MinibearRex comments on Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted - Less Wrong

53 Post author: orthonormal 02 September 2011 07:37AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (118)
Tags: deontology consequentialism

Comments (118)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Alicorn 31 August 2011 04:38:39AM *  6 points [-]

But what if the doctor is confident of keeping it a secret? Well, then causal decision theory would indeed tell her to harvest his organs, but TDT (and also UDT) would strongly advise her against it. Because if TDT endorsed the action, then other people would be able to deduce that TDT endorsed the action, and that (whether or not it had happened in any particular case) their lives would be in danger in any hospital run by a timeless decision theorist, and then we'd be in much the same boat. Therefore TDT calculates that the correct thing for TDT to output in order to maximize utility is "Don't kill the traveler," and thus the doctor doesn't kill the traveler.

If you make things more inconvenient, no one will ever suspect that the doctor runs TDT, either.

Comment author: MinibearRex 31 August 2011 04:57:23AM *  2 points [-]

On the other hand, other people knowing that you're a TDT agent is the reason TDT agents are able to cooperate. TDT on a large scale kind of depends on other people suspecting it.

<EDIT> Please note that Alicorn's point is correct. If you are using this as a thought experiment, take "no one will ever suspect the doctor is a TDT agent" as an axiom. If you are looking at it to analyze decision theory, you do have to consider other factors. </EDIT>

Comment author: khafra 31 August 2011 02:15:46PM 1 point [-]

Is there anything formalized, or even informalized, showing the boundaries of the circumstances wherein TDT agents should reveal their TDTness, and the subset of those where they should reveal their source code? I'm not aware of any; only of regions within that space where we're pretty sure they should be open about it.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit