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Vaniver comments on Discussion for Eliezer Yudkowsky's paper: Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Alexei 06 January 2011 12:28AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 07 January 2011 05:12:24AM 0 points [-]

Newcomb's problem is important because it led (may be not directly, but I think it contributed) to the schism into evidential decision theory and causal decision theory.

As far as I can tell, that's because the causal decision theorists are crippled by using magicless thinking in a magical problem. The only outcome is "huh, people who use all the information provided by a problem do better than people who ignore some of the information!" As schisms go, that seems pretty tame.

Comment author: Jack 07 January 2011 06:52:13AM 0 points [-]

The issue is expressing formally the algorithm which uses all the information to get the right answer in Newcomb's.

Comment author: Vaniver 07 January 2011 07:45:28AM *  0 points [-]

That does make it clearer why I'm a 0-boxer and uninterested by it, and suggests I should refrain from approaching it on a level as intense as Eliezer's paper until I am interested in formality, as a correct one-page explanation is unlikely to be formal and the reason the problem is interesting is in its formality.

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