cousin_it comments on Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 August 2009 01:10AM

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Tags: timeless timeless_decision_theory newcomblike

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Comment author: cousin_it 20 August 2009 06:58:50PM *  0 points [-]

This vague outline is the result of Eliezer yielding to our pleas to say something - anything - about his confident solution to Newcomb's problem. Now that it's been posted as a not-obviously-formalizable text, and people are discussing it informally, I share a lot of your disappointment. But let's give the topic some days and see how it crystallizes.

What's Flare? (...looks it up...) Oh dear Cthulhu, oh no.

(Edit: I originally listed several specific users as "refusing to formalize". That was wrong.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 August 2009 07:45:52PM 0 points [-]

What's Flare?

A legacy of pre-2003 Eliezer, of no particular importance one way or another.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 20 August 2009 07:29:52PM *  0 points [-]

refuse to formalize

What about what I wrote?

These considerations lead to the following design for the decision algorithm S. S is coded with a vector <P1, P2, P3, ...> of programs that it cares about, and a utility function on vectors of the form <E1, E2, E3, …> that defines its preferences on how those programs should run. When it receives an input X, it looks inside the programs P1, P2, P3, ..., and uses its "mathematical intuition" to form a probability distribution P_Y over the set of vectors <E1, E2, E3, …> for each choice of output string Y. Finally, it outputs a string Y* that maximizes the expected utility Sum P_Y(<E1, E2, E3, …>) U(<E1, E2, E3, …>).

Which part do you find insufficiently formal? Of course I use "mathematical intuition" as a black box without explaining how it works, but that's just like EDT using "prior" without explaining where it comes from, or CDT using "causal probability" as a black box. It's an unsolved problem, not refusal to formalize.

Comment author: cousin_it 20 August 2009 07:34:53PM *  0 points [-]

Your decision theory is formal enough for me, but it seems to be different from Eliezer's, which I was talking about. If they're really the same, could you explain how?

Comment author: Wei_Dai 20 August 2009 08:07:58PM 0 points [-]

In that case, I never said I understood Eliezer's version well enough that I could formalize it if I wanted to, and I don't think Nesov and Drescher claimed that either, so I don't know why you mentioned our names in connection with "refuse to formalize". Actually I explicitly said that I don't understand Eliezer's theory very well yet.

Comment author: cousin_it 20 August 2009 08:25:50PM *  0 points [-]

You're right. I apologize. Amended the comment.

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