Wei_Dai comments on The Absent-Minded Driver - Less Wrong

27 Post author: Wei_Dai 16 September 2009 12:51AM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 16 September 2009 08:25:13PM 0 points [-]

S() is suppose to be an implementation of UDT. By looking at the world program P, it should determine that among all possible input-output mappings, those that return "EXIT" for 1/3 of all inputs (doesn't matter which ones) maximize average payoff. What made me express the payoff as a function of p is by stepping through what S is supposed to do as an implementation of UDT.

Does that make sense?

Comment author: SilasBarta 16 September 2009 08:33:00PM 0 points [-]

I'm still confused. Your response seems to just say, "I did it because it works." -- which is a great reason! But I want to know if UDT gave you more guidance than that.

Does UDT require that you look at the consequences of doing something p% of the time (irrespective of which ones), on all problems?

Basically, I'm in the position of that guy/gal that everyone here probably helped out in high school:

"How do you do the proof in problem 29?" "Oh, just used identities 3 and 5, solve for t, and plug it back into the original equation." "But how did you know to do that?"

Comment author: Wei_Dai 16 September 2009 08:46:05PM 0 points [-]

Does UDT require that you look at the consequences of doing something p% of the time (irrespective of which ones), on all problems?

No, UDT (at least in my formulation) requires that you look at all possible input-output mappings, and choose the one that is optimal. In this case it so happens that any function that returns "EXIT" for 1/3 of inputs is optimal.