Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 August 2009 11:50:08PM 1 point [-]

I don't have a general solution. I'm just carrying out the reasoning by hand. I don't know how to solve the logical ordering problem.

In other words, why would A and B defect conditional on C defecting, when they know "C is going to follow a certain decision algorithm here - do the Dai-obvious thing and defect"?

Why would C choose to follow such an algorithm, if C perceives that not following such an algorithm might lead to mutual cooperation instead of mutual defection?

Essentially, I'm claiming that your belief about "logical uncorrelation" is hard to match up with your out-of-context intuitive reasoning about what all the parties are likely to do. It's another matter if C is a piece of cardboard, a random number generator, or a biological organism operating on some weird deluded decision theory; but you're reasoning as if C is calmly maximizing.

Suppose I put things to you this way: Groups of superrational agents will not occupy anything that is not at least a Pareto optimum, because they have strong motives to occupy Pareto optima and TDT lets them coordinate where such motives exist. Now the 3-choose-2 problem with two C players and one D player may be a Pareto optimum (if taken at face value without further trades being possible), but if you think of Pareto-ization as an underlying motivation - that everyone starts out in the mutual defection state, and then has a motive to figure out how to leave the mutual defection state by increasing their entanglement - then you might see why I'm a bit more skeptical about these "logical uncorrelations". Then you just end up in the all-D state, the base state, and agents have strong incentives to figure out ways to leave it if they can.

In other words, you seem to be thinking in terms of a C-equilibrium already accomplished among one group of agents locally correlated with themselves only, and looking at the incentive of other agents to locally-D; whereas my own reasoning assumes the D-equilibrium already globally accomplished, but suspects that in this case rational agents have a strong incentive to reach up to the largest reachable C-equilibria, which they can accomplish by increasing (not decreasing) various forms of entanglement.

Relations between "previously uncorrelated" groups may be viewable as analogous to relations between causally uncorrelated individuals. To assume that one subgroup has decided on interior cooperation even though it makes them vulnerable to outside defection, without that subgroup having demanded anything in return, may be like presuming unilateral cooperation on the PD.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 26 August 2009 03:32:43AM 0 points [-]

whereas my own reasoning assumes the D-equilibrium already globally accomplished, but suspects that in this case rational agents have a strong incentive to reach up to the largest reachable C-equilibria, which they can accomplish by increasing (not decreasing) various forms of entanglement.

Ok, this looks reasonable to me. But how would they actually go about doing this? So far I can see two general methods:

  1. convergence towards an "obvious" decision theory
  2. deliberate conditioning of moves between players

My current view is that neither of these methods seem very powerful as mechanisms for enabling cooperation, compared to say the ability to prove source code, or to merge securely. To summarize my thoughts and the various examples I've given, here are the problems with each of the above methods for "increasing entanglement":

  1. Two agents with the same "obvious" decision theory may not be highly correlated, if they have different heuristics, intuitions, priors, utility functions, etc. Also, an agent may have a disincentive to unilaterally increase his correlation with a large group of already highly correlated agents.
  2. Deliberate conditioning of moves is difficult when two sides have high uncertainty about each others' source code. Which hypothetical agent(s) do you condition your move against? How would they know that you've done so, when they don't know your source code either? It's also difficult if two sides have different preferences about the correlation of their moves, that is, if one side wants them to be positively correlated, and another wants them to be uncorrelated or negatively correlated.
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 August 2009 05:56:26AM 1 point [-]

These sound like basically reasonable worries / lines of argument to me. I'm sure life will be a lot easier for... not necessarily everyone, but at least us primitive mortal analysts... if it's easy for superintelligences to exhibit their source code to each other. Then we just have the problem of logical ordering in threats and games of Chicken. (Come to think of it, blackmail threats of mutual destruction unless paid off, would seem to become more probable, not less, as you became more able to exhibit and prove your source code to the other player.)

A possible primary remaining source of our differing guesses at this point, may have to do with the degree to which we think that decision processes are a priori (un)correlated. I take statements like "Obviously, everyone plays D at the end" to be evidence of very high a priori correlation - it's no good talking about different heuristics, intuitions, priors, utility functions, etcetera, if you don't actually conclude that maybe some players play C and others play D.

It's also difficult if two sides have different preferences about the correlation of their moves, that is, if one side wants them to be positively correlated, and another wants them to be uncorrelated or negatively correlated.

How would that happen?

Comment author: Wei_Dai 26 August 2009 06:46:01AM *  0 points [-]

(Come to think of it, blackmail threats of mutual destruction unless paid off, would seem to become more probable, not less, as you became more able to exhibit and prove your source code to the other player.)

I think Nesov's position is that such threats don't work against updateless agents, but I'm not sure about that yet. ETA: See previous discussion of this topic.

I take statements like "Obviously, everyone plays D at the end" to be evidence of very high a priori correlation - it's no good talking about different heuristics, intuitions, priors, utility functions, etcetera, if you don't actually conclude that maybe some players play C and others play D.

That doesn't make sense... Suppose nobody smokes, and nobody gets cancer. Does that mean smoking and cancer are correlated? In order to have correlation, you need to have both (C,C) and (D,D) outcomes. If all you have are (D,D) outcomes, there is no correlation.

How would that happen?

I'm referring to rock-paper-scissors and this example. Or were you asking something else?

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