cousin_it comments on A Problem About Bargaining and Logical Uncertainty - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Wei_Dai 21 March 2012 09:03PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 21 March 2012 10:48:34PM *  7 points [-]

(I'll review some motivations for decision theories in the context of Counterfactual Mugging, leading to the answer.)

Precommitment in the past, where it's allowed, was a CDT-style solution to problems like this. You'd try making the most general possible precommitment as far in the past as possible that would respond to any possible future observations. This had two severe problems: it's not always possible to be far enough in the past to make precommitments that would coordinate all relevant future events, and you have to plan every possible detail of future events in advance.

TDT partially resolves such problems by implementing coordinated decisions among the instances of the agent within agent's current worlds (permitted by observations so far) that share the same epistemic state (or its aspects relevant to the decision) and decide for all of themselves together, so arrive at the same decision. (It makes sense for the decision to be a strategy that then can take into account additional information differentiating the instances of the agent.) This is enough for Newcomb's problem and (some versions of) Prisoner's Dilemma, but where coordination of agents in mutually exclusive counterfactuals are concerned, some of the tools break down.

Counterfactual Mugging both concerns agents located in mutually exclusive counterfactuals, and explicitly forbids the agent to be present in the past to make a precommitment, so TDT fails to apply. In this case, UDT (not relying on causal graphs) can define a common decision problem shared by the agents from different counterfactuals, if these agents can be first reduced to a shared epistemic state, so that all of them would arrive at the same decision (which takes the form of a strategy), which is then given each agent's particular additional knowledge that differentiates it from the other agents within the group that makes the coordinated decision.

In the most general case, where we attempt to coordinate among all UDT agents, these agents arrive, without using any knowledge other than what can be generated by pure inference (assumed common among these agents), at a single global strategy that specifies the moves of all agents (depending on each agent's particular knowledge and observations). However, when applied to a simple situation like Counterfactual Mugging, an agent only needs to purge itself of one bit of knowledge (identifying an agent) and select a simple coordinated strategy (for both agents) that takes that bit back as input to produce a concrete action.

So this takes us the whole circle, from deciding in a moment, to deciding (on a precommitment) in advance, and to deciding (on a coordinated strategy) in the present (of each instance). However, the condition for producing a coordinated strategy in the present is different from that for producing a precommitment in the past: all we need is shared state of knowledge among the to-be-coordinated agents, and not the state of knowledge they could've shared in the past, if they were to attempt a precommitment.

So for this problem, in coordinating with the other player (which let's assume abstractly exists, even if with measure 0), you can use your knowledge of the millionth digit of pi, since both players share it. And using this shared knowledge, the strategy you both arrive at would favor the world that's permitted by that value, in this case the paperclip world, the other world doesn't matter, contrary to what would be the case with a coin toss instead of the accessible abstract fact. And since the other player has nothing of value to offer, you take the whole pie.

Comment author: cousin_it 21 March 2012 11:03:22PM *  1 point [-]

So you would also keep the money in Counterfactual Mugging with a logical coin? I don't see how that can be right. About half of logical coins fall heads, so given a reasonable prior over Omegas, it makes more sense for the agent to always pay up, both in Counterfactual Mugging and in Wei's problem. But of course using a prior over Omegas is cheating...

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 21 March 2012 11:15:31PM 0 points [-]

Then you'd be coordinating with players of other CM setups, not just with your own counterfactual opponent, you'd be breaking out of your thought experiment, and that's against the rules! (Whatever "logical coin" is, the primary condition is for it to be shared among and accessible to all coordinating agents. If that's so, like here, then I keep the money, assuming the thought experiment doesn't leak control.)

Comment author: Will_Newsome 22 March 2012 07:30:32AM *  9 points [-]

assuming the thought experiment doesn't leak control

:/ The whole point of thought experiments is that they leak control. ;P

"I seem to have found myself in a trolley problem! This is fantastically unlikely. I'm probably in some weird moral philosophy thought experiment and my actions are likely mostly going to be used as propaganda supporting the 'obvious' conclusions of one side or the other... oh and if I try to find a clever third option I'll probably make myself counterfactual in most contexts. Does the fact that I'm thinking these thoughts affect what contexts I'm in? /brainasplodes"

Comment author: Armok_GoB 22 March 2012 08:27:19PM 2 points [-]

This is exactly what my downscale copy thinks the first 3-5 times I try to run any though experiment. Often it's followed by "**, I'm going to die!"

I don't run though experiments containing myself at any level of detail if I can avoid it any more.

Comment author: cousin_it 22 March 2012 10:49:16AM *  0 points [-]

I'm still not sure. You can look at it as cooperating with players of other CM setups, or as trying to solve the meta-question "what decision theory would be good at solving problems like this one?" Saying "50% of logical coins fall heads" seems to capture the intent of the problem class quite well, no?

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 22 March 2012 05:10:19PM *  0 points [-]

The decision algorithm that takes the whole pie is good at solving problems like this one: for each specific pie it gets it whole. Making the same action is not good for solving the different problem of dividing all possible pies simultaneously, but then the difference is reflected in the problem statement, and so the reasons that make it decide correctly for individual problems won't make it decide incorrectly for the joint problem.

I think it's right to cooperate in this thought experiment only to the extent that we accept the impossibility of isolating this thought experiment from its other possible instances, but then it should just motivate restating the thought experiment so as to make its expected actual scope explicit.

Comment author: cousin_it 22 March 2012 06:02:17PM 0 points [-]

I think it's right to cooperate in this thought experiment only to the extent that we accept the impossibility of isolating this thought experiment from its other possible instances, but then it should just motivate restating the thought experiment so as to make its expected actual scope explicit.

Agreed.