= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Epictetus comments on Treating anthropic selfish preferences as an extension of TDT - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (16)
If it is indeed in your power to swear and execute such an oath, then "I will make an oath to simulate this event and make such-and-such changes" is a legitimate event that would impact any probability calculation. Before swearing the oath, there was still the probability of you swearing it in the future and executing it.
The probability of going to a tropical island given that the oath was made is likely higher than it was before the oath was made, but the only way it would be significantly higher is if there was a very low probability of the oath being made in the first place.
This is identical to the problem with causal decision theory which goes "If determinism is true, I'm already certain to make my decision, so how can I worry about its causal impacts?"
The answer is that you swear the oath because you calculated what would happen if (by causal surgery) your decision procedure output something else. This calculation gets done regardless of determinism - it's just how this decision procedure goes.