Comments on: Specifying (non-decision-theoretic) Counterfactuals https://ordinaryideas.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/specifying-non-decision-theoretic-counterfactuals/ As advertised Wed, 17 Dec 2014 04:51:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Solomonoff Induction and Simulations « Ordinary Ideas https://ordinaryideas.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/specifying-non-decision-theoretic-counterfactuals/#comment-66 Thu, 24 May 2012 16:56:26 +0000 http://ordinaryideas.wordpress.com/?p=25#comment-66 […] the outcome of some experiment we have set up–for example, we may want to talk about a counterfactual world, or to talk about the behavior of a system which we think reflects our values, or to express our […]

]]> By: jsteinhardt https://ordinaryideas.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/specifying-non-decision-theoretic-counterfactuals/#comment-34 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:10:49 +0000 http://ordinaryideas.wordpress.com/?p=25#comment-34 Also, the very first sentence of the post is confusing, you might want to clarify it.

]]> By: jsteinhardt https://ordinaryideas.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/specifying-non-decision-theoretic-counterfactuals/#comment-33 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:09:53 +0000 http://ordinaryideas.wordpress.com/?p=25#comment-33 “If the flips contained substantially more information than required to locate the sequence of flips in the universe, then the universe can be most concisely described by locating these distinguished coin flips and using L to determine their values (rather than by choosing them randomly, as the normal laws of physics would entail). By plugging in some other sequence of bits and asking for the computer’s inputs, we get access to the computer’s inputs in counterfactual worlds where the coin flips turned out differently.”

Is this the shortest description intuitively, or can the statement be made rigorous?

How would we plug in some other sequence of bits? Locating the bits is part of the algorithm, maybe there is no obvious place in the algorithm to modify the locating process to return a different result.

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