5HC : Skinner, Turing and yet more Laplace

maru · 17 Feb 2005, 20:29 · from 2005-February.txt.gz

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From: marudubshinki at gmail.com (maru)
Date: Thu Feb 17 20:29:34 2005
Subject: (urth) 5HC : Skinner, Turing  and yet more Laplace
In-Reply-To: <BAY102-F399F963956FB06C812BCF0B96C0 at phx.gbl>
References: <BAY102-F399F963956FB06C812BCF0B96C0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <42156F28.5070709 at gmail.com>

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'.
>

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