Re: reasoning under computational limitations

Nick Bostrom (bostrom@ndirect.co.uk)
Mon, 29 Mar 1999 17:16:25 +0000

Wei Dai wrote:

> > And in general when faced with a computational
> > problem that we can't solve, (1) does it always make sense to reason as if
> > there is a probability distribution on the answer and (2) how do we come
> > up with this distribution?

We don't need to assume an objective chance for these cases if we don't want to. You can use a person's subjective probability, which you find out about by asking him about what odds he would be willing to bet at.

Nick Bostrom
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method London School of Economics