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lackofcheese comments on Newcomblike problems are the norm - Less Wrong
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First of all, for any decision problem it's an implicit assumption that you are given sufficient information to have a very high degree of certainty about the circumstances of the problem. If presented with the appropriate evidence, AIXI should be convinced of this. Indeed, given its nature as an "optimal sequence-predictor", it should take far less evidence to convince AIXI than it would take to convince a human. You are correct that if it was presented Newcomb's problem repeatedly then in the long run it should eventually try one-boxing, but if it's highly convinced it could take a very long time before it's worth it for AIXI to try it.
Now, as for an assumption of causality, the model that AIXI has of the agent/environment interaction is based on an assumption that both of them are chronological Turing machines---see the description here. I'm reasonably sure this constitutes an assumption of forward causality.
Similarly, what AIXI would do in Newcomb's problem depends very specifically on its notion of what exactly it can control. Just as a CDT agent does, AIXI should understand that whether or not the opaque box contains a million dollars is already predetermined; in fact, given that AIXI is a universal sequence predictor it should be relatively trivial for it to work out whether the box is empty or full. Given that, AIXI should calculate that it is optimal for it to two-box, so it will two-box and get $1000. For AIXI, Newcomb's problem should essentially boil down to Agent Simulates Predictor.
Ultimately, the AIXI agent makes the same mistake that CDT makes - it fails to understand that its actions are ultimately controlled not by the agent itself, but by the output of the abstract AIXI equation, which is a mathematical construct that is accessible not just to AIXI, but the rest of the world as well. The design of the AIXI algorithm is inherently flawed because it fails to recognize this; ultimately this is the exact same error that CDT makes.
Granted, this doesn't answer the interesting question of "what does AIXI do if it predicts Newcomb's problem in advance?", because before Omega's prediction AIXI has an opportunity to causally affect that prediction.
What it doesn't do, is make an assumption that there must be physical sequence of dominoes falling on each other from one singular instance of it, to the effect.
Not at all. It can't self predict. We assume that the predictor actually runs AIXI equation.
Ultimately, it doesn't know what's in the boxes, and it doesn't assume that what's in the boxes is already well defined (there's certainly codes where it is not), and it can learn it controls contents of the box in precisely the same manner as it has to learn that it controls it's own robot arm or what ever is it that it controls. Ultimately it can do exactly same output->predictor->box contents as it does for output->motor controller->robot arm. Indeed if you don't let it observe 'its own' robot arm, and only let it observe the box, that's what it controls. It has no more understanding that this box labelled 'AIXI' is the output of what it controls, than it has about the predictor's output.
It is utterly lacking this primate confusion over something 'else' being the predictor. The predictor is representable in only 1 way, and that's an extra counter factual insertion of actions into the model.
You need to notice and justify changing the subject.
If I was to follow your line of reasoning, then CDT also one-boxes on Newcomb's problem, because CDT can also just believe that its action causes the prediction. That goes against the whole point of the Newcomb setup - the idea is that the agent is given sufficient evidence to conclude, with a high degree of confidence, that the contents of the boxes are already determined before it chooses whether to one-box or two-box.
AIXI doesn't assume that the causality is made up of a "physical sequence of dominoes falling", but that doesn't really matter. We've stated as part of the problem setup that Newcomb's problem does, in fact, work that way, and a setup where Omega changes the contents of the boxes in advance, rather than doing it after the fact via some kind of magic, is obviously far simpler, and hence far more probable given a Solomonoff prior.
As for the predictor, it doesn't need to run the full AIXI equation in order to make a good prediction. It just needs to conclude that due to the evidence AIXI will assign high probability to the obviously simpler, non-magical explanation, and hence AIXI will conclude that the contents of the box are predetermined, and hence AIXI will two-box.
There is no need for Omega to actually compute the (uncomputable) AIXI equation. It could simply take the simple chain of reasoning that I've outlined above. Moreover, it would be trivially easy for AIXI to follow Omega's chain of reasoning, and hence predict (correctly) that the box is, in fact, empty, and walk away with only $1000.
Again, folk physics. You make your action available to your world model at the time t where t is when you take that action. You propagate the difference your action makes (to avoid re-evaluating everything). So you need back in time magic.
Let's look at the equation here: http://www.hutter1.net/ai/uaibook.htm . You have a world model that starts at some arbitrary point well in the past (e.g. big bang), which proceeds from that past into the present, and which takes the list of past actions and the current potential action as an input. Action which is available to the model of the world since it's very beginning. When evaluating potential action 'take 1 box', the model has money in the first box, when evaluating potential action 'take 2 boxes', the model doesn't have money in the first box, and it doesn't do any fancy reasoning about the relation between those models and how those models can and can't differ. It just doesn't perform this time saving optimization of 'let first box content be x, if i take 2 boxes, i get x+1000 > x'.
Why do you need "back in time magic", exactly? That's a strictly more complex world model than the non-back-in-time-magic version. If Solomonoff induction results in a belief in the existence of back-in-time magic when what's happening is just perfectly normal physics, this would be a massive failure in Solomonoff induction itself. Fortunately, no such thing occurs; Solomonoff induction works just fine.
I'm arguing that, because the box already either contains the million or does not, AIXI will (given a reasonable but not particularly large amount of evidence) massively downweight models that do not correctly describe this aspect of reality. It's not doing any kind of "fancy reasoning" or "time-saving optimization", it's simply doing Solomonoff induction, and dong it correctly.
Then it can, for experiment' sake, take 2 boxes if theres something in the first box, and take 1 otherwise. The box contents are supposedly a result of computing AIXI and as such are not computable; or for a bounded approximation, not approximable. You're breaking your own hypothetical and replacing the predictor (which would have to perform hypercomputation) with something that incidentally coincides. AIXI responds appropriately.
edit: to stpop talking to one another: AIXI does not know if there's money in the first box. The TM where AIXI is 1boxing is an entireliy separate TM from one where AIXI is 2boxing. AIXI does not in any way represent any facts about the relation between those models, such as 'both have same thing in the first box'.
edit2: and , it is absoloutely correct to take 2 boxes if you don't know anything about the predictor. AIXI represents the predictor as the surviving TMs using the choice action value as omega's action to put/not put money in the box. AIXI does not preferentially self identify with the AIXI formula inside the robot that picks boxes, over AIXI formula inside 'omega'.
If you have to perform hypercomputation to even approximately guess what AIXI would do, then this conversation would seem like a waste of time/
Precisely.
Besides that, if you can't even make a reasoned guess as to what AIXI would do in a given situation, then AIXI itself is pretty useless even as a theoretical concept, isn't it?
Omega doesn't have to actually evaluate the AIXI formula exactly; it can simply reason logically to work out what AIXI will do without performing those calculations. Sure, AIXI itself can't take those shortcuts, but Omega most definitely can. As such, there is no need for Omega to perform hypercomputation, because it's pretty easy to establish AIXI's actions to a very high degree of accuracy using the arguments I've put forth above. Omega doesn't have to be a "perfect predictor" at all.
In this case, AIXI is quite easily able to predict the chain of reasoning Omega takes, and so it can easily work out what the contents of the box are. This straightforwardly results in AIXI two-boxing, and because it's so straightforward it's quite easy for Omega to predict this, and so Omega only fills one box.
The problem with AIXI is not that it preferentially self-identifies with the AIXI formula inside the robot that picks boxes vs the "AIXI formula inside Omega". The problem with AIXI is that it doesn't self-identify with the AIXI formula at all.
One could argue that the simple predictor is "punishing" AIXI for being AIXI, but this is really just the same thing as the CDT agent who thinks Omega is punishing them for being "rational". The point of this example is that if the AIXI algorithm were to output "one-box" instead of "two-box" for Newcomb's problem, then it would get a million dollars. Instead, it only gets $1000.
Well, to make an object-level observation, it's not entirely clear to me what it means for AIXI to occupy the epistemic state required by the problem definition. The "hypotheses" of AIXI are general sequence predictor programs rather than anything particularly realist. So while present program state can only depend on AIXI's past actions, and not future actions, nothing stops a hypothesis from including a "thunk" that is only evaluated when the program receives the input describing AIXI's actual action. In fact, as long as no observations or rewards depend on the missing information, there's no need to even represent the "actual" contents of the boxes. Whether that epistemic state falls within the problem's precondition seems like a matter of definition.
If you restrict AIXI's hypothesis state to explicit physics simulations (with the hypercomputing part of AIXI treated as a black box, and decision outputs monkeypatched into a simulated control wire), then your argument does follow, I think; the whole issue of Omega's prediction is just seen as some "physics stuff" happening, where Omega "does some stuff" and then fills the boxes, and AIXI then knows what's in the boxes and it's a simple decision to take both boxes.
But, if the more complicated "lazily-evaluating" sort of hypotheses gain much measure, then AIXI's decision starts actually depending on its simulation of Omega, and then the above argument doesn't really work and trying to figure out what actually happens could require actual simulation of AIXI or at least examination of the specific hypothesis space AIXI is working in.
So I suppose there's a caveat to my post above, which is that if AIXI is simulating you, then it's not necessarily so easy to "approximately guess" what AIXI would do (since it might depend on your approximate guess...). In that way, having logically-omniscient AIXI play kind of breaks the Newcomb's Paradox game, since it's not so easy to make Omega the "perfect predictor" he needs to be, and you maybe need to think about how Omega actually works.
I think it's implicit in the Newcomb's problem scenario that it takes place within the constraints of the universe as we know it. Obviously we have to make an exception for AIXI itself, but I don't see a reason to make any further exceptions after that point. Additionally, it is explicitly stated in the problem setup that the contents of the box are supposed to be predetermined, and that the agent is made aware of this aspect of the setup. As far as the epistemic states are concerned, this would imply that AIXI has been presented with a number of prior observations that provide very strong evidential support for this fact.
I agree that AIXI's universe programs are general Turing machines rather than explicit physics simulations, but I don't think that's a particularly big problem. Unless we're talking about a particularly immature AIXI agent, it should already be aware of the obvious physics-like nature of the real world; it seems to me that the majority of AIXI's probability mass should be occupied by physics-like Turing machines rather than by thunking. Why would AIXI come up with world programs that involve Omega making money magically appear or disappear after being presented significant evidence to the contrary?
I can agree that in the general case it would be rather difficult indeed to predict AIXI, but in many specific instances I think it's rather straightforward. In particular, I think Newcomb's problem is one of those cases.
I guess that in general Omega could be extremely complex, but unless there is a reason Omega needs to be that complex, isn't it much more sensible to interpret the problem in a way that is more likely to comport with our knowledge of reality? Insofar as there exist simpler explanations for Omega's predictive power, those simpler explanations should be preferred.
I guess you could say that AIXI itself cannot exist in our reality and so we need to reinterpret the problem in that context, but that seems like a flawed approach to me. After all, the whole point of AIXI is to reason about its performance relative to other agents, so I don't think it makes sense to posit a different problem setup for AIXI than we would for any other agent.
So you don't predict anything, just put nothing in the first box, and advertise this fact clearly enough for the agent making the choice.
Newcomb's original problem did not include the clause 'by the way, there's nothing in the first box'. You're adding that clause by making additional assertions regarding what AIXI knows about "Omega".
There's a truly crazy amount of misunderstandings with regards to what Solomonoff Induction can learn about the world, on LW.
Let's say you run AIXI, letting it oversee some gigabytes of webcam data, at your location. You think AIXI can match the exact location of raindrops on your roof, hours in advance? You think AIXI is going to know all about me - the DNA I have, how may I construct a predictor, etc?
A version of the problem in which Omega is predictable is hardly the same thing as a version of the problem in which the first box is always empty. Other algorithms get the million dollars; it's just that AIXI does not. Moreover, AIXI is not being punished simply for being AIXI; AIXI not getting the million dollars is a direct consequence of the output of the AIXI algorithm.
Of course it didn't include that clause; it would be a rather stupid problem if it did include that clause. On the other hand, what is in the statement of Newcomb's problem is "By the time the game begins, and the player is called upon to choose which boxes to take, the prediction has already been made, and the contents of box B have already been determined." Moreover, it is quite clearly stated that the agent playing the game is made fully aware of this fact.
If we stipulate, for the sake of argument, that AIXI cannot work out the contents of the opaque box, AIXI still fails and two-boxes. By the problem statement AIXI should already be convinced that the contents of the boxes are predetermined. Consequently, the vast majority of weight in AIXI's distribution over world models should be held by models in which AIXI's subsequent action has no effect on the contents of the box, and so AIXI will rather straightforwardly calculate two-boxing to have higher utility. Moreover, it's easy for Omega to deduce this, and so the first box will be empty, and so AIXI gets $1000.
Setting the stipulation aside, I still think it should be pretty easy for AIXI to deduce that the box is empty. Given Omega's astounding predictive success it is far more likely that Omega has a non-trivial capacity for intelligent reasoning and uses this reasoning capacity with a goal of making accurate predictions. As such, I would be surprised if an Omega-level predictor was not able to come across the simple argument I gave above. Of course, as I said above, it doesn't really matter if AIXI can't deduce the contents of the box; AIXI two-boxes and loses either way.
No, I don't think that.