Wes_W comments on Counterfactual Mugging - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Vladimir_Nesov 19 March 2009 06:08AM

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Comment author: Wes_W 16 October 2016 06:49:57AM *  0 points [-]

You're fundamentally failing to address the problem.

For one, your examples just plain omit the "Omega is a predictor" part, which is key to the situation. Since Omega is a predictor, there is no distinction between making the decision ahead of time or not.

For another, unless you can prove that your proposed alternative doesn't have pathologies just as bad as the Counterfactual Mugging, you're at best back to square one.

It's very easy to say "look, just don't do the pathological thing". It's very hard to formalize that into an actual decision theory, without creating new pathologies. I feel obnoxious to keep repeating this, but that is the entire problem in the first place.