Heat but no light this time around. I won't reply more unless it gets better.
In the cloning scenario, Tim-in-China would have to be a modified version of Tim-in-US.
There's no reason for this.
The world in which Tim-in-US lives determines what options are available when creating Tim-in-China, not any property of CDT, so if I'm creating the scenario I can fill in the details so there is reason for Tim-in-China to be lame in any way I choose. It could be very simple -- Tim-in-US has a button to push that will both destroy Tim-in-US and set Tim-in-China into action, where Tim-in-China existed at the beginning of the scenario and is therefore whatever I want it to be. Tim-in-US cannot take any direct action other than pushing the button. Pushing the button is self-modification. If we can contrive for it to be rational for Tim-in-US to push the button, Tim-in-US will self-modify.
In a more realistic scenario, Tim-in-China might be imperfect because it is built of whatever materials are at hand, rather than the mathematically perfect substrate Tim-in-US's mind runs on. If you want Tim-in-China to be an ideal CDT for it to qualify as self-modification, then fine, Tim-in-China is an ideal CDT but the environment constrains things so that Tim-in-China's utility function is not a particularly good approximation to that of Tim-in-US. If Tim-in-China's utility function is good enough, and Tim-in-US's ability to take direct action is impaired enough, then we can fill in the details so Tim-in-US will still benefit from self-modifying.
Also, strictly speaking, prior to the point where Tim in China is created the problems are not fully action-determined, since the outcome is affected by things other than random chance the the choices made by Tim in US.
I can't make sense of this. Please tell me the influence on the outcome that wasn't random chance and wasn't a choice made by Tim-in-US. (We don't need any randomness in this scenario.) You'll also have to choose something that leads to it not being action-determined, and something that's consistent with a definition of action-determined that doesn't lead to "action-determined" referring a useless or empty set of possibilities.
You might be referring to actions taken by Tim-in-China. Tim-in-US chose to create Tim-in-China, so all actions taken by Tim-in-China are a consequence of choices made by Tim-in-US.
You might be referring to actions taken by Tim-in-China. Tim-in-US chose to create Tim-in-China, so all actions taken by Tim-in-China are a consequence of choices made by Tim-in-US.
The thing is there's two ways of looking at this problem. Either creating Tim-in-China is just one option avaliable in an action-determined, everything he does is just a consequence which Tim-in-US predicted. In this case it isn't self-modification. Alternatively, he is an independent agent, in which case creating him is self-modification but the problem isn't action-determin...
I don't know if this is a little too afar field for even a Discussion post, but people seemed to enjoy my previous articles (Girl Scouts financial filings, video game console insurance, philosophy of identity/abortion, & prediction market fees), so...
I recently wrote up an idea that has been bouncing around my head ever since I watched Death Note years ago - can we quantify Light Yagami's mistakes? Which mistake was the greatest? How could one do better? We can shed some light on the matter by examining DN with... basic information theory.
Presented for LessWrong's consideration: Death Note & Anonymity.