Re: [sl4] Is belief in immortality computable?

From: Peter de Blanc (peter@spaceandgames.com)
Date: Wed May 20 2009 - 11:50:16 MDT


Matt Mahoney wrote:
> (1) we would want to be rational,
> (2) we would want to be immortal,
> (3) we would want to know that we are immortal.
>
> And I claim you can't have both (1) and (3).
>
> By (1) I mean that if you are given a choice of two utilities (summation of numeric future time series denoting reward) and you can compute them, then you would choose the higher value.
>
> By (3) I mean there exist two computable utilities such that if you believed that you were immortal with probability 1 that you would make a different choice than with any other probability distribution over life expectancy.

Matt, you're confusing an agent A's knowledge of its own immortality
with other agents' knowledge of A's knowledge.



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