Re: poly: What probabilities?

> From: "Peter C. McCluskey" <pcm@rahul.net>
> Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 08:27:07 -0700
> To: polymath@cco.caltech.edu
> Subject: Re: poly: What probabilities?
> Reply-to: polymath@cco.caltech.edu

>
> bostrom@ndirect.co.uk ("Nick Bostrom") writes:
> >Peter C. McCluskey wrote:
> >
> >> >"Here's a scenario which I would guess has a 0.1 to 10% chance of
> >> > happening: 1) a self-replicating molecular assembler becomes able to
> >> > manufacture...",
> >
> >> Can you produce 2 reasonable interpretations of my statement which
> >> have nontrivially different implications?
> >
> >Interpretation 1: You say something about the objective probability
> >of the scenario in question, i.e. that if we prepared a large number
> >of systems in states indistinguishable from the present state of
> >civilization here on earth (modulo our knowledge thereof) then the
> >fraction of them which would develop in accordance with the scenario
> >is between 0.1 and 10%.
>
> The hypothesis that I have information which would justify this
> interpretation seems very far from reasonable.

But you only said you were guessing. How could I know that you didn't
think you had enough information to make a reasonable guess?

_____________________________________________________
Nick Bostrom
Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
London School of Economics
n.bostrom@lse.ac.uk
http://www.hedweb.com/nickb
Received on Tue Apr 28 00:13:15 1998