Nesov wrote: > Exactly. It needs stressing that probability is a tool for > decision-making and it has no semantics when no decision enters the > picture. ... > What's it good for if it can't be used (= advance knowledge)? For > other purposes we'd be better off with specially designed random > number generators. So it's more like tautology that anything useful > influences decisions.
In another context, I might not be picky about the use of the word "decision" here ... but this thread started with a discussion of radical models of the universe involving multi-multiverses and Yverses and so on. In this context, casual usage of folk-psychology notions like "decision" isn't really appropriate, I suggest. The idea of "decision" seems wrapped up with "free will", which has a pretty tenuous relationship with physical reality. If what you mean is that probabilities of events are associated with the actions that agents take, then of course this is true. The (extremely) speculative hypothesis I was proposing in my blog post is that perhaps intelligent agents can take two kinds of actions -- those that are lateral moves within a given multiverse, and those that pop out of one multiverse into another (surfing through the Yverse to another multiverse). One could then talk about conditional probabilities of agent actions ... which seems unproblematic ... -- Ben G ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=90464629-d2f914
