cousin_it comments on Decision Theories: A Semi-Formal Analysis, Part I - Less Wrong

21 Post author: orthonormal 24 March 2012 04:01PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 24 March 2012 11:09:09PM 0 points [-]

It's a lot easier for me to see the applications for an iterated game where you try to model your opponent's source code given the game history than a single-shot game where you try to predict what your opponent will do given their source code and your source code. That seems like it just invites infinite regress.

Suppose we know we're going to play the one-shot prisoner's dilemma with access to source code, and so we want to try to build the bot that cooperates only with bots that have functionally the same rule as it, i.e. the 'superrational prisoner' that's come up on LW. How would we actually express that? Suppose, for ease of labeling, we have bots 1 and 2 that can either C or D. Bot 1 says "output C iff 2 will output C iff 1 will output C iff 2 will output C iff..." Well, clearly that won't work. We also can't just check to see if the source code is duplicated, because we want to ensure that we also cooperate with similar bots, and don't want to get fooled by bots that have that commented out.

Is there a way to code that bot with the sort of propositions you're doing? Outcomes aren't enough- you need models of outcome dependencies that can fit inside themselves.

Comment author: cousin_it 25 March 2012 12:04:34AM *  2 points [-]

What Nesov said. Loebian cooperation happened because I wanted to make quining cooperation work when the opponent has the same algorithm, but not necessarily the same source code. Illusion of transparency again, I post a lot of math thinking that its motivation will be crystal clear to everyone...

Comment author: Vaniver 25 March 2012 07:11:45AM 0 points [-]

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