On 04 Aug 2017, at 01:14, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 2:50 AM, Stathis Papaioannou
>> I already know a rat will try to solve a maze to get food so
I'll take that part of the bet, but I'm not sure what "proportion
of the number of attempts" means or what the experimental setup
would be to test it.
> I meant to write "as a proportion of the number of attempts".
In the experiment as it would normally be done, there is a certain
probability that the rat will get a reward per attempt. It might
turn out, for example, that if the rat gets a reward at least 30% of
the time it will learn to repeat the behavior, but less than this it
won't. The equivalent experiment with the duplicator is that
multiple copies of the rat are made and a proportion of the copies
get a reward.
I am quite certain whatever rat behavior that is observed without
using the rat duplicating machine the exact same behavior will be
observed with it. So what on earth is the point of introducing a
rat duplicating machine into this thought experiment?
> One would expect that the copies that have a memory of
getting a reward 30% of the time or more will learn to repeat the
behaviour.
If a rat remembers it got a reward 30% of the time that's all the
information we need, it's irrelevant if a rat duplicating
machine was used or not. And the rat is able to know it got a
reward 30% of the time some event happened because the rat can
remember the past so the rat always knows for sure if he got the
reward or not. But the rat can not do the same thing for the
future because the rat can not remember the future, so to figure out
what to do next the only thing it can do is use induction which
works more often than it doesn't. I doubt if a rat understands
what 30% means but it probably can have some sort intuitive feeling
that a certain action is worth the effort or not. And a rat
duplicating machine is a fifth wheel in all this serving no
purpose.
> the rats cannot distinguish between a single stream of
experience with probabilistic outcomes
Copying machines or not, looking into the past a person or a rat
can always remembers one unique path of experience
On 4 August 2017 at 03:06, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
I am quite certain whatever rat behavior that is observed without
using the rat duplicating machine the exact same behavior will be
observed with it. So what on earth is the point of introducing a
rat duplicating machine into this thought experiment?
> One would expect that the copies that have a memory of
getting a reward 30% of the time or more will learn to repeat the
behaviour.
If a rat remembers it got a reward 30% of the time that's all the
information we need, it's irrelevant if a rat duplicating
machine was used or not. And the rat is able to know it got a
reward 30% of the time some event happened because the rat can
remember the past so the rat always knows for sure if he got the
reward or not. But the rat can not do the same thing for the
future because the rat can not remember the future, so to figure out
what to do next the only thing it can do is use induction which
works more often than it doesn't. I doubt if a rat understands
what 30% means but it probably can have some sort intuitive feeling
that a certain action is worth the effort or not. And a rat
duplicating machine is a fifth wheel in all this serving no
purpose.
> the rats cannot distinguish between a single stream of
experience with probabilistic outcomes
Copying machines or not, looking into the past a person or a rat
can always remembers one unique path of experience, and in the
past we can know (at least in theory) that a event either happened
or it did not with no need to insert a "maybe". But we can't do
any of that with the future, if we could then we couldn't tell the
difference between the past and the future, but we can.
You seem to agree that it's obvious the duplicating machine won't
make a difference. This has been the whole point of the discussion:
looking forward to a 30% probability of a certain outcome without
duplication is equivalent (subjectively and behaviourally) to
looking forward to being copied multiple times with 30% of the
copies experiencing that outcome, whether you are a rat or a human.
I waited for John Clark to reply on this, but that was a formidable
checkmate. Actually. Very well done.
Bruno
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Stathis Papaioannou
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