APMason comments on Sneaky Strategies for TDT - Less Wrong

8 Post author: drnickbone 25 May 2012 04:13PM

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Comment author: drnickbone 26 May 2012 08:33:56PM *  0 points [-]

Here are the variants which make no explicit mention of TDT anywhere in the problem statement. It seems a real strain to describe either of them as unfair to TDT. Yet TDT will be outperformed on them by CDT; unless it resolves never to allow itself to be outperformed on any problem (in TDT über alles fashion)

Problem 1: Omega (who experience has shown is always truthful) presents the usual two boxes A and B and announces the following. "Before you entered the room, I selected an agent at random from the following distribution over all full source-codes for decision theory agents (insert distribution). I then simulated the result of presenting this exact problem to that agent. I won't tell you what the agent decided, but I will tell you that if the agent two-boxed then I put nothing in Box B, whereas if the agent one-boxed then I put big Value-B in Box B. Regardless of how the simulated agent decided, I put small Value-A in Box A. Now please choose your box or boxes."

Problem 2: Our ever-reliable Omega now presents ten boxes, numbered from 1 to 10, and announces the following. "Exactly one of these boxes contains $1 million; the others contain nothing. You must take exactly one box to win the money; if you try to take more than one, then you won't be allowed to keep any winnings. Before you entered the room, I ran multiple simulations of this problem as presented to different agents, sampled uniformly from different possible future universes according to their relative numbers, with the universes themselves sampled from my best projections of the future. I determined the box which the agents were least likely to take. If there were several such boxes tied for equal-lowest probability, then I just selected one of them, the one labelled with the smallest number. I then placed $1 million in the selected box. Please choose your box."

Comment author: APMason 27 May 2012 02:13:56PM *  2 points [-]

I think the clearest and simplest version of Problem 1 is where Omega chooses to simulate a CDT agent with .5 probability and a TDT agent with .5 probability. Let's say that Value-B is $1000000, as is traditional, and Value-A is $1000. TDT will one-box for an expected value of $500500 (as opposed to $1000 if it two-boxes), and CDT will always two-box, and receive an expected $501000. Both TDT and CDT have an equal chance of playing against each other in this version, and an equal chance of playing against themselves, and yet CDT still outperforms. It seems TDT suffers for CDT's irrationality, and CDT benefits from TDT's rationality. Very troubling.

EDIT: (I will note, though, that a TDT agent still can't do any better by two-boxing - only make CDT do worse).