Dmytry comments on Decision Theories: A Semi-Formal Analysis, Part II - Less Wrong

16 Post author: orthonormal 06 April 2012 06:59PM

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Comment author: Dmytry 07 April 2012 03:28:13PM *  -1 points [-]

That's why you don't let your calculator be sentient. FAI might give a number that makes you most happy, which might well be 42 if you are not relying on this number for anything useful. (E.g. it might tell 42 as a joke, knowing that you know what 2+3 is)

Edit: you can, however, have some requirements on the calculator's output, and then there will be the number that satisfies those criteria; the x substitution will work to solve for this value, and in principle even to solve for protective measures to take against cosmic rays, and so on.

edit: and on the NDT, it doesn't one-way substitute at start. It assumes equivalence.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 07 April 2012 05:00:29PM 2 points [-]

FAI might give a number that makes you most happy

Sure, if it happened to be in a situation where the most valuable thing to do by my standards was make me happy. Agreed.
You seem to be implying that I should prefer to avoid this result... do you in fact believe that?
If so, can you clarify why?

A somewhat analogous real-world situation: one of Siri's possible responses to "open the pod bay doors" as a command is "We're never going to live that down, are we?" This delights me enormously, and costs nothing of consequence. Should I prefer that this result be eliminated?

Comment author: Dmytry 07 April 2012 05:44:53PM *  0 points [-]

Actually I misunderstood his point with calculator. He was speaking of NDT with issues resulting from equivalence, i thought he was speaking of issues resulting from substitution. I did not mean to imply that you should avoid this result, simply that if you want your calculator to work by the decision theory I thought he was referring to, it got to have some utilities associated with outputs. And this doesn't really help make a calculating device.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 07 April 2012 08:57:45PM 0 points [-]

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

Comment author: orthonormal 07 April 2012 03:40:03PM 1 point [-]

Who said anything about sentience? NDT, as described, is a perfectly comprehensible program that (in certain games that you or I would regard as fair tests) generates spurious counterfactuals and thus makes terrible decisions, thanks to a particular kind of circularity.

In this sequence, I'm not talking about FAI or anything beyond my current understanding, and I'm not intentionally drawing metaphors. I'm simply outlining programs which (if I could write a good automated theorem-prover) I could write myself, and comparing how they do in a straightforward tournament setting, with the twist of allowing read-access to source codes. We should be able to agree on that base level.

Comment author: Dmytry 07 April 2012 04:14:52PM *  1 point [-]

Yea, NDT is no good, agreed about that. That doesn't so much results from substitution as from full blown two way equivalence.