Vladimir_Nesov comments on Towards a New Decision Theory - Less Wrong

50 Post author: Wei_Dai 13 August 2009 05:31AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (142)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 20 August 2009 12:18:42PM 1 point [-]

It's more or less a direct rendition of the idea of UDT: actions (with state transitions) depend on state of knowledge, so what does it say about the geometry of state transitions?

More relevant to the recent discussion: Where does logical dependence come from and how to track it in a representation detailed enough? The source of logical dependence, beside what comes from the common algorithm, is actions and observations. In forward-time, all states following a given observation become dependent on that observation, and in backward-time, states preceding an action. A single observation can make multiple actions depend on it, and thus make them dependent.

Connection with logic: states of knowledge in the state network are programs/proofs, and actions/observations are variables parameterizing more general programs that resolve into specific states of knowledge given these actions/observations. Also related to game semantics. This is one dimension along which to compress the knowledge representation and seek further understanding.