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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The AI in a box boxes you - Less Wrong
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Too late, I already precommitted not to care. In fact, I precommitted to use one more level of precommitment than you do.
I suggest that framing the refusal as requiring levels of recursive precommitment gives too much credit to the blackmailer and somewhat misrepresents how your decision algorithm (hopefully) works. One single level of precommittment (or TDT policy) against complying with blackmailed is all that is involved. The description of 'multiple levels of precommitment" made by the blackmailer fits squarely into the category 'blackmail'. It's just blackmail that includes some rather irrelevant bluster.
There's no need to precommit to each of:
Then I hope that if we ever do end up with a boxed blackmail-happy UFAI, you're the gatekeeper. My point is that there's no reason to consider yourself safe from blackmail (and the consequences of ignoring it) just because you've adopted a certain precommitment. Other entities have explicit incentives to deny you that safety.
In a multiverse with infinite resources there will be other entities that outweigh such incentives. And yes, this may not be symmetric, but you have absolutely no way to figure out how the asymmetry is inclined. So you ignore this (Pascal's wager).
In more realistic scenarios, where e.g. a bunch of TV evangelists ask you to give them all your money, or otherwise, in 200 years from now, they will hurt you once their organisation creates the Matrix, you obviously do not give them money. Since giving them money would make it more likely for them to actually build the Matrix and hurt you. What you do is label them as terrorists and destroy them.
I don't care, remember? Enjoy being tortured rather than "irrationally" giving in.
</steelman>
EDIT: re-added the steelman tag because the version without it is being downvoted.
Should I calculate in expectation that you will do such a thing, I shall of course burn yet more of my remaining utilons to wreak as much damage upon your goals as I can, even if you precommit not to be influenced by that.
... bloody hell. That was going to be my next move.
<steelman>
Naturally, as blackmailer, I precommitted to increase the resources allotted to torturing should I find that you make such precommitments under simulation, so you presumably calculated that would be counterproductive.
</steelman>
Ask me if I was even bothering to simulate you doing that.
<steelman>
OK, I'll bite. Are you deliberately ignoring parts of hypothesis-space in order to avoid changing your actions? I had assumed you were intelligent enough for my reaction to obvious, although you may have precommitted to ignore that fact.
</steelman>
Off the record, your point is that agents can simply opt out of or ignore acausal trades, forcing them to be mutually beneficial, right?
Yup.
<steelman>
Isn't that ... irrational? Shouldn't a perfect Bayesian always welcome new information? Litany of Tarski; if my action is counterproductive, I desire to believe that it is counterproductive.
Worse still, isn't the category "blackmail" arbitrary, intended to justify inaction rather than carve reality at it's joints? What separates a precommitted!blackmailer from an honest bargainer in a standard acausal prisoner's dilemma, offering to increase your utility by rescuing thousands of potential torture victims from the deathtrap created by another agent?
</steelman>
Has there been some cultural development since I was last at these boards such that spamming "<steelman></steelman>" is considered useful? None of the things I have thus far seen inside the tags have been steel men of any kind or of anything (some have been straw men). The inflationary use of terms is rather grating and would prompt downvotes even independently of the content.
Those are to indicate that the stuff between them is the response I would give were I on opposing side of this debate, rather than my actual belief. The practice of creating the strongest possible version of the other sides's argument is known as a steelman.
They are not intended to indicate that the argument therein is also steelmanning the other side. You're quite right, that would be awful. Can you imagine noting every rationality technique you used in the course of writing something?
OK, this whole conversation is being downvoted (by the same people?)
Fair enough, this is rather dragging on. I'll try and wrap things up by addressing my own argument there.
We want to avoid supporting agents that create problems for us. So nothing, if the honest agent shares a similar utility function to the torturer (and thus rewarding them is incentive for the torturer to arrange such a situation.)
Thus, creating such an honest agent (such as - importantly - by self-modifying in order to "precommit") is subject to the same incentives as just blackmailing us normally.
I'll join you by mostly agreeing and expressing a small difference in the way TDT-like reasoners may see the situation.
This is a good heuristic. It certainly handles most plausible situations. However in principle a TDT agent will make a distinction between the agent offering to rescue the torture victims for a payment. It will even pay an agent who just happens to value torturing folk to not torture folk. This applies even if these honest agents happen to have similar values to the UFAI/torturer.
The line I draw (and it is a tricky concept that is hard to express so I cannot hope to speak for other TDT-like thinkers) is not whether the values of the honest agent are similar to the UFAI's. It is instead based on how that honest agent came to be.
If the honest torturer just happened to evolve that way (competitive social instincts plus a few mutations for psychopathy, etc) and had not been influence by a UFAI then I'll bribe him to not torture people. If an identical honest torturer was created (or modified to) by the UFAI for the purpose of influence then it doesn't get cooperation.
The above may seem arbitrary but the 'elegant' generalisation is something along the lines of always, for every decision, tracing a complete causal graph of the decision algorithms being interacted with directly or indirectly. That's too complicated to calculate all the time and we can usually ignore it and just remember to treat intentionally created agents and self-modifications approximately the same as if the original agent was making their decision.
Precisely. (I have the same conclusion, just slightly different working out.)
Caving to a precommitted blackmailer produces a result desirable to the agent that made the original commitment to torture; disarming a trap constructed by a third party presumably doesn't.
No. It produces better outcomes. That's the point.
The information is welcome. It just doesn't make it sane to be blackmailed. Wei Dai's formulation frames it as being 'updateless' but there is no requirement to refuse information. The reasoning is something you almost grasped when you used the description:
Acausal trades are similar to normal trades. You only accept the good ones.
Eliezer doesn't get blackmailed in such situations. You do. Start your chant.
This has been covered elsewhere in this thread as well as plenty of other times on the the forum since you joined. The difference isn't whether torture or destruction is happening. The distinction that matters is whether the blackmailer is doing something worse than their own Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement for the purpose of attempting to influence you.
If the UFAI gains benefit torturing people independently of influencing you but offers to stop in exchange for something then that isn't blackmail. It is a trade that you consider like any other.
Wedrifid, please don't assume the conclusion. I know it's a rather obvious conclusion, but dammit, we're going to demonstrate it anyway.
The entire point of this discussion is addressing the idea that blackmailers can, perhaps, modify the Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement (although it wasn't phrased like that.) Somewhat relevant when they can, presumably, self-modify, create new agents which will then trade with you, or maybe just act as if they had using TDT reasoning.
If you're not interested in answering this criticism ... well, fair enough. But I'd appreciate it if you don't answer things out of context, it rather confuses things?