timtyler comments on Explicit Optimization of Global Strategy (Fixing a Bug in UDT1) - Less Wrong

17 Post author: Wei_Dai 19 February 2010 01:30AM

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Comment author: timtyler 19 February 2010 09:42:27AM *  0 points [-]

Conventionally, spades comes before clubs:

Bridge: spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs;

Poker (generally) spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 19 February 2010 09:53:02AM 2 points [-]

Except that generally you list them going up - clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades.

Comment author: timtyler 19 February 2010 08:41:38PM *  0 points [-]

Reference? They are not generally listed that way on the internet:

Google "spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs" - 4,090

Google "clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades" - 2,950

Comment author: Sniffnoy 19 February 2010 09:24:40PM 2 points [-]

Huh, that surprises me. I was going purely by personal experience, plus the fact that bidding goes from low to high in Bridge; that's the order I would expect people to list the suits in, because that's the order they occur in.

Comment author: RobinZ 19 February 2010 08:44:45PM 1 point [-]

Those numbers are not hugely different - it might be more accurate to say that "there is no reliable consensus on order".

Comment author: timtyler 19 February 2010 08:58:57PM -1 points [-]

To deal with this kind of problem, you want the best ordering you can find.

Not everyone has to agree on it.

Comment author: RobinZ 19 February 2010 09:06:40PM 0 points [-]

The other agent, who has different source code to you, has to agree on it. If it were you and Sniffnoy playing the game ...

Comment author: timtyler 19 February 2010 09:19:24PM 0 points [-]

In the post, it said:

"Suppose Omega appears and tells you that you have just been copied".

Comment author: RobinZ 19 February 2010 10:14:39PM 0 points [-]

Oh, I see the problem. I was talking about Tyrrell_McAllister's question upthread, in which the assumption of identical source code (i.e. copying) is dropped.

Comment author: timtyler 19 February 2010 11:34:08PM *  1 point [-]

If you don't know much about the other agent - except that it is also trying to win - I figure you should also probably just do the best you can to pick the most mutually-obvious ordering, hoping that they will be doing much the same. Sometimes, it won't work out - but that is doing as well as you can.

That's assuming linear utility. If the most important thing is to consistently get at least a few points, then randomness may be a better strategy.