EHeller comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong

60 Post author: lukeprog 16 May 2011 06:28AM

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Comment author: nshepperd 23 November 2014 12:10:31PM *  2 points [-]

If your goal is to show that Omega is "impossible" or "inconsistent", then having Omega adopt the strategy "leave both boxes empty for people who try to predict me / do any other funny stuff" is a perfectly legitimate counterargument. It shows that Omega is in fact consistent if he adopts such strategy. You have no right to just ignore that counterargument.

Indeed, Omega requires a strategy for when he finds that you are too hard to predict. The only reason such a strategy is not provided beforehand in the default problem description is because we are not (in the context of developing decision theory) talking about situations where you are powerful enough to predict Omega, so such a specification would be redundant. The assumption, for the purpose of illuminating problems with classical decision theory, is that Omega has vastly more computational resources than you do, so that the difficult decision tree that presents the problem will obtain.

By the way, it is extremely normal for there to be strategies you are "incapable of executing". For example, I am currently unable to execute the strategy "predict what you will say next, and counter it first", because I can't predict you. Computation is a resource like any other.

Comment author: EHeller 24 November 2014 01:43:35AM *  0 points [-]

If your goal is to show that Omega is "impossible" or "inconsistent", then having Omega adopt the strategy "leave both boxes empty for people who try to predict me / do any other funny stuff" is a perfectly legitimate counterargument. It shows that Omega is in fact consistent if he adopts such strategy. You have no right to just ignore that counterargument.

This contradicts the accuracy stated at the beginning. Omega can't leave both boxes empty for people who try to adopt a mixed strategy AND also maintain his 99.whatever accuracy on one-boxers.

And even if Omega has way more computational than I do, I can still generate a random number. I can flip a coin thats 60/40 one-box, two-box. The most accurate Omega can be, then, is to assume I one box.

Comment author: nshepperd 24 November 2014 03:10:56AM 2 points [-]

This contradicts the accuracy stated at the beginning. Omega can't leave both boxes empty for people who try to adopt a mixed strategy AND also maintain his 99.whatever accuracy on one-boxers.

He can maintain his 99% accuracy on deterministic one-boxers, which is all that matters for the hypothetical.

Alternatively, if we want to explicitly include mixed strategies as an available option, the general answer is that Omega fills the box with probability = the probability that your mixed strategy one-boxes.