Dmytry 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: Dmytry 17 March 2012 01:39:23PM *  0 points [-]

Well, i can implement omega by scanning your brain and simulating you. The other 'non implementations' of omega, though, imo are best ignored entirely. You can't really blame a decision theory for failure if there's no sensible model of the world for it to use.

My decision theory, personally, allows me to ignore unknown and edit my expected utility formula in ad-hoc way if i'm sufficiently convinced that omega will work as described. I think that's practically useful because effective heuristics often have to be invented on spot without sufficient model of the world.

edit: albeit, if i was convinced that omega works as described, i'd be convinced that it has scanned my brain and is emulating my decision procedure, or is using time travel, or is deciding randomly then destroying the universes where it was wrong... with more time i can probably come up with other implementations, the common thing about the implementations though is that i should 1-box.

Comment author: [deleted] 17 March 2012 03:30:09PM *  0 points [-]

Well, i can implement omega by scanning your brain and simulating you.

Provided my brain's choice isn't affected by quantum noise, otherwise I don't think you can. :-)

Comment author: orthonormal 17 March 2012 04:26:25PM 2 points [-]

People with memory problems tend to repeat "spontaneous" interactions in essentially the same way, which is evidence that quantum noise doesn't usually sway choices.

Comment author: Dmytry 17 March 2012 03:37:48PM 0 points [-]

Good point. Still, the brain's choice can be quite deterministic, if you give it enough thought - averaging out noise.