(urth) 5HC : Skinner, Turing and yet more Laplace
maru
marudubshinki at gmail.com
Thu Feb 17 20:29:28 PST 2005
Hmm.
I'd think there would be some plans that would be correct irregardless
of who knew it.
What about someone (hypothetically speaking) who didn't mind being
predicted, and the
prediction (which we will assume is optimum for him) is optimum from vis
POV as well. They have no
incentive to outdate it by doing something else, in fact, might even
work harder to make sure they do
what they woulda done anyway. Put that way and it sounds silly, but so
much does.
And psychology experiments are an intersting field of ethics: if people
know they are being tested
on how compassionate they are, or how gullible, or how sheep-like, that
would throw off results.
Often experiments are fraught with ethical peril, like ones about
persauding people against their will,
or maybe the infamous Stanford prisoner experiments.
Incidentally, this whole tangent about predictions reminds me
ineluctably of the 'Dune' series.
I never did figure oput what frank Herbert was saying about
predestination and free will in those works.
~Maru
Infinite monkeys would type out this conversation, as well as the
unanswerable rebuttals to both our arguments.
Iorwerth Thomas wrote:
> ....
> Ummm. I think I may have botched my presentation of the argument.
> You are quite right. _But_, the issue isn't what the demon knows,
> it's what _you_, as the person who has just been given the prediction,
> are correct in believing; the implication being that there's no
> determinate plan of your future actions that you'd be correct in
> believing if only you knew it. Thus, even if your actions are in some
> sense determined by the laws of physics, this isn't quite the same as
> metaphysical determinism, where you'd expect there to be a determinate
> plan of your future actions that would remain correct if you knew it.
> I think.
>
> I think I've fatally flawed the whole thing by bringing in the demon,
> though [1]. Originally, it was a large computer, and the result was
> then generalised by replacing the computer with God in an attempt to
> short-circuit the free-will vs. predestination debate. Barrow's book
> gives a better explanation (mostly by quoting Mackay/Mackie).
>
> There may a small scale analogy of this knd of thing with psychology
> experiments - I imagine that if you're trying to repeat an experiment
> and some of the group are aware of the original results it skews thing
> somewhat. Maybe someone who knows more than me can confirm/deny this.
>
> Iorwerth
>
> [1] It's due to an idea for a 'Black Easter' - style short story I
> keep thinking of writing, hampered mostly by my lack of talent, time
> and the unfortunate fact that I've never read 'Black Easter'.
>
More information about the Urth
mailing list