Same here, buddy.
Zachary_Kurtz
Is this anything like the Red paper clip trade story?
Already are! http://vimeo.com/siai
no problem
Ok I’m going to re-read this article again. I thought I saw a similarity in there. But I tend to agree with Alicorn below me. If both parties agree to a free trade, can it really be characterized as “unfair” just because the normal market values don’t seem to line up?
It’s all about personal expected utility after all, not what the market thinks.
But what do you mean by “fair trade” here. It’s not like any party didn’t know what the deal was. This just means there’s something else at play which was determining the value of the goods to both participants. What is “unfair” about this type of exchange?
Not being European, I probably haven’t paying as close attention to this as I should be. What does the Treaty do besides for adding an extra crunchy bureaucratic layer on top of the European “Community” ?
We discussed this at the last NYC OB/LW meetup. I’m becoming more in love with the “anthropic speculations.” Of course, its impossible to prove empirically until the universe is already destroyed.
All the trades must be indifferent or advantageous to you, so that you will accept them. And if even one of those trades is advantageous, then this is a money pump: I can charge you a tiny amount for that trade, making free money out of you. You are now strictly poorer than if you had not accepted the tradesat all.
I think this is part I don’t get.
Lets say we’re making a trade I would be indifferent about under normal circumstances (say a red paper clip for a pen). If you then try to turn around and try to “pump” me for a transaction cost of $1, I would no longer be indifferent about the trade. I would be negative about it.
I know you said that the situation requires me to forget about expected utility axioms, but does this also mean I shouldn’t have rational expectations about the value of the trade? At what point do these assumptions stop representing the real world?
fair enough, I was getting off track.
OK this makes a lot more sense now. So you’re engaging arbitrage by taking advantage of my transitive preferences?
I could see this scenario being possible, but not if you described all the trades to me beforehand (I assume limiting information is a prerequisite for the pump to work)
Maybe the Soviet Bloc would be a good example?
The only reference on google related to “transient global amnesia” and quantum is this thread (third link down).
Well the Austrians are right in that the traditional assumptions of rationality (and therefore fairness) don’t make much sense.
Although I think the behavioral economists are doing a decent job of backing up these type of assertions: the point that “fairness” is subjective.
Can someone engage in a trade they don’t believe is fair? Yes of course.
But if both parties say a trade is fair, who is an outside observer (with all the market data in the world) to tell them otherwise?
False actually. If you do the experiment a number of times and always get “suspicious” hindrances, then all you have is a lot of confirmational biases if you assume that the reason is anthropic.
Confirmation can’t provide definitive empirical proof, only “dis-comfirmation” can. This is especially true when your underlying assumption is unobservable, like multiverse theory.
I get what you mean, but I would hardly classify failing to destroy ourselves as “good empirical evidence.” For each time you replicate the experiment (and we survive) it does seem more likely that something is preventing us from turning on the LHC. But how many replications is significant (who the hell knows).
And how do you reach the conclusion that we are destroying ourselves in other universes (no evidence of this)?
After all these experiments, all you know is that the LHC isn’t turning on. You don’t really have evidence of anything going in potential parallel universes.
The whole argument smacks of circular logic. You’re starting with the assumption that multiple universes exist (which may be a good assumption, I’m not trying to say otherwise) and use the experiments to prove something funky is happening elsewhere in the multiverse.
Such a story might be internally consistent, but I fail to see the empiricism.
The probability of you making the observation that the LHC persistently fails to turn on is something like 1 if there exists a malevolent God who doesn’t want humans to learn more about physics.
I don’t see how God (and other bad explanations) can be ruled out given the experimental conditions being described. You’ve observed that the LHC can’t be turned on but the only reason, as far as I can tell, why the MWI is being chosen as the source of the dilemma is because we’re already starting with the assumption that the MWI is correct and relevant here.
If this is not actually a ‘begging the question’ fallacy, please demonstrate, or I’ll assume either myself or everyone else is missing something important.
there are other hypotheses that might better explain test failures
This quote is key. Other hypotheses could produce the same outcome as MWT-LHCD. Therefore MWF-LHCD actually has two possible outcomes. MW is false and we die. or MW is false and something else keeps us from dying.
The only reason we’d ignore the second possibility is if we assume MW is true and other hypotheses are irrelevant.
It may not be a bad assumption, but this is hardly empirical proof.
We seem to be talking past each other.
My problem is not with Bayesian approach to confirmation. Afterall, evolutionary theory is largely based on this (sorry Popper, its not just metaphysics).
My problem is with the idea that confirmation points exclusively to MWI.
Take your gravity example. Multiple observations show us that gravity exists. Careful study can even lead us to a Newtonian analysis of it. We understand very well how mass is related to gravity, etc. But this doesn’t tell us anything about how gravity is created.
There’s a lot of conjecture about gravitons and Einstein’s ideas about mass bending space-time are quite elegant. But nobody has observed any of these phenomena and the “source” of gravity confounds us still.
Likewise, when you perform your LHC experiments, you’ve made a proximate observation, but you have not observed the actual cause.
I repeat, If Many Worlds is False, LHC may still be failing through an unknown alternative mechanism. MW has more external support than, say the existence of a diety, but these experiments alone are not sufficient to cite MW as the probable cause.
For one thing, Many Worlds has a lot less empirical support (and no direct observation) compared to something like gravity. And the LHC experiment and your MW anthropic explanation has no specific link about MW being the underlying cause.
I ask again, other than circular reasoning, what is your basis for ignoring the possibility that MW is false and something else is preventing us from destroying the universe?
See and I would say the exact opposite. Modern terms, at least since the 1960s hippie revolution, people care more about nature, and particular with modern green revolution spurred on by global warming scares.
At least, we’re doing a better job than we were pre1959.
That’s not to say that only hippies can connect to nature, but they were indeed important in this shift.