I hope you don't blame me too much for that
Not at all, and your work on the theory was excellent. I just hope that by the time the descendent decision theories evolve to a stable state that they have picked up a new moniker. The reflexive term sounds much more significant!
BTW I remember you once said you also didn't like the language I used to describe UDT, but didn't say why when I asked.
I think I would put less emphasis on subtracting updates and more on just which kind of information should be used. After all, not doing updates isn't the important thing (or a sufficient thing), it is that the right piece of information is used at the end.
I'm afraid I've actually been negligent in my decision theory reading. I've actually forgotten a lot since I originally read your work from - what was it? - two years ago or so. I wouldn't really have high confidence in my words if I tried to really explore the issues in detail these days.
Edit: Also, wedrifid_today considers the wording (and punctuation) used by wedrifid_last_month to be rather more hyperbolic than he would endorse.
After all, not doing updates isn't the important thing, it is that the right piece of information is used at the end.
It's an important thing, in that we don't know how to do updates without getting misled in some strange situations. UDT uses other sources of information, and shows how that's sufficient in principle, but the current puzzle is how to make use of the information that UDT doesn't use, avoiding UDT's logical cornucopia (so that one has to deal with resulting logical uncertainty, and resolve it to a limited extent based on observations).
In my recent post, I outlined 5 conditions that I'd like a decision theory to pass; TDT, UDT and ADT pass them, while CDT and EDT don't. I called decision theories that passed those conditions "advanced decision theories", but that's probably not an optimal name. Can I ask you to brainstorm some other suggestions for me? (I may be writing a follow-up soon.)
As usual, it's best to brainstorm on your own before reading any of the comments. You can write down your ideas, then check if any have already been suggested, then comment with the new ones.
Thanks!