hairyfigment comments on Causal decision theory is unsatisfactory - Less Wrong

20 Post author: So8res 13 September 2014 05:05PM

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Comment author: hairyfigment 18 September 2014 04:13:02PM 1 point [-]

No. BOT^CDT = DefectBot. It defects against any opponent. CDT could not cause it to cooperate by changing what it does.

Maybe I've misread you, but this sounds like an assertion that your counterfactual question is the right one by definition, rather than a meaningful objection.

Comment author: dankane 19 September 2014 12:59:57AM 0 points [-]

Well, yes. Then again, the game was specified as PD against BOT^CDT not as PD against BOT^{you}. It seems pretty clear that for X not equal to CDT that it is not the case that X could achieve the result CC in this game. Are you saying that it is reasonable to say that CDT could achieve a result that no other strategy could just because it's code happens to appear in the opponent's program?

I think that there is perhaps a distinction to be made between things that happen to be simulating your code and this that are causally simulating your code.