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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Timeless Decision Theory: Problems I Can't Solve - Less Wrong
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Comments (153)
As a first off-the-cuff thought, the infinite regress of conditionality sounds suspiciously close to general recursion. Do you have any guarantee that a fully general theory that gives a decision wouldn't be equivalent to a Halting Oracle?
ETA: If you don't have such a guarantee, I would submit that the first priority should be either securing one, or proving isomorphism to the Entscheidungsproblem and, thus, the impossibility of the fully general solution.
Obviously any game theory is equivalent to the halting problem if your opponents can be controlled by arbitrary Turing machines. But this sort of infinite regress doesn't come from a big complex starting point, it comes from a simple starting point that keeps passing the recursive buck.
I understand that much, but if there's anything I've learned from computer science it's that turing completeness can pop up in the strangest places.
I of course admit it was an off-the-cuff, intuitive thought, but the structure of the problem reminds me vaguely of the combinatorial calculus, particularly Smullyan's Mockingbird forest.
This was a clever ploy to distract me with logic problems, wasn't it?
No, but mentioning the rest of Smullyan's books might be.