Vladimir_Nesov comments on The True Epistemic Prisoner's Dilemma - Less Wrong

9 Post author: MBlume 19 April 2009 08:57AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 21 April 2009 04:57:22PM *  0 points [-]

As I understand it, to the extent that it makes sense to cooperate, the thing that cooperates is not you, but some sub-algorithm implemented in both you and your opponent.

It has to add up to normality, there should be a you somewhere. If each time you act on your better judgment over gut instinct it is "not you" that does the acting, why is it invited in your mind? Is the whole of deliberate reasoning not you?

In my book, when future-you fights a previously made informed commitment, then it is a case where future-you is not you anymore, where it stops caring about your counterfactuals. Not when the future-you remains reflectively consistent.

But possibly, this reflectively consistent creature can't a person anymore, and is not what we'd like to be, with our cognitive ritual morally significant after all, a thing to protect in itself.