Comment author: Gurkenglas 08 December 2014 04:25:44PM *  0 points [-]

If I am choosing the algorithm that all civilisations are going to follow, if one civilisation succeeded that would lead to large positive utilities for all future civilisations. Why would I let the game end?

Comment author: Beluga 08 December 2014 10:56:08PM 1 point [-]

Not sure I understand your question, but:

  • I assume that each civilization only cares about itself. So one civilization succeeding does not "lead to large positive utilities for all future civilisations", only for itself. If civilization A assigns positive or negative value to civilization B succeeding, the expected utility calculations become more complicated.
  • You cannot "let the game end". The fact that the game ends when one player receives R only represents the fact that each player knows that no previous player has received R (i.e., we arguably know that no civilization so far has successfully colonized space in our neighborhood).
Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 December 2014 03:39:57PM 3 points [-]

If a player pushes the button and receives R, the game is immediately aborted, while the game continues if a player receives R.

I think you have a typo-- it should be "if a player receives P".

Comment author: Beluga 08 December 2014 12:46:28AM 0 points [-]

Thanks, I fixed it.

Comment author: lackofcheese 24 October 2014 03:52:51PM *  2 points [-]

OK, time for further detail on the problem with pre-emptively submissive gnomes. Let's focus on the case of total utilitarianism, and begin by looking at the decision in unlinked form, i.e. we assume that the gnome's advice affects only one human if there is one in the room, and zero humans otherwise. Conditional on there being a human in cell B, the expected utility of the human in cell B buying a ticket for $x is, indeed, (1/3)(-x) + (2/3)(1-x) = 2/3 - x, so the breakeven is obviously at x = 2/3. However, if we also assume that the gnome in the other cell will give the same advice, we get (1/3)(-x) + 2(2/3)(1-x) = 4/3 - (5/3)x, with breakeven at x=4/5. In actual fact, the gnome's reasoning, and the 4/5 answer, is correct. If tickets were being offered at a price of, say, 75 cents, then the overall outcome (conditional on there being a human in cell B) is indeed better if the humans buy at 75 cents than if they refuse to buy at 75 cents, because 3/4 is less than 4/5.

As I mentioned previously, in the case where the gnome only cares about total $ if there is a human in its cell, then 4/5 is correct before conditioning on the presence of a human, and it's also correct after conditioning on the presence of a human; the number is 4/5 regardless. However, the situation we're examining here is different, because the gnome cares about total $ even if no human is present. Thus we have a dilemma, because it appears that UDT is correct in advising the gnome to precommit to 2/3, but the above argument also suggests that after seeing a human in its cell it is correct for the gnome to advise 4/5.

The key distinction, analogously to mwenger's answer to Psy-Kosh's non-anthropic problem, has to do with the possibility of a gnome in an empty cell. For a total utilitarian gnome in an empty cell, any money at all spent in the other cell translates directly into negative utility. That gnome would prefer the human in the other cell to spend $0 at most, but of course there is no way to make this happen, since the other gnome has no way of knowing that this is the case.

The resolution to this problem is that, for linked decisions, you must (as UDT does) necessarily consider the effects of that decision over all a priori possible worlds affected by that decision. As it happens, this is the same thing as what you would do if you had the opportunity to precommit in advance.

It's a bit trickier to justify why this should be the case, but the best argument I can come up with is to apply that same "linked decision" reasoning at one meta-level up, the level of "linked decision theories". In short, by adopting a decision theory that ignores linked decisions in a priori possible worlds that are excluded by your observations, you are licensing yourself and other agents to do the same thing in future decisions, which you don't want. If other agents follow this reasoning, they will give the "yea" answer in Psy-Kosh's non-anthropic problem, but you don't want them to do that.

Note that most of the time, decisions in worlds excluded by your observations do not usually tend to be "linked". This is because exclusion by observation would usually imply that you receive a different observation in the other possible world, thus allowing you to condition your decision on that observation, and thereby unlinking the decisions. However, some rare problems like the Counterfactual Mugging and Psy-Kosh's non-anthropic problem violate this tendency, and should therefore be treated differently.

Overall, then, the "linked decision theory" argument supports adopting UDT, and it means that you should consider all linked decisions in all a priori possible worlds.

Comment author: Beluga 25 October 2014 05:45:55PM *  1 point [-]

Thanks a lot for your comments, they were very insightful for me. Let me play the Advocatus Diaboli here and argue from the perspective of a selfish agent against your reasoning (and thus also against my own, less refined version of it).

"I object to the identification 'S = $B'. I do not care about the money owned by the person in cell B, I only do so if that person is me. I do not know whether the coin has come up heads or tails, but I do not care about how much money the other person that may have been in cell B had the coin come up differently would have paid or won. I only care about the money owned by the person in cell B in "this world", where that person is me. I reject identifying myself with the other person that may have been in cell B had the coin come up differently, solely because that person would exist in the same cell as I do. My utility function thus cannot be expressed as a linear combination of $B and $C.

I would pay a counterfactual mugger. In that case, there is a transfer, as it were, between two possible selfes of mine that increases "our" total fortune. We are both both possible descendants of the same past-self, to which each of us is connected identically. The situation is quite different in the incubator case. There is no connection over a mutual past self between me and the other person that may have existed in cell B after a different outcome of the coin flip. This connection between past and future selves of mine is exactly what specifies my selfish goals. Actually, I don't feel like the person that may have existed in cell B after a different outcome of the coin flip is "me" any more than the person in cell C is "me" (if that person exists). Since I will pay and win as much as the person in cell C (if they exist), I cannot win any money from them, and I don't care about whether they exist at all, I think I should decide as an average utilitarian would. I will not pay more than $0.50."

Is the egoist arguing this way mistaken? Or is our everyday notion of selfishness just not uniquely defined when it comes to the possibility of subjectively indistinguishable agents living in different "worlds", since it rests on the dubious concept of personal identity? Can one understand selfishness both as caring about everyone living in subjectively identical circumstances as oneself (and their future selves), and as caring about everyone to whom one is directly connected only? Do these two possibilities correspond to SIA-egoists and SSA-egoists, respectively, which are both coherent possibilities?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 23 October 2014 11:40:41AM *  2 points [-]

A minimal non-anthropic example that illustrates the difference

The decision you describe in not stable under pre-commitments. Ahead of time, all agents would pre-commit to the $2/3. Yet they seem to change their mind when presented with the decision. You seem to be double counting, using the Bayesian updating once and the fact that their own decision is responsible for the other agent's decision as well.

In the terminology of paper http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/anthropics-why-probability-isnt-enough.pdf , your agents are altruists using linked decisions with total responsibility and no precommitments, which is a foolish thing to do. If they were altruists using linked decisions with divided responsibility (or if they used precommitments), everything would be fine (I don't like or use that old terminology - UDT does it better - but it seems relevant here).

But that's detracting from the main point: still don't see any difference between indexical and non-indexical total utilitarianism. I don't see why a non-indexical total utilitarian can't follow the wrong reasoning you used in your example just as well as an indexical one, if either of them can - and similarly for the right reasoning.

Comment author: Beluga 24 October 2014 03:47:55PM 0 points [-]

The decision you describe in not stable under pre-commitments. Ahead of time, all agents would pre-commit to the $2/3. Yet they seem to change their mind when presented with the decision. You seem to be double counting, using the Bayesian updating once and the fact that their own decision is responsible for the other agent's decision as well.

Yes, this is exactly the point I was trying to make -- I was pointing out a fallacy. I never intended "lexicality-dependent utilitarianism" to be a meaningful concept, it's only a name for thinking in this fallacious way.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 22 October 2014 05:30:11PM 1 point [-]

I'm still not clear why lexicality-independent utility functions are different from their equivalent indexical versions.

Comment author: Beluga 22 October 2014 08:02:29PM 1 point [-]

I elaborated on this difference here. However, I don't think this difference is relevant for my parent comment. With indexical utility functions I simply mean selfishness or "selfishness plus hating the other person if another person exists", while with lexicality-independent utility functions I meant total and average utilitarianism.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 22 October 2014 02:46:06PM 1 point [-]

The broader question is "does bringing in gnomes in this way leave the initial situation invariant"? And I don't think it does. The gnomes follow their own anthropic setup (though not their own preferences), and their advice seems to reflect this fact (consider what happens when the heads world has 1, 2 or 50 gnomes, while the tails world has 2).

I also don't see your indexical objection. The sleeping beauty could perfectly have an indexical version of total utilitarianism ("I value my personal utility, plus that of the sleeping beauty in the other room, if they exist"). If you want to proceed further, you seem to have to argue that indexical total utilitarianism gives different decisions than standard total utilitarianism.

This is odd, as it seems a total utilitarian would not object to having their utility replaced with the indexical version, and vice-versa.

Comment author: Beluga 22 October 2014 07:53:33PM *  1 point [-]

The broader question is "does bringing in gnomes in this way leave the initial situation invariant"? And I don't think it does. The gnomes follow their own anthropic setup (though not their own preferences), and their advice seems to reflect this fact (consider what happens when the heads world has 1, 2 or 50 gnomes, while the tails world has 2).

As I wrote (after your comment) here, I think it is prima facie very plausible for a selfish agent to follow the gnome's advice if a) conditional on the agent existing, the gnome's utility function agrees with the agent's and b) conditional on the agent not existing, the gnome's utility function is a constant. (I didn't have condition b) explicitly in mind, but your example showed that it's necessary.) Having the number of gnomes depend upon the coin flip invalidates their purpose. The very point of the gnomes is that from their perspective, the problem is not "anthropic", but a decision problem that can be solved using UDT.

I also don't see your indexical objection. The sleeping beauty could perfectly have an indexical version of total utilitarianism ("I value my personal utility, plus that of the sleeping beauty in the other room, if they exist"). If you want to proceed further, you seem to have to argue that indexical total utilitarianism gives different decisions than standard total utilitarianism.

That's what I tried in the parent comment. To be clear, I did not mean "indexical total utilitarianism" to be a meaningful concept, but rather a wrong way of thinking, a trap one can fall into. Very roughly, it corresponds to thinking of total utilitarianism as "I care for myself plus any other people that might exist" instead of "I care for all people that exist". What's the difference, you ask? A minimal non-anthropic example that illustrates the difference would be very much like the incubator, but without people being created. Imagine 1000 total utilitarians with identical decision algorithms waiting in separate rooms. After the coin flip, either one or two of them are offered to buy a ticket that pays $1 after heads. When being asked, the agents can correctly perform a non-anthropic Bayesian update to conclude that the probability of tails is 2/3. An indexical total utilitarian reasons: "If the coin has shown tails, another agent will pay the same amount $x that I pay and win the same $1, while if the coin has shown heads, I'm the only one who pays $x. The expected utility of paying $x is thus 1/3 * (-x) + 2/3 * 2 * (1-x)." This leads to the incorrect conclusion that one should pay up to $4/5. The correct (UDT-) way to think about the problem is that after tails, one's decision algorithm is called twice. There's only one factor of 2, not two of them. This is all very similar to this post.

To put this again into context: You argued that selfishness is a 50/50 mixture of hating the other person, if another person exists, and total utilitarianism. My reply was that this is only true if one understands total utilitarianism in the incorrect, indexical way. I formalized this as follows: Let the utility function of a hater be vh - h * vo (here, vh is the agent's own utility, vo the other person's utility, and h is 1 if the other person exists and 0 otherwise). Selfishness would be a 50/50 mixture of hating and total utilitarianism if the utility function of a total utilitarian were vh + h * vo. However, this is exactly the wrong way of formalizing total utilitarianism. It leads, again, to the conclusion that a total utilitarian should pay up to $4/5.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 22 October 2014 12:55:51PM 1 point [-]

Right now lets modify the setup a bit, targeting that one vulnerable gnome who sees no human in the heads world.

First scenario: there is no such gnome. The number of gnomes is also determined by the coin flip, so every gnome will see a human. Then if we apply the reasoning from http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/l58/anthropic_decision_theory_for_selfish_agents/bhj7 , this will result with a gnome with a selfish human agreeing to x<$1/2.

Instead, let's now make the gnome in the head world hate the other human, if they don't have one themselves. The result of this is that they will agree to any x<$1, as they are (initially) indifferent to what happens in the heads world (potential gains, if they are the gnome with a human, as cancelled out by the potential loss, if they are the gnome without the human).

So it seems to me that the situation is most likely an artefact of the number and particular motivations of the gnomes (notice I never changed the motivations of gnomes who would encounter a human, only the "unimportant extra" one).

Comment author: Beluga 22 October 2014 03:47:02PM *  1 point [-]

First scenario: there is no such gnome. The number of gnomes is also determined by the coin flip, so every gnome will see a human. Then if we apply the reasoning from http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/l58/anthropic_decision_theory_for_selfish_agents/bhj7 , this will result with a gnome with a selfish human agreeing to x<$1/2.

If the gnomes are created after the coin flip only, they are in exactly the same situation like the humans and we cannot learn anything by considering them that we cannot learn from considering the humans alone.

Instead, let's now make the gnome in the head world hate the other human, if they don't have one themselves. The result of this is that they will agree to any x<$1, as they are (initially) indifferent to what happens in the heads world (potential gains, if they are the gnome with a human, as cancelled out by the potential loss, if they are the gnome without the human).

What this shows is that "Conditional on me existing, the gnome's utility function coincides with mine" is not a sufficient condition for "I should follow the advice that the gnome would have precommited to give".

What I propose is instead: "If conditional on me existing the gnome's utility function coincides with mine, and conditional on me not existing the gnome's utility function is a constant, then I should follow the advice that the gnome would have precommited to."

ETA: Speaking of indexicality-dependent utility functions here. For lexicality-independent utility functions, such as total or average utilitarianism, the principle simplifies to: "If the gnome's utility function coincides with mine, then I should follow the advice that the gnome would have precommited to."

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 21 October 2014 09:10:13PM 2 points [-]

Ok, I don't like gnomes making current decisions based on their future values. Let's make it simpler: the gnomes have a utility function linear in the money owned by person X. Person X will be the person who appears in their (the gnome's) room, or, if no-one appeared, some other entity irrelevant to the experiment.

So now the gnomes have subjectively indistinguishable utility functions, and know they will reach the same decision upon seeing "their" human. What should this decision be?

If they advise "buy the ticket for price $x", then they expect to lose $x with probability 1/4 (heads world, they see a human), lose/gain nothing with probability 1/4 (heads world, they don't see a human), and gain $1-x with probability 1/2 (tails world). So this gives an expected gain of 1/2-(3/4)x, which is zero for x=$2/3.

So this seems to confirm your point.

"Not so fast!" shouts a voice in the back of my head. That second head-world gnome, the one who never sees a human, is a strange one. If this model is vulnerable, it's there.

So let's do without gnomes for a second. The incubator always creates two people, but in the heads world, the second person can never gain (nor lose) anything, no matter what they agree to: any deal is nullified. This seems a gnome setup without the gnomes. If everyone is an average utilitarian, then they will behave exactly as the total utilitarians would (since population is equal anyway) and buy the ticket for x<$2/3. So this setup has changed the outcome for average utilitarians. If its the same as the gnome setup (and it seems to be) then the gnome setup is interfering with the decisions in cases we know about. The fact that the number of gnomes is fixed is the likely cause.

I'll think more about it, and post tomorrow. Incidentally, one reason for the selfish=average utilitarian is that I sometimes model selfish as the average between total utilitarian incubator and anti-incubator (where the two copies hate each other in the tail world). 50%-50% on total utilitarian vs hatred seems to be a good model of selfishness, and gives the x<$1/2 answer.

Comment author: Beluga 22 October 2014 01:58:11PM *  2 points [-]

Thanks for your reply.

Ok, I don't like gnomes making current decisions based on their future values.

For the selfish case, we can easily get around this by defining the gnome's utility function to be the amount of $ in the cell. If we stipulate that this can only change through humans buying lottery tickets (and winning lotteries) and that humans cannot leave the cells, the gnome's utility function coincides with the human's. Similarly, we can define the gnome's utility function to be the amount of $ in all cells (the average amount of $ in those cells inhabited by humans) in the total (average) utilitarian case.

This seems to be a much neater way of using the gnome heuristic than the one I used in the original post, since the gnome's utility function is now unchanging and unconditional. The only issue seems to be that before the humans are created, the gnome's utility function is undefined in the average utilitarian case ("0/0"). However, this is more a problem of average utilitarianism than of the heuristic per se. We can get around it by defining the utility to be 0 if there aren't any humans around yet.

The incubator always creates two people, but in the heads world, the second person can never gain (nor lose) anything, no matter what they agree to: any deal is nullified. This seems a gnome setup without the gnomes. If everyone is an average utilitarian, then they will behave exactly as the total utilitarians would (since population is equal anyway) and buy the ticket for x<$2/3. So this setup has changed the outcome for average utilitarians. If its the same as the gnome setup (and it seems to be) then the gnome setup is interfering with the decisions in cases we know about. The fact that the number of gnomes is fixed is the likely cause.

I don't follow. As I should have written in the original post, total/average utilitarianism includes of course the wellbeing and population of humans only, not of gnomes. Otherwise, it's trivial that the presence of gnomes affects the conclusions. That the presence of an additional human affects the conclusion for average utilitarians is not surprising, since in contrast to the presence of gnomes, an additional human changes the relevant population.

Incidentally, one reason for the selfish=average utilitarian is that I sometimes model selfish as the average between total utilitarian incubator and anti-incubator (where the two copies hate each other in the tail world). 50%-50% on total utilitarian vs hatred seems to be a good model of selfishness, and gives the x<$1/2 answer.

Hm, so basically one could argue as follows against my conclusion that both selfish and total utilitarians pay up to $2/3: A hater wouldn't pay anything for a ticket that pays $1 in the tails world. Since selfishness is a mixture of total utilitarianism and hating, a selfish person certainly cannot have the same maximal price as a total utilitarian.

However, I feel like "caring about the other person in the tail world in a total utilitarian sense" and "hating the other person in the tail world" are not exactly mirror images of each other. The difference is that total utilitarianism is lexicality-independent, while "hating the other person" isn't. My claim is: However you formalize "hating the person in the other room in the tail world" and "being a total utilitarian", the statements "a total utilitarian pays up to $2/3" and "selfishness is a mixture of total utilitarianism and hating" and "a hater would not pay more than $0 for the ticket" are never simultaneously true.

Imagine that the human formally writes down their utility function in order to apply the "if there were a gnome in my room, what maximal prize to pay would it advise me after asking itself what advice it would have precommited to?" heuristic. We introduce the variables 'vh' and 'vo' for "$-value in this/the other room". These are 0 if there's no human, -x after buying a ticket after head, and 1-x after buying a ticket after tail. We also introduce a variable 't' which is 1 after tail and 0 after head.

We can then write down the following utility functions with their respective expectation values (from the point of view of the gnome before the coin flip):

egoist: vh => 1/4 * (-x+0+(1-x)+(1-x))

total ut.: vh + t * vo => 1/4 * (-x+0+2 * (1-x)+2 * (1-x))

hate: vh - t * vo => 1/4 * (-x+0+0+0)

Here, we see that egoism is indeed a mixture of total utilitarianism and hating, the egoist pays up to 2/3, and the hater pays nothing. However, according to this definition of total utilitarianism, a t.u. should pay up to 4/5. Its utility function is lexicality-dependent (the variable t enters only the utility coming from the other person), in contrast to true total utilitarianism.

In order to write down a lexicality-independent utility function, we introduce new variables 'nh' and 'no', the number of people here and in the other room (0 or 1). Then, we could make the following definitions:

egoist: nh * vh
total ut.: nh * vh + no * vo
hate: nh * vh - no * vo

(The 'nh' and 'no' factors are actually redundant, since 'vh' is defined to be zero if 'nh' is.)

With these definitions, both an egoist and a t.u. pay up to 2/3 and egoism is a mixture of t.u. and hating. However, the expected utility of a hater is now 0 independent of x, such that there is no longer a contradiction. The reason is that we now count the winnings of the single head-human one time positively (if ze is in our room) and one time negatively (if ze is in the other room). This isn't what we meant by hating, so we could modify the utility function of the hater as follows:

hate: nh * (vh - no * vo)

This reproduces again what we mean by hating (it is equivalent to the old definition 'vh - t * vo'), but now egoism is no longer a combination of hating and t.u..

In conclusion, it doesn't seem to be possible to derive a contradiction between "a hater wouldn't pay anything for a lottery ticket" and "both egoists and total utilitarians would pay up to $2/3".

In response to 2013 Survey Results
Comment author: Beluga 19 January 2014 01:22:53PM *  11 points [-]

Not sure how much sense it makes to take the arithmetic mean of probabilities when the odds vary over many orders of magnitude. If the average is, say, 30%, then it hardly matters whether someone answers 1% or .000001%. Also, it hardly matters whether someone answers 99% or 99.99999%.

I guess the natural way to deal with this would be to average (i.e., take the arithmetic mean of) the order of magnitude of the odds (i.e., log[p/(1-p)], p someone's answer). Using this method, it would make a difference whether someone is "pretty certain" or "extremely certain" that a certain statement is true or false.

Does anyone know what the standard way for dealing with this issue is?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 10 December 2013 03:31:53PM *  3 points [-]

Although I don't believe it to be impossible that a gene causes you to think in specific ways, in the setting of the game such a mechanism is not required.

It is required. If Omega is making true statements, they are (leaving aside those cases where someone is made aware of the prediction before choosing) true independently of Omega making them. That means that everyone with gene A makes choice A and everyone with gene B makes choice B. This strong entanglement implies the existence of some sort of causal connection, whether or not Omega exists.

More generally, I think that every one of those problems would be made clear by exhibiting the causal relationships that are being presumed to hold. Here is my attempt.

For the School Mark problem, the causal diagram I obtain from the description is one of these:

pupil's character ----> teacher's prediction ----> final mark
|
|
V
studying ----> exam performance

or

pupil's character ----> teacher's prediction
|
|
V
studying ----> exam performance ----> final mark

For the first of these, the teacher has waived the requirement of actually sitting the exam, and the student needn't bother. In the second, the pupil will not get the marks except by studying for and taking the exam. See also the decision problem I describe at the end of this comment.

For Newcomb we have:

person's qualities --> Omega's prediction --> contents of boxes
| |
| |
V V
person's decision --------------------------> payoff

(ETA: the second down arrow should go from "contents of boxes" to "payoff". Apparently Markdown's code mode isn't as code-modey as I expected.)

The hypotheses prevent us from performing surgery on this graph to model do(person's decision). The do() operator requires deleting all in-edges to the node operated on, making it causally independent of all of its non-descendants in the graph. The hypotheses of Newcomb stipulate that this cannot be done: every consideration you could possibly employ in making a decision is assumed to be already present in the personal qualities that Omega's prediction is based on.

A-B:

Unknown factors ---> Gene ---> Lifespan
|
|
V
Choice

or:

Gene ---> Lifespan
|
|
V
Choice

or both together.

Here, it may be unfortunate to discover oneself making choice B, but by the hypotheses of this problem, you have no choice. As with Newcomb, causal surgery is excluded by the problem. To the extent that your choice is causally independent of the given arrow, to that extent you can ignore lifespan in making your choice -- indeed, it is to that extent that you have a choice.

For Solomon's Problem (which, despite the great length of the article, you didn't set out) the diagram is:

charisma ----> overthrow
|
|
V
commit adultery

This implies that while it may be unfortunate for Solomon to discover adulterous desires, he will not make himself worse off by acting on them. This differs from A-B because we are given some causal mechanisms, and know that they are not deterministic: an uncharismatic leader still has a choice to make about adultery, and to the extent that it is causally independent of the lack of charisma, it can be made, without regard to the likelihood of overthrow.

Similarly CGTA:

CGTA gene ----> throat abcesses
|
|
V
chew gum

and the variant:

CGTA gene ----> throat abcesses
| ^
| |
V |
chew gum ---------/

(ETA: the arrow from "chew gun" to "throat abcesses" didn't come out very well.)

in which chewing gum is protective against throat abscesses, and positively to be recommended.

Newcomb's Soda:

soda assignment ---> $1M
|
|
V
choice of ice cream ---> $1K

Here, your inclination to choose a flavour of ice-cream is informative about the $1M prize, but the causal mechanism is limited to experiencing a preference. If you would prefer $1K to a chocolate ice-cream then you can safely choose vanilla.

Finally, here's another decision problem I thought of. Unlike all of the above, it requires no sci-fi hypotheses, real-world examples exist everywhere, and correctly solving them is an important practical skill.

I want to catch a train in half an hour. I judge that this is enough time to get to the station, buy a ticket, and board the train. Based on a large number of similar experiences in the past, I can confidently predict that I will catch the train. Since I know I will catch the train, should I actually do anything to catch the train?

The general form of this problem can be applied to many others. I predict that I'm going to ace an upcoming exam. Should I study? I predict I'll win an upcoming tennis match. Should I train for it? I predict I'll complete a piece of contract work on time. Should I work on it? I predict that I will post this. Should I click the "Comment" button?

Comment author: Beluga 11 December 2013 11:13:56PM *  1 point [-]

For the School Mark problem, the causal diagram I obtain from the description is one of these:

diagram

or

diagram

For the first of these, the teacher has waived the requirement of actually sitting the exam, and the student needn't > bother. In the second, the pupil will not get the marks except by studying for and taking the exam. See also the decision problem I describe at the end of this comment.

I think it's clear that Pallas had the first diagram in mind, and his point was exactly that the rational thing to do is to study despite the fact that the mark has already been written down. I agree with this.

Think of the following three scenarios:

  • A: No prediction is made and the final grade is determined by the exam performance.
  • B: A perfect prediction is made and the final grade is determined by the exam performance.
  • C: A perfect prediction is made and the final grade is based on the prediction.

Clearly, in scenario A the student should study. You are saying that in scenario C, the rational thing to do is not studying. Therefore, you think that the rational decision differs between either A and B, or between B and C. Going from A to B, why should the existence of someone who predicts your decision (without you knowing the prediction!) affect which decision the rational one is? That the final mark is the same in B and C follows from the very definition of a "perfect prediction". Since each possible decision gives the same final mark in B and C, why should the rational decision differ?

In all three scenarios, the mapping from the set of possible decisions to the set of possible outcomes is identical -- and this mapping is arguably all you need to know in order to make the correct decision. ETA: "Possible" here means "subjectively seen as possible".

By deciding whether or not to learn, you can, from your subjective point of view, "choose" wheter you were determined to learn or not.

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