Thank you so much for this paper! I literally made a similar argument to someone last weekend (in the context of economic growth), glad to have a canonical/detailed source to look at so I can present more informed views/have an easy thing to link to.
I will read the rest of the paper later, but just flagging that I don’t find your response to “incomplete understanding of physics” particularly persuasive:
Perhaps our understanding of physics is incorrect. That is, it is possible that our understanding of any of the assumed correct disciplines discussed here, from cosmology to computation. This is not merely an objection to the authors’ personal grasp of the subjects, but a claim that specific premises may, in the future, be found to be incorrect.
I think the strongest version of the “we don’t understand physics” argument is that we (or at least I) have nonzero credence in physics as we know it to be mistaken in a way that allows for infinities. This results in an infinite expected value.
Now, perhaps we can exclude arbitrarily exclude sufficiently small probabilities (“Pascal’s mugging”). But at least for me, my inside-view credence in misunderstanding the finitude of physics is >0.1%, and I don’t think Pascal’s mugging exceptions should be applicable to probabilities at anywhere near that level.
Michael Dickens has a different issue where finite distributions can still have infinite expected value, but I have not read enough of your paper to know if it addresses this objection.
Thanks. I agree that we should have non-infinitesimal credence that physics is wrong, but to change the conclusion, we would need to “insist that modern physics is incorrect in very specific ways.” Given the strength of evidence about the existence of many of the limits, regardless of their actual form or value, that is a higher bar. I also advise looking closely at the discussion of the “Pessimistic Meta-induction,” and why we think that it’s reasonable to be at least incredibly confident that these limits exist.
That doesn’t guarantee their existence. But after accepting a non-zero credence in those specific types of incorrect theory, we need to pin our hopes for infinite value on those specific occurrences; we would need to maximize expected value conditional on that very small probability in order to find infinite value, and neglect the very large but finite value we are nearly certain exists in the physical universe. That seems difficult to me.
Thank you so much for this paper! I literally made a similar argument to someone last weekend (in the context of economic growth), glad to have a canonical/detailed source to look at so I can present more informed views/have an easy thing to link to.
I will read the rest of the paper later, but just flagging that I don’t find your response to “incomplete understanding of physics” particularly persuasive:
I think the strongest version of the “we don’t understand physics” argument is that we (or at least I) have nonzero credence in physics as we know it to be mistaken in a way that allows for infinities. This results in an infinite expected value.
Now, perhaps we can exclude arbitrarily exclude sufficiently small probabilities (“Pascal’s mugging”). But at least for me, my inside-view credence in misunderstanding the finitude of physics is >0.1%, and I don’t think Pascal’s mugging exceptions should be applicable to probabilities at anywhere near that level.
Michael Dickens has a different issue where finite distributions can still have infinite expected value, but I have not read enough of your paper to know if it addresses this objection.
Thanks. I agree that we should have non-infinitesimal credence that physics is wrong, but to change the conclusion, we would need to “insist that modern physics is incorrect in very specific ways.” Given the strength of evidence about the existence of many of the limits, regardless of their actual form or value, that is a higher bar. I also advise looking closely at the discussion of the “Pessimistic Meta-induction,” and why we think that it’s reasonable to be at least incredibly confident that these limits exist.
That doesn’t guarantee their existence. But after accepting a non-zero credence in those specific types of incorrect theory, we need to pin our hopes for infinite value on those specific occurrences; we would need to maximize expected value conditional on that very small probability in order to find infinite value, and neglect the very large but finite value we are nearly certain exists in the physical universe. That seems difficult to me.