From: Wei Dai (weidai@eskimo.com)
Date: Wed Jun 12 2002 - 21:30:56 MDT
On Wed, Jun 12, 2002 at 06:32:04PM -0700, Hal Finney wrote:
> The problem with this answer is that really the question we are facing is
> whether we *should* value re-runs. It's not something that we necessarily
> know the answer to. So our goal is to discover what our subjective
> preferences should be, hopefully with the aid of analogy and reasoning.
Asking whether we should value re-runs is like asking whether we should
value classical music. You either do or you don't. Unlike say
prejudgement, re-runs are not a means to an end, it's an end in itself.
That's why it makes sense to ask whether we should prejudge (in other
words whether prejudgement is a good way to achieve our aims), but not
whether we should do re-runs.
> For example, if I am offered a choice between running a very pleasant
> experience twice identically, or running the very pleasant experience
> once and a slightly less pleasant experience once, which should I pick?
> On the one hand, the average pleasantness is higher in the first
> alternative. On the other hand, I have two different experiences in
> the second alternative. I don't know which is better, so I don't have
> an initial subjective preference between them.
Like asking whether you should listen to Beethoven or Mozart, it may not
be possible to determine your preference ahead of time. You may just have
to try both and see which one you like better. Maybe in the music case you
can guess ahead of time by considering what other composers you like, but
it's hard to think of something that is both familiar and similar enough
to re-runing computations to give you a useful clue here.
> Of course if you had those computing resources, it would arguably be
> better from the survival perspective to do something else with them than
> just re-run the same program over and over. But maybe survival is not
> an issue; everyone's major wants and needs are met, and they are just
> seeking pleasure. Then people who seek re-runs might come to control
> more resources than people who don't care about them.
Not caring about re-runs doesn't mean not wanting more resources. You
might want to use the resources to think deep philosophical thoughts, or
search for perfect odd numbers, or just gain power for its own sake.
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