From: Robin Hanson (rhanson@gmu.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 24 2003 - 11:37:56 MDT
On 6/24/2003, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>>I agree with Eliezer; most disagreements on this list are not on their
>>face people declaring different values. That may be the real cause
>>behind the scenes, but the actual statements that people dispute seem to
>>mostly be statements about which of many possible worlds the actual world is.
>
>Some disputes about values are not statements about which of many possible
>worlds the actual world is, unless you extend possible-world semantics to
>cover alternate laws of mathematics or inconsistent worlds; some disputes
>about values are disputes about the output of a computational process. For
>example, two people arguing about "rationality" are better thought of as
>arguing about properties emergent in Bayesian decision theory, rather than
>arguing about the contents of a black box labeled "rationality" which
>contains different things in different possible worlds. There's a black
>box, but it's internal, not external, and it contains the same thing in
>all possible worlds which obey our rules of mathematics.
Possible world semantics can in fact be extended to cover what are called
"impossible possible worlds." In any case, most statements that appear on
this list do not commit themselves to positions on such abstract issues. I
claim that given a random dispute on this list, it can be relatively easily
expressed in terms of possible worlds.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Assistant Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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