orthonormal comments on Disguised Queries - Less Wrong
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Comments (104)
A fair point, though I would be interested to hear how the algorithm described in DT relate to action (it can't be that they describe action, since we needn't act on the output of a DT, especially given that we're often akratic). When the metaethics sequence, for all the trouble I have with its arguments, gets into an account of free will, I don't generally find myself in disagreement. I've been looking over that and the physics sequences in the last couple of days, and I think I've found the point where I need to do some more reading: I think I just don't believe either that the universe is timeless, or that it's a block universe. So I should read Barbour's book.
Thanks, buy the way for posting that DT series, and for answering my questions. Both have been very helpful.
It does, but I find myself, as I said, unable to grant the premise that statements about the future have truth value. I think I do just need to read up on this view of time.
You're welcome!
Yeah, a human who consciously endorses a particular decision theory is not the same sort of agent as a simple algorithm that runs that decision theory. But that has more to do with the messy psychology of human beings than with decision theory in its abstract mathematical form.