"Players may have different beliefs (priors) due to different information they acquired during their lives. Theoretically, one may try to model all this learning as simple Bayes' update of a prior one has at birth. Unrealistic as this may sound (or, indeed, be), this story could still be (a part of) a viable model, the reduction of all decision problems in one's life to one "grand decision.
Yet people surely differ even at birth. For instance, they have different genes which may
determine both their utilities and priors. Therefore, the argument goes one step further and
considers the "players" before they acquired the information contained in their genes.
Thus, we are asked to think of some intelligent entity capable of logico-mathematical reasoning but which does not yet know what actual player it will materialize in. At the moment of birth (or
conception, or even much earlier, depending on the reader's faith and social policy preferences),
this intelligent entity--the empty shell--learns the genes it got, updates its prior and becomes a
"regular" player with a utility function and beliefs that are now the posterior.
However, the "empty shell" argument concludes, before learning the genes, there is no
reason to distinguish between these empty shells. They are all identical, since any distinction
among them is assumed to be learned later on. In particular, they all have the same prior.
One extreme view of empty shells is that they are (almost) nothing but the logico-mathematical entity needed to "understand" the model and reason about it. According to this view, they are free from all that is mundane, and, in particular, have no preferences. Loosely, pure logico-mathematical entities simply don't care (about anything).
But if empty shells do not (yet) have preferences, one may not attempt to derive priors
from them a la Ramsey, de Finetti and Savage, and the concept of "prior" becomes somewhat
metaphysical."
-"Why the empty shells were not fired", Itzhak Gilboa, 2010
"I came from nothing before nothing began
Broke the window of existence and became a man
No sympathy for fools, my star is black and burned
I tilt toward the light, I suck your souls into my might
We are starchildren, coming out of nowhere and to nowhere return
Starchildren, a hundred million souls sucked out in one breath"
Broke the window of existence and became a man
No sympathy for fools, my star is black and burned
I tilt toward the light, I suck your souls into my might
We are starchildren, coming out of nowhere and to nowhere return
Starchildren, a hundred million souls sucked out in one breath"
"Starchildren", Bruce Dickinson, 1996
2 comments:
i like this :)
although personally I cannot manage to obliterate my self-importance to that level. I am all-pervasive and have existed since forever
two people, same thing, different perspectives but coming to same conclusion. Independently. So it is a marvelous thing.
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