Wei_Dai comments on An introduction to decision theory - Less Wrong

16 [deleted] 13 August 2010 09:09AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 13 August 2010 09:44:29AM *  3 points [-]

I applaud anyone who figures out stuff for themselves and posts it for the benefit of others, but this post is extremely unclear. How do you define these funky "causal probabilities" to someone who only knows regular conditional probabilities? And how can kissing the baby be evidence for anything, if it's determined entirely by which decision theory you adopt? In short, I feel your "explanation" doesn't look inside black boxes, only shuffles them around. I'd prefer a more formal treatment to ensure that no lions lurk in the shadows.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 13 August 2010 10:04:05AM *  3 points [-]

In short, I feel your "explanation" doesn't look inside black boxes, only shuffles them around.

That's not Adam Bell's fault. Those black boxes are inherent in CDT. You can read a CDT proponent's formal treatment of causal probabilities here, and see for yourself.