TobyBartels comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Unnamed 30 August 2010 05:37AM

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Comment author: TobyBartels 01 September 2010 11:37:53PM *  3 points [-]

Going one step further doesn't (generally) add restrictions; it just changes them. Consider:

  1. I will cooperate if I know anything.
  2. I will cooperate if I know that you will cooperate.
  3. I will cooperate if I know that you will cooperate iff I cooperate.
  4. I will cooperate if I know that you will cooperate iff I cooperate iff you cooperate.
  5. I will cooperate if I know that you will cooperate iff I cooperate iff you cooperate iff I cooperate.

Using classical logic after the modal operator, these reduce to:

  1. I will cooperate if I know anything.
  2. I will cooperate if I know that you will cooperate.
  3. I will cooperate if I know that we will perform the same action.
  4. I will cooperate if I know that I will cooperate.
  5. I will cooperate if I know anything.
  6. … (repeats)

Actually, now that I write it out like this, I can see why one would choose (3)!

It's important that there's an ‘if I know that’ instead of an ‘iff’, which I've seen before. But the version above is how I parsed WrongBot's statement, so hopefully WrongBot quoted it correctly. (The search function is not helping me find an original.)