Lumifer comments on Agent-Simulates-Predictor Variant of the Prisoner's Dilemma - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (31)
Unless you want to screw around with terminology, making a move in a game is not "making a binding commitment". It's making a move.
Let's look at the OP:
This is predicting the opponent's response. Since UDT (according to the OP) does write down 1, the prediction is accurate.
UDT looks very predictable to me in this case.
It isn't making a move that I suggested was equivalent to making a binding commitment. (In this case, it's working out one's best strategy, in the presence of a perfect predictor.) It's equivalent in the sense that both have the effect of narrowing the options the other player thinks you might take. That's not a good notion of equivalence in all contexts, but I think it is here; the impact on the game is the same.
Yes, there are situations in which UDT-as-understood-by-the-OP produces predictable results. That doesn't mean that UDT (as understood etc.) Is consistently predictable, and it remains the case that the OP explicitly characterized the UDT-using agent as a superhumanly effective predictor.