UDASSA - Revision history

Issa: /* Description */

2023-01-08T09:13:14Z

‎Description

Issa: /* Comparison to UDT */

2021-10-01T23:09:57Z

‎Comparison to UDT

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2021-10-01T22:48:16Z

‎Description

Issa at 22:47, 1 October 2021

2021-10-01T22:47:10Z

Issa at 20:41, 6 April 2021

2021-04-06T20:41:36Z

Issa: /* History */

2021-04-06T20:41:19Z

‎History

Issa: /* Comparison to UDT */

2020-03-23T19:28:51Z

‎Comparison to UDT

Issa: /* Comparison to UDT */

2020-03-23T19:27:04Z

‎Comparison to UDT

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‎Comparison to UDT

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‎History

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-the shortest program that produces my current OM and the shortest program that produces the OM of someone else on earth right now probably have the same "physical law" part, so the difference is in locating the two of us. now, the weird thing is, ''one'' of us will be closer to some "natural" location from which to specify coordinates (e.g. maybe "where the big bang started", if that's even a well-defined location? idk any physics). the upshot is that probably the location part will have a different length (i'm imagining that you use something like a binary search, where each extra bit gets you halfway to where you are; is there a more efficient way to specify coordinates?). and each extra bit means you incur a penalty of 1/2. so even though my OM and their OM "feel just as real" (whatever that means..), one of us will have possibly something like 2<sup>k</sup> times as much measure, where k is the difference in number of bits needed to locate the two OMs. this sounds pretty crazy, especially considering the fact that we shouldn't expect either OM to occur in a larger number of possible worlds. i.e. the only difference between the two OMs is that one happens to be easier to find in the physical world. this is sort of like the "big people matter more" thing that people have brought up, but i find it much more unintuitive. this might be mostly the same problem as "people who are next to black holes matter more"/"people with a giant arrow pointing at them matter more", but the difference seems to be that any difference in distance changes the measure, not just being super close to a big important thing.
+the shortest program that produces my current OM and the shortest program that produces the OM of someone else on earth right now probably have the same "physical law" part, so the difference is in locating the two of us. now, the weird thing is, ''one'' of us will be closer to some "natural" location from which to specify coordinates (e.g. maybe "where the big bang started", if that's even a well-defined location? idk any physics). the upshot is that probably the location part will have a different length (i'm imagining that you use something like a binary search, where each extra bit gets you halfway to where you are; is there a more efficient way to specify coordinates?). and each extra bit means you incur a penalty of 1/2. so even though my OM and their OM "feel just as real" (whatever that means..), one of us will have possibly something like 2<sup>k</sup> times as much measure, where k is the difference in number of bits needed to locate the two OMs. this sounds pretty crazy, especially considering the fact that we shouldn't expect either OM to occur in a larger number of possible worlds. i.e. the only difference between the two OMs is that one happens to be easier to find in the physical world. this is sort of like the "big people matter more" thing that people have brought up, but i find it much more unintuitive. this might be mostly the same problem as "people who are next to black holes matter more"/"people with a giant arrow pointing at them matter more", but the difference seems to be that any difference in distance changes the measure, not just being super close to a big important thing. another weird thing is, as you move around the universe over time, in certain moments you are closer to the "center of the universe" while in other moments you are farther away, so your OM at t1 may be easier to specify than your OM at t2. but you don't really "feel more real" while walking around in a park or whatever; what's going on with this?
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	or maybe i've gotten all of this wrong. what udassa actually gives you is the measure of the OM. but in sleeping beauty, we've stipulated that the beauty can't tell what world she's in. so the OMs in all three spots are the same. they all get counted toward the same OM in the output of udassa. and udassa just tells you the measure of an OM, i.e. how likely you are to experience that OM. but it doesn't tell you the probability of heads. but maybe we could modify the sleeping beauty problem slightly: we change the OM so that in some subconscious part of the beauty's brain is stored the "index" of which copy she is, but she doesn't have conscious access to this index. so the OMs are now distinguished, but beauty can't make use of the information.		or maybe i've gotten all of this wrong. what udassa actually gives you is the measure of the OM. but in sleeping beauty, we've stipulated that the beauty can't tell what world she's in. so the OMs in all three spots are the same. they all get counted toward the same OM in the output of udassa. and udassa just tells you the measure of an OM, i.e. how likely you are to experience that OM. but it doesn't tell you the probability of heads. but maybe we could modify the sleeping beauty problem slightly: we change the OM so that in some subconscious part of the beauty's brain is stored the "index" of which copy she is, but she doesn't have conscious access to this index. so the OMs are now distinguished, but beauty can't make use of the information.
		+
		+	see https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/Zz6Nv7kR7xN3RAFAE/insights-from-the-randomness-ignorance-model-are-genuine/comment/3Jz8LeN8rXqxgSwMG for someone who was thinking along the same lines.

	what does UDT say? well, you can read the stuart armstrong paper. basically, udt refuses to give you probabilities! because what matters is the ''decisions''. and you can't make a decision without some sort of bet (e.g. naming the price of a ticket that pays out in the tails world), and some sort of utility function (e.g. selfish, altruistic, ...).		what does UDT say? well, you can read the stuart armstrong paper. basically, udt refuses to give you probabilities! because what matters is the ''decisions''. and you can't make a decision without some sort of bet (e.g. naming the price of a ticket that pays out in the tails world), and some sort of utility function (e.g. selfish, altruistic, ...).

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 actually a better order of introduction might be going from ASSA, and then UD. that's how paul does it [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/QmWNbCRMgRBcMK6RK/the-absolute-self-selection-assumption here]: the idea is, first we leave the measure unspecified. and we say that how likely we are to experience an OM is the measure of that OM under some measure. finally at the end, we decide that UD would be a fine measure to use here.
-here's an alternative that paul mentions, just to show something different so that you know udassa is doing something different: we could have used the measure to find the probability of each world. then in each world, we could find all the OMs (within each world, we weigh each OM equally). As paul says in a [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/sEAW5KbWAf6onq9Mi/anthropics-in-a-tegmark-multiverse different post], "It is typical to use some complexity prior to select a universe, and then to appeal to some different notion to handle the remaining anthropic reasoning (to ask: how many beings have my experiences within this universe?). What I am suggesting is to instead apply a complexity prior to our experiences directly." What could go wrong if we use this instead? I think the problem is if the universe is infinite. If there are infinitely many copies of you in the universe, then you run into the problem of infinite ethics. So by penalizing harder-to-locate OMs within the universe, you get rid of the problem of infinite ethics.
+here's an alternative that paul mentions, just to show something different so that you know udassa is doing something different: we could have used the measure to find the probability of each world. then in each world, we could find all the OMs (within each world, we weigh each OM equally). As paul says in a [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/sEAW5KbWAf6onq9Mi/anthropics-in-a-tegmark-multiverse different post], "It is typical to use some complexity prior to select a universe, and then to appeal to some different notion to handle the remaining anthropic reasoning (to ask: how many beings have my experiences within this universe?). What I am suggesting is to instead apply a complexity prior to our experiences directly." What could go wrong if we use this instead? I think the problem is if the universe is infinite. If there are infinitely many copies of you in the universe, then you run into the problem of infinite ethics. So by penalizing harder-to-locate OMs within the universe, you get rid of the problem of infinite ethics. [so I think this alternative is actually the observer-moments version of SSA, so ''this'' should be called ASSA/SSSA, and the actual ASSA should be called ASIA; see below]
 so what does UDASSA get us? make decisions; explain anthropics; ...

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	what does udassa say about a giant lookup table? Well, a giant lookup table is still a valid OM right? I don't see why we should disqualify it somehow. The problem is that maybe a giant lookup table has huge storage requirements, so that specifying its coordinates in space and time might cost more bits somehow?		what does udassa say about a giant lookup table? Well, a giant lookup table is still a valid OM right? I don't see why we should disqualify it somehow. The problem is that maybe a giant lookup table has huge storage requirements, so that specifying its coordinates in space and time might cost more bits somehow?
		+
		+	----
		+
		+	so i actually think "ASSA" is incorrectly named? ASSA is doing the observer-moments version of SIA, so i think it should be called SSIA (in analogy with bostrom's SSSA) or renamed to ASIA.
		+
		+	sleeping beauty already deals with observer moments, but we could make it more obvious by making the beauty live for two seconds in the tails world vs one second in the heads world, and that she has no short term/working memory so she doesn't know in the second second of the tails world that she has existed for one second already. then i think "ASSA" would act like SIA in sleeping beauty, rather than like SSA.

	==Comparison to UDT==		==Comparison to UDT==

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	<references/>		<references/>
		+
		+	[[Category:AI safety]]

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 ==History==
-UDASSA was first proposed by wei dai on [[everything-list]].
+UDASSA was first proposed by [[Wei Dai]] on [[everything-list]].
 If I am not mistaken, [[Paul Christiano]] reinvented UDASSA in 2011. Why do I think this? See [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/sEAW5KbWAf6onq9Mi/anthropics-in-a-tegmark-multiverse this post] from 2011-04-02. In comments, Wei says "Seems like we have a lot of similar ideas/interests. :) This is was my main approach for solving anthropic reasoning, until I gave it up in favor of UDT." and then links to the UDASSA page. After seeing Wei's comment, Paul then seems to have edited the post to include the following: "Edit: this idea is exactly the same as UDASSA as initially articulated by Wei Dai. I think it is a shame that the arguments aren’t more widespread, since it very cleanly resolves some of my confusion about simulations and infinite cosmologies. My only contribution appears to be a slightly more concrete plan for calculating (or failing to calculate) the Born probabilities; I will report back later about how the computation goes." Then on 2011-04-11, paul posts a [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/QmWNbCRMgRBcMK6RK/the-absolute-self-selection-assumption second post], which mentions UDASSA: "In this article I will discuss UDASSA, a framework for anthropic reasoning due to Wei Dai."

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 or maybe i've gotten all of this wrong. what udassa actually gives you is the measure of the OM. but in sleeping beauty, we've stipulated that the beauty can't tell what world she's in. so the OMs in all three spots are the same. they all get counted toward the same OM in the output of udassa. and udassa just tells you the measure of an OM, i.e. how likely you are to experience that OM. but it doesn't tell you the probability of heads. but maybe we could modify the sleeping beauty problem slightly: we change the OM so that in some subconscious part of the beauty's brain is stored the "index" of which copy she is, but she doesn't have conscious access to this index. so the OMs are now distinguished, but beauty can't make use of the information.
-what does UDT say? well, you can read the stuart armstrong paper. basically, udt refuses to give you probabilities! because what matters is the ''decisions''. and you can't make a decision without some sort of bet, and some sort of utility function (e.g. selfish, altruistic, ...).
+what does UDT say? well, you can read the stuart armstrong paper. basically, udt refuses to give you probabilities! because what matters is the ''decisions''. and you can't make a decision without some sort of bet (e.g. naming the price of a ticket that pays out in the tails world), and some sort of utility function (e.g. selfish, altruistic, ...).
 ==See also==

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 but what if the measures of the three OMs are not equal? e.g. maybe it takes 1 bit to specify heads or tails world, then in the tails world, a second bit to specify first or second OM. so now out of all four two-bit strings, two of them are heads and two of them are tails. (by the same reasoning, out of all infinite bit strings, half of them start with "1", a quarter start with "00", and a quarter start with "01".) so p(heads)=1/2.
-as you can see, it seems like with udassa, what we decide is the measure of the OM (which depends on what is the shortest program to output that OM) sways the outcome. So the question is, does it take an extra bit to specify monday vs tuesday in the tails world? or does each OM in the tails world take the same length of problem to specify as in the heads world? it's not clear to me what's the right answer (i.e. what udassa ends up saying in the end, after you set up the sleeping beauty problem in some "neutral" way).
+as you can see, it seems like with udassa, what we decide is the measure of the OM (which depends on what is the shortest program to output that OM) sways the outcome. So the question is, does it take an extra bit to specify monday vs tuesday in the tails world? or does each OM in the tails world take the same length of program to specify as in the heads world? it's not clear to me what's the right answer (i.e. what udassa ends up saying in the end, after you set up the sleeping beauty problem in some "neutral" way).
 or maybe i've gotten all of this wrong. what udassa actually gives you is the measure of the OM. but in sleeping beauty, we've stipulated that the beauty can't tell what world she's in. so the OMs in all three spots are the same. they all get counted toward the same OM in the output of udassa. and udassa just tells you the measure of an OM, i.e. how likely you are to experience that OM. but it doesn't tell you the probability of heads. but maybe we could modify the sleeping beauty problem slightly: we change the OM so that in some subconscious part of the beauty's brain is stored the "index" of which copy she is, but she doesn't have conscious access to this index. so the OMs are now distinguished, but beauty can't make use of the information.

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	If I am not mistaken, [[Paul Christiano]] reinvented UDASSA in 2011. Why do I think this? See [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/sEAW5KbWAf6onq9Mi/anthropics-in-a-tegmark-multiverse this post] from 2011-04-02. In comments, Wei says "Seems like we have a lot of similar ideas/interests. :) This is was my main approach for solving anthropic reasoning, until I gave it up in favor of UDT." and then links to the UDASSA page. After seeing Wei's comment, Paul then seems to have edited the post to include the following: "Edit: this idea is exactly the same as UDASSA as initially articulated by Wei Dai. I think it is a shame that the arguments aren’t more widespread, since it very cleanly resolves some of my confusion about simulations and infinite cosmologies. My only contribution appears to be a slightly more concrete plan for calculating (or failing to calculate) the Born probabilities; I will report back later about how the computation goes." Then on 2011-04-11, paul posts a [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/QmWNbCRMgRBcMK6RK/the-absolute-self-selection-assumption second post], which mentions UDASSA: "In this article I will discuss UDASSA, a framework for anthropic reasoning due to Wei Dai."		If I am not mistaken, [[Paul Christiano]] reinvented UDASSA in 2011. Why do I think this? See [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/sEAW5KbWAf6onq9Mi/anthropics-in-a-tegmark-multiverse this post] from 2011-04-02. In comments, Wei says "Seems like we have a lot of similar ideas/interests. :) This is was my main approach for solving anthropic reasoning, until I gave it up in favor of UDT." and then links to the UDASSA page. After seeing Wei's comment, Paul then seems to have edited the post to include the following: "Edit: this idea is exactly the same as UDASSA as initially articulated by Wei Dai. I think it is a shame that the arguments aren’t more widespread, since it very cleanly resolves some of my confusion about simulations and infinite cosmologies. My only contribution appears to be a slightly more concrete plan for calculating (or failing to calculate) the Born probabilities; I will report back later about how the computation goes." Then on 2011-04-11, paul posts a [https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/QmWNbCRMgRBcMK6RK/the-absolute-self-selection-assumption second post], which mentions UDASSA: "In this article I will discuss UDASSA, a framework for anthropic reasoning due to Wei Dai."
		+
		+	some early posts where wei talks about udassa-like things:
		+
		+	* https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/0302.html
		+	* https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/0315.html
		+	* https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/0301.html
		+	* https://riceissa.github.io/everything-list-1998-2009/0316.html (i think this one is considered the first description of udassa)

	==Description==		==Description==