drethelin comments on Open Thread, August 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong

2 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 01 August 2012 03:39PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (149)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Grognor 01 August 2012 03:59:54PM 11 points [-]

Do people think superrationality, TDT, and UDT are supposed to be useable by humans?

I had always assumed that these things were created as sort of abstract ideals, things you could program an AI to use (I find it no coincidence that all three of these concepts come from AI researchers/theorists to some degree) or something you could compare humans to, but not something that humans can actually use in real life.

But having read the original superrationality essays, I realize that Hofstadter makes no mention of using this in an AI framework and instead thinks about humans using it. And in HPMoR, Eliezer has two eleven-year old humans using a bare-bones version of TDT to cooperate (I forget the chapter this occurs in), and in the TDT paper, Eliezer still makes no mention of AIs but instead talks about "causal decision theorists" and "evidential decision theorists" as though they were just people walking around with opinions about decision theory, not the platonic formalized abstraction of decision theories. (I don't think he uses the phrase "timeless decision theorists".)

I think part of the rejection people have to these decision theories might be from how impossible they are to actually implement in humans. To get superrationality to work in humans, you'd probably have to broadcast it directly into the minds of everyone on the planet, and even then it's uncertain how many defectors would remain. You almost certainly could not possibly get TDT or UDT to work in humans because the majority of them cannot even understand them. I certainly had trouble, and I am not exactly one of the dumbest members of the species, and frankly I'm not even sure I understand them now.

The original question remains. It is not rhetorical. Do people think TDT/UDT/superrationality are supposed to be useable by humans?

(I am aware of this; it is no surprise that a very smart and motivated person can use TDT to cooperate with himself, but I doubt they can really be used in practice to get people to cooperate with other people, especially those not of the same tribe.)

Comment author: drethelin 01 August 2012 05:24:22PM -1 points [-]

TDT is not even that good at cooperating with yourself, if you're not in the right mindset. The notion that "If you fail at this you will fail at this forever" is very dangerous to depressed people, and TDT doesn't say anything useful (or at least nothing useful has been said to me on the topic) about entities that change over time, ie Humans. I can't timelessly decide to benchpress 200 pounds whenever I go to the gym, if I'm physically incapable of it.

Comment author: Grognor 01 August 2012 10:32:27PM *  0 points [-]

A failure or so, in itself, would not matter, if it did not incur a loss of self-esteem and of self-confidence. But just as nothing succeeds like success, so nothing fails like failure. Most people who are ruined are ruined by attempting too much. Therefore, in setting out on the immense enterprise of living fully and comfortably within the narrow limits of twenty-four hours a day, let us avoid at any cost the risk of an early failure. I will not agree that, in this business at any rate, a glorious failure is better than a petty success. I am all for the petty success. A glorious failure leads to nothing; a petty success may lead to a success that is not petty.

-Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

The notion that "If you fail at this you will fail at this forever" is very dangerous to depressed people,

A dangerous truth is still true. Let's not recommend people try at things if a failure will cause a failure cascade!

TDT doesn't say anything useful [...] about entities that change over time

The notion of "change over time" is deeply irrelevant to TDT, hence its name.