= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
cousin_it comments on Formalizing Newcomb's - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (111)
Annoyance has it right but too cryptic: it's the other way around. If your decision theory fails on this test ground but works perfectly well in the real world, maybe you need to work some more on the test ground. For now it seems I've adequately demonstrated how your available options depend on the implementation of Omega, and look not at all like the decision theories that we find effective in reality. Good sign?
Not quite. The failure of a strong decision theory on a test is a reason for you to start doubting the adequacy of both the test problem and the decision theory. The decision to amend one or the other must always come through you, unless you already trust something else more than you trust yourself. The paradox doesn't care what you do, it is merely a building block towards better explication of what kinds of decisions you consider correct.
Woah, let's have some common sense here instead of preaching. I have good reasons to trust accepted decision theories. What reason do I have to trust Newcomb's problem? Given how much in my analysis turned out to depend on the implementation of Omega, I don't trust the thing at all anymore. Do you? Why?
You are not asked to trust anything. You have a paradox; resolve it, understand it. What do you refer to, when using the word "trust" above?
Uh, didn't I convince you that, given any concrete implementation of Omega, the paradox utterly disappears? Let's go at it again. What kind of Omega do you offer me?
The usual setting, you being a sufficiently simple mere human, not building your own Omegas in the process, going through the procedure in a controlled environment if that helps to get the case stronger, and Omega being able to predict your actual final decision, by whatever means it pleases. What the Omega does to predict your decision doesn't affect you, shouldn't concern you, it looks like only that it's usually right is relevant.
"What the Omega does to predict your decision doesn't affect you, shouldn't concern you, it looks like only that it's usually right is relevant."
Is this the least convenient world? What Omega does to predict my decision does concern me, because it determines whether I should one-box or two-box. However, I'm willing to allow that in a LCW, I'm not given enough information. Is this the Newcomb "problem", then -- how to make rational decision when you're not given enough information?
No perfectly rational decision theory can be applied in this case, just like you can't play chess perfectly rationally with a desktop PC. Several comments above I outlined a good approximation that I would use and recommend a computer to use. This case is just... uninteresting. It doesn't raise any question marks in my mind. It should?
Can you please explain why a rational decision theory cannot be applied?
As I understand it, perfect rationality in this scenario requires we assume some Bayesian prior over all possible implementations of Omega and do a ton of computation for each case. For example, some Omegas could be type 3 and deceivable with non-zero probability; we have to determine how. If we know which implementation we're up against, the calculations are a little easier, e.g. in the "simulating Omega" case we just one-box without thinking.
By that definition of "perfect rationality" no two perfect rationalists can exist in the same universe, or any material universe in which the amount of elapsed time before a decision is always finite.
The decision theory must allow approximations, a ranking allowing to find (recognize) as good a solution as possible, given the practical limitations.
The problem setting itself shouldn't raise many questions. If you agree that the right answer in this setting is to one-box, you probably understand the test. Next, look at the popular decision theories that calculate that the "correct" answer is to two-box. Find what's wrong with those theories, or with the ways of applying them, and find a way to generalize them to handle this case and other cases correctly.
There's nothing wrong with those theories. They are wrongly applied, selectively ignoring the part of the problem statement that explicitly says you can't two-box if Omega decided you would one-box. Any naive application will do that because all standard theories assume causality, which is broken in this problem. Before applying decision theories we must work out what causes what. My original post was an attempt to do just that.
What other cases?
The decision is yours, Omega only foresees it. See also: Thou Art Physics.
Do that for the standard setting that I outlined above, instead of constructing its broken variations. What it means for something to cause something else, and how one should go about describing the situations in that model should arguably be a part of any decision theory.