Jonii comments on What Program Are You? - Less Wrong

28 Post author: RobinHanson 12 October 2009 12:29AM

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Comment author: Jonii 12 October 2009 02:37:00AM 2 points [-]

The advice to "choose as though controlling the logical output of the abstract computation you implement" might have you choose as if you controlled the actions of all physical objects, if you viewed the laws of physics as your program, or choose as if you only controlled the actions of the particular physical state that you are, if every distinct physical state is a different program.

This seems to be about identity. First case being where one thinks that they are the Universe itself, and latter being complete denialist of time passing in any sense at all, and our experience being non-connected solid state, thus refusing to accept that he is in any meaningful sense the guy he was 5 minutes earlier. I don't think it's wrong that this kind of differences in views of self-identity should change our decisions.

Comment author: RobinHanson 12 October 2009 12:53:40PM 1 point [-]

A positive theory of human behavior may well depend on self-assigned identity. But a normative theory of agent behavior will need a normative theory of identify if identity is to be a central element.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 13 October 2009 09:02:56AM 2 points [-]

But a normative theory of agent behavior will need a normative theory of identify if identity is to be a central element.

Doesn't causal decision theory also require a theory of identify, which you have to use in order to provide CDT with a set of possible choices? For example, in a Prisoner's Dilemma game, you could identify with both players, and make your choice set the four pairs {<C,C>,<C,D>,<D,D>,<D,C>} instead of {C,D}, but presumably you don't. If you're puzzled about whether you should view yourself as controlling the actions of all physical objects under TDT/UDT, why aren't you puzzled about this same question under CDT?

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