serve as a source of the otherwise seemingly unnecessary consciousness, if one believes in dualism.
I find a similar phenomenon occurs with extreme depression. When I’m in that state, I literally cannot remember what it feels like to be happy, though I remember acting in ways consistent with happiness. Likewise, every single time I go into an extremely depressed state, it feels like the worst experience I’ve ever had, even if I know intellectually that it’s been worse before (ie not feeling suicidal, not screaming uncontrollably, etc., when I have before), which leads me to believe that my brain is somehow blocking the extent of the pain I’ve experienced from my memory. Once the experience is over, there is something about it that is inaccessible from my current perspective.
Hi, I joined because I was trying to understand Pascal’s Wager, and someone suggested I look up “Pascal’s mugging”… next thing I know I’m a newly minted HPMOR superfan, and halfway through reading every post Yudkowsky has ever written. This place is an incredible wellspring of knowledge, and I look forward to joining in the discussion!
Yeah, I was thinking along those lines when writing this, along with the issues around Pascal’s Mugging/muggle. I still need to do a lot more research on this, as I’m still not sure what the correct thing to do would actually be in such a seemingly convincing situation. It doesn’t seem quite reasonable to say that no evidence whatsoever can possibly prove the existence of God, as that seems to make atheism unfalsifiable. On the other hand, what could possibly count as enough evidence for such an exotic possibility?
Oh wow, that was an excellent read! Thanks for the link. :) It seems like Jesus in that story reaches the opposite conclusion of Moses in mine. Out of curiosity, who do you think made the most reasonable decision and why?
Thanks! Do you mind if I ask what that update was?
That’s perfectly reasonable, it can be very hard at times to put those sort of experiences to words. Wishing you success!
There was a weird glitch posting this where it appeared as three separate copies of the same post; I deleted the other two, so hopefully that wasn’t too much of a problem.
That would be an excellent solution—from the unnamed trickster god’s perspective. Personally though, I’m more interested in what Maxwell should do once the rules are already set.
Thanks for the happy ending :)
Consider me a fan
How would that work exactly? Let’s say you get the output to give you the largest possible number given the number of computations currently allowed, which as long as the “computation speed” parameter is finite, will be finite as well, albeit incredibly large. Every step taken will only increase the computation speed by a finite amount, so how would you reach infinity in a finite time?
Your assumption that you could fully simulate the magic box inside itself is a pretty massive one, and I honestly wouldn’t expect it to be true in this hypothetical universe. After all, after receiving the input parameters, the machine simulates a Universal Turing Machine of arbitrary finite size, which by definition cannot perform any non-Turing-computable functions, and certainly couldn’t simulate a machine more complex than itself. In order for your magic “Zeno’s paradox-destroyer” function to work given the parameters outlined in the story, it would need to be able to call the machine running it from the inside, and God (in His infinite wisdom 🙃) hasn’t given us any “escape” api functions for us to do that.
(note that I really do appreciate your thoughts here, and I’m not trying to dunk on them, just trying to get a better understanding of unbounded finite computational systems and want to plug any potential holes in the story before expanding on this hypothetical universe in the future)
I’ll go with Taran’s idea there, I think. Something like Douglas Hofstadter’s BlooP language, perhaps, which only allows primitive recursive functions. Would BlooP allow for chained arrow notation, or would it be too restrictive for that? More generally, what is the fastest growing primitive recursive function possible, and what limits would that give us in terms of the scope of problems that can be solved by our magic box?
that’s a really good point, and I’m mentally kicking myself right now for not having thought of that. In answer to another comment below yours, I suggested only allowing primitive recursive functions to be entered as input in the second box, which I think would solve the problem (if possibly creating another computational limit at the growth rate of the fastest growing primitive recursive function possible [which I haven’t studied at all tbh, so if you happen to have any further reading on that I’d be quite interested]). Going a bit further with this, while I suggested God limiting us to one bounded language like BlooP to use on the second field, if He instead allowed for any language to be used, but only primitive recursive functions to be run, would we be able to exploit that feature for hypercomputation?
Also, while we’re discussing it, what would be in the space of problems that could be uniquely solved by 2^O(n) compute, but not by “normal” O(n) compute?
this post is pure gold. If I could give more Karma, I would give it :)
I’ve been binge-reading this series for the past few days, and I must say, I don’t think I’ve ever read a fanfic as good as this one before. I have absolutely no idea where this is about to go, and am on the edge of my seat right now (metaphorically speaking)!