army1987 comments on Decision Theories: A Less Wrong Primer - Less Wrong

69 Post author: orthonormal 13 March 2012 11:31PM

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Comment author: Estarlio 16 March 2012 02:57:38PM -1 points [-]

Which brings me back to whether Omega is feasible. I just don't share the intuition that Omega is capable of the sort of predictive capacity required of it.

Well, I guess my response to that would be that it's a thought experiment. Omega's really just an extreme - hypothetical - case of a powerful predictor, that makes problems in CDT more easily seen by amplifying them. If we were to talk about the prisoner's dilemma, we could easily have roughly the same underlying discussion.

Comment author: scmbradley 17 March 2012 12:41:11PM 0 points [-]

See mine and orthonormal's comments on the PD on this post for my view of that.

The point I'm struggling to express is that I don't think we should worry about the thought experiment, because I have the feeling that Omega is somehow impossible. The suggestion is that Newcomb's problem makes a problem with CDT clearer. But I argue that Newcomb's problem makes the problem. The flaw is not with the decision theory, but with the concept of such a predictor. So you can't use CDT's "failure" in this circumstance as evidence that CDT is wrong.

Here's a related point: Omega will never put the money in the box. Smith act like a one-boxer. Omega predicts that Smith will one-box. So the million is put in the opaque box. Now Omega reasons as follows: "Wait though. Even if Smith is a one-boxer, now that I've fixed what will be in the boxes, Smith is better off two-boxing. Smith is smart enough to realise that two-boxing is dominant, once I can't causally affect the contents of the boxes." So Omega doesn't put the money in the box.

Would one-boxing ever be advantageous if Omega were reasoning like that? No. The point is Omega will always reason that two-boxing dominates once the contents are fixed. There seems to be something unstable about Omega's reasoning. I think this is related to why I feel Omega is impossible. (Though I'm not sure how the points interact exactly.)

Comment author: [deleted] 17 March 2012 01:11:43PM 1 point [-]

Here's a related point: Omega will never put the money in the box. Smith act like a one-boxer. Omega predicts that Smith will one-box. So the million is put in the opaque box. Now Omega reasons as follows: "Wait though. Even if Smith is a one-boxer, now that I've fixed what will be in the boxes, Smith is better off two-boxing. Smith is smart enough to realise that two-boxing is dominant, once I can't causally affect the contents of the boxes." So Omega doesn't put the money in the box.

By that logic, you can never win in Kavka's toxin/Parfit's hitchhiker scenario.

Comment author: scmbradley 20 March 2012 05:49:32PM 0 points [-]

So I agree. It's lucky I've never met a game theorist in the desert.

Less flippantly. The logic pretty much the same yes. But I don't see that as a problem for the point I'm making; which is that the perfect predictor isn't a thought experiment we should worry about.