PhilGoetz comments on Open Thread: April 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Unnamed 08 April 2010 03:09AM

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 30 April 2010 06:27:16PM 0 points [-]

Wikipedia page on causal decision theory says:

In a 1981 article, Allan Gibbard and William Harper explained causal decision theory as maximization of the expected utility U of an action A of an action "calculated from probabilities of counterfactuals":

U(A)=\sum\limits{j} P(A > Oj) D(O_j),

where D(Oj) is the desirability of outcome Oj and P(A > Oj) is the counterfactual probability that, if A were done, then Oj would hold.

David Lewis proved that the probability of a conditional P(A > Oj) does not always equal the conditional probability P(Oj | A). If that were the case, causal decision theory would be equivalent to evidential decision theory, which uses conditional probabilities.

Can somebody explain this strange statement?

Comment author: JGWeissman 30 April 2010 06:36:21PM 1 point [-]

An important aspect of a decision theory is how it defines counterfactuals. Anna Salamon wrote a good sequence on this topic.