LESSWRONG
LW

All of myren's Comments + Replies

Do Timeless Decision Theorists reject all blackmail from other Timeless Decision Theorists?
myren10

As far as I understand the main thing that is missing is a solid theory of logical counterfactuals.
The main question is: In the counter-factual scenario in which TDT recommends action X to agent A , what does would another agent B do?
How does the thought process of A correlate with the thought process of B?

There are some games mentioned in the FDT and TDT paper which clearly involve multiple TDT agents.
The FDT paper mentions that TDTs "form successful voting coalitions in elections",
and the TDT paper mentions that TDTs cooperate in Prisoner's Dilemma.
In th... (read more)

Reply
1Dacyn
-"The main question is: In the counter-factual scenario in which TDT recommends action X to agent A , what does would another agent B do?" This is actually not the main issue. If you fix an algorithm X for agent A to use, then the question "what would agent B do if he is using TDT and knows that agent A is using algorithm X?" has a well-defined answer, say f(X). The question "what would agent A do if she knows that whatever algorithm X she uses, agent B will use counter-algorithm f(X)" then also has a well-defined answer, say Z. So you could define "the result of TDT agents A and B playing against each other" to be where A plays Z and B plays f(Z). The problem is that this setup is not symmetric, and would yield a different result if we switched the order of A and B. -"In a blackmail scenario it’s not so obvious, but I do think there is a certain symmetry between rejecting all blackmail and sending all blackmail." The symmetry argument only works when you have exact symmetry, though. To recall, the argument is that by controlling the output of the TDT algorithm in player A's position, you are also by logical necessity controlling the output in player B's position, hence TDT can act as though it controls player B's action. If there is even the slighest difference between player A and player B then there is no logical necessity and the argument doesn't work. For example, in a prisoner's dilemma where the payoffs are not quite symmetric, TDT says nothing. -"So I no longer believe the claim that TDT agents simply avoid all negative-sum trades." I agree with you, but I think that's because TDT is actually undefined in scenarios where negative-sum trading might occur.
Do Timeless Decision Theorists reject all blackmail from other Timeless Decision Theorists?
myren10

Yeah, my argument here is not contradicting the paper,
because the case of a TDT agent blackmailing a TDT agent is not discussed.
I just wanted to know whether the resistance against blackmail extortion still applies in this case,
because I think it doesn't.

But in some situations the logic can absolutely be applied to "normal causal blackmail".
If a CDT agent sends a completely normal blackmail to a TDT agent,
and if the CDT agent is capable of perfectly predicting the TDT agent,
then that is precisely the situation in which resisting the extortion makes sense.
I... (read more)

Reply
Do Timeless Decision Theorists reject all blackmail from other Timeless Decision Theorists?
myren10

Would a TDT agent also just always send all possible blackmail to other agents, independently of whether they think it gets accepted or not, and just live with the consequences?
They might want to do that, because if they did, then they would encounter less universes in which their blackmails get rejected, because it's known that rejecting their blackmail doesn't disincentivize them from sending it.
Like, I don't believe TDT actually recommends that, but it's the same logic that justifies rejecting all blackmail.


In any case, the decision theory of the blackm... (read more)

Reply