V_V comments on What's Wrong with Evidential Decision Theory? - Less Wrong

15 Post author: aaronde 23 August 2012 12:09AM

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Comment author: V_V 24 August 2012 09:56:08AM 0 points [-]

An EDT agent that's stuck in the desert will self-modify in such a way that, when someone offers to pick him up, he knows he'll keep the promise to pay them.

If the agent is able to credibly commit (I assume that's what you mean by self modification), he doesn't have to do that in advance. He can just commit when he's offered the ride.

On a side note, the entry you linked says:

This is the dilemma of Parfit's Hitchhiker, and the above is the standard resolution according to mainstream philosophy's causal decision theory

Is it actually correct that causal decision theory is mainstream? I was under the impression that EDT is mainstream, so much that is usually referred to just as decision theory.

Comment author: DanielLC 24 August 2012 05:05:09PM 0 points [-]

He can just commit when he's offered the ride.

He can in that example. There are others where he can't. For example, the guy picking him up might have other ways of figuring out if he'd pay, and not explain what's going on until the ride, when it's too late to commit.

Is it actually correct that causal decision theory is mainstream?

I don't know. Both of them are major enough to have Wikipedia articles. I've heard that philosophers are split on Newcomb's paradox, which would separate CDTers and EDTers.

In any case, both decision theories give the same answer for Parfit's hitchhiker.

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