Vladimir_Nesov comments on Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 07 July 2012 05:16PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 08 July 2012 02:54:58PM *  2 points [-]

If difficulty of selecting and implementing a strategy is part of the tradeoff (so that more complicated strategies count as "worse" because of their difficulty, even if they promise an otherwise superior outcome), maybe there are "best" strategies in some sense, like there is a biggest natural number that you can actually write down in 30 seconds. (Such things would of course have the character of particular decisions, not of decision theory.)

Comment author: novalis 08 July 2012 05:24:30PM *  -2 points [-]

There is not a biggest natural number that you can actually write down in thirty seconds -- that's equivalent to Berry's paradox.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 08 July 2012 09:08:21PM *  1 point [-]

Huh? Just start writing. The rule wasn't "the number you can define in 30 seconds", but simply "the number you can write down in 30 seconds". Like the number of strawberries you can eat in 30 seconds, no paradox there!

Comment author: novalis 08 July 2012 09:15:28PM -1 points [-]

I was reading "write down" more generally than "write down each digit of in base ten," but I guess that's not how you meant it.

Comment author: private_messaging 08 July 2012 03:52:41PM -2 points [-]

Hmm if it was a programming contest I would expect non-transitive 'betterness'.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 08 July 2012 04:30:01PM 2 points [-]

Given a fixed state of knowledge about possible opponents and finite number of feasible options for your decision, there will be maximal decisions, even if in an iterated contest the players could cycle their decisions against updated opponents indefinitely.