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shminux comments on Agency is bugs and uncertainty - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: shminux 06 June 2015 04:53AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 08 June 2015 07:50:31PM 2 points [-]

To Omega in the Newcomb's problem humans are just automatons without a hint of agency.

I think there's such a thing as too much dissolving of useful concepts. Just because you know how humans run doesn't mean they cease to behave as agents. A human, especially when engaging in goal-directed behavior, is indeed acting as a causal component of the universe that takes in energy and turns it into optimization of events and waste-heat.

Comment author: shminux 08 June 2015 08:32:14PM *  0 points [-]

Just because you know how humans run doesn't mean they cease to behave as agents.

So the question is whether agency is a good abstraction when you know everything there is to know about a complex-enough system. My experience in software development suggests that, while you can encode some requirements as "goals", you rarely think about your code as having a human-like "capacity to act". On the other hand software agent is a useful concept.

A human, especially when engaging in goal-directed behavior, is indeed acting as a causal component of the universe that takes in energy and turns it into optimization of events and waste-heat.

"is" seems too strong a term. "Can be usefully modeled as in some cases" seems more accurate.