gwern comments on The Absent-Minded Driver - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: gwern 03 January 2010 03:44:49PM 0 points [-]

I think it must've.

If you remember your choice, then there's no reason to ever choose 'wake me up only at X'. If you wake up only at X, then you will either take action to turn off and score 0 points, or you will go back to sleep and continue to C and score 1 point.

0 or 1 is pretty bad, since you could then do better just by randomly picking from A, B, or C (as (1/3)*1 + (1/3)*4 + (1/3)*0 = 1.6...). Eliminating one branch entirely eliminates the problem.