Unless you can explain to me how prediction markets are going to break the pattern that two different shares of the same stock have correlated prices.
I'm actually not sure how prediction markets are supposed to have an effect on this issue. My issue is not that people have too much difficulty recognizing patterns. My issue is that some patterns once recognized do not provide incentives to make that pattern disappear. Unless you can tell me how prediction markets might fix this problem, your response seems like a bit of a non-sequitur.
This seems like too general a principle. I agree that in many circumstances, public knowledge of a pattern in pricing will lead to effects causing that pattern to disappear. However, it is not clear to me that this is always to case, or that the size of the effect will be sufficient to complete cancel out the original observation.
For example, I observe that two different units of Google stock have prices that are highly correlated with each other. I doubt that this observation will cause separate markets to spring up giving wildly divergent prices to diffe...
We probably couldn't even talk ourselves out of this box.
I don't know... That sounds a lot like what an AI trying to talk itself out of a box would say.
Hmm... I would probably explain the threshold for staying in the house not as an implicit expected probability computation, but an evaluation of the price of the discomfort associated with staying in a location that you find spooky. At least for me, I think that the part of my mind that knows that ghosts do not exist would have no trouble controlling whether or not I remain in the house or not. However, it might well decide that it is not worth the $10 that I would receive to spend the entire night in a place where some other piece of my mind is constantly yelling at me to run away screaming.
It's just that such self-referential criteria as reflective equilibrium are a necessary condition
Why? The only example of adequately friendly intelligent systems that we have (i.e. us) don't meet this condition. Why should reflective equilibrium be a necessary condition for FAI?
That may be true (at least to the degree to which it is sensible to assign a specific cause to a given util). However, it is not very good evidence that investment in first world economies is the most effective way to generate utils in Africa.
OK. So suppose that I grant your claim that donations to sub-Saharan Africa will not substantially affect the size of the future economic pie, but that other investments will. I claim that there may still be reason to donate there.
I grant that such a donation will produce fewer dollars of value than investing in capitol infrastructure. On the other hand dollars is not the objective, utils are. We can reasonably assume that marginal utility of an extra dollar for a given person is decreasing as that person's wealth increases. We can reasonably expect that w...
[I realize that I missed the train and probably very few people will read this, but here goes]
So in non-iterated prisoner's dilemma, defect is a dominant strategy. No matter what the opponent is doing, defecting will always give you the best possible outcome. In iterated prisoner's dilemma, there is no longer a dominant strategy. If my opponent is playing Tit-for-Tat, I get the best outcome by cooperating in all rounds but the last. If my opponent ignores what I do, I get the best outcome by always defecting. It is true that all defects is the unique Nash ...
I think that the way that humans predict other humans is the wrong way to look at this, and instead consider how humans would reason about the behavior of an AI that they build. I'm not proposing simply "don't use formal systems", or even "don't limit yourself exclusively to a single formal system". I am actually alluding to a far more specific procedure:
Yes, obviously. We solve the Lobstacle by not ourselves running on formal systems and sometimes accepting axioms that we were not born with (things like PA). Allowing the AI to only do things that it can prove will have good consequences using a specific formal system would make it dumber than us.
Actually, why is it that when the Lobian obstacle is discussed that it seem to always be in reference to an AI trying to determine if a successor AI is safe, and not an AI trying to determine whether or not it, itself, is safe?
Question: If we do manage to build a strong AI, why not just let it figure this problem out on its own when trying to construct a successor? Almost definitionally, it will do a better job of it than we will.
Relatedly, with your interview example, I think that perhaps a better model is that whether a person is confident or shy is not depending on whether they believe that they will be bold or not, but upon the degree to which they care about being laughed at. If you are confident, you don't care about being laughed at and might as well be bold. If you are afraid of being laughed at, you already know that you are shy and thus do not gain anything by being bold.
I think my bigger point is that you don't seem to make any real argument as to which case we are in. For example, consider the following model of how people's perception of my trustworthiness might be correlated to my actual trustworthiness: There are two causal chains: My values -> Things I say -> Peoples' perceptions My values -> My actions So if I value trustworthiness, I will not, for example talk much about wanting to avoid being sucker (in contexts where it would refer to be doing trustworthy things). This will influence peoples' perceptions...
Newcomblike problems occur whenever knowledge about what decision you will make leaks into the environment. The knowledge doesn't have to be 100% accurate, it just has to be correlated with your eventual actual action.
This is far too general. The way in which information is leaking into the environment is what separates Newcomb's problem from the smoking lesion problem. For your argument to work you need to argue that whatever signals are being picked up on would change if the subject changed their disposition, not merely that these signals are correlated with the disposition.
Sorry. I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Though, I did ask for a specific example, which I am pretty sure is not contained here.
Though to clarify, by "reading your mind" I refer to any situation in which the scenario you face (including the given description of that scenario) depends directly on which program you are running and not merely upon what that program outputs.
Well, yes. Then again, the game was specified as PD against BOT^CDT not as PD against BOT^{you}. It seems pretty clear that for X not equal to CDT that it is not the case that X could achieve the result CC in this game. Are you saying that it is reasonable to say that CDT could achieve a result that no other strategy could just because it's code happens to appear in the opponent's program?
I think that there is perhaps a distinction to be made between things that happen to be simulating your code and this that are causally simulating your code.
OK. Fine. Point taken. There is a simple fix though.
MBOT^X(Y) = X'(MBOT^X) where X' is X but with randomized irrelevant experiences.
In order to produce this properly, MBOT only needs to have your prior (or a sufficiently similar probability distribution) over irrelevant experiences hardcoded. And while your actual experiences might be complicated and hard to predict, your priors are not.
No. BOT^CDT = DefectBot. It defects against any opponent. CDT could not cause it to cooperate by changing what it does.
If it cooperated, it would get CC instead of DD.
Actually if CDT cooperated against BOT^CDT it would get $3^^^3. You can prove all sorts of wonderful things once you assume a statement that is false.
Depending on the exact setup, "irrelevant details in memory" are actually vital information that allow you to distinguish whether you are "actually playing" or are being simulated in BOT's mind.
OK... So UDT^Red and U...
It's hard to see how this doesn't count as "reading your mind".
So... UDT's source code is some mathematical constant, say 1893463. It turns out that UDT does worse against BOT^1893463. Note that it does worse against BOT^1893463 not BOT^{you}. The universe does not depend on the source code of the person playing the game (as it does in mirror PD). Furthermore, UDT does not control the output of its environment. BOT^1893463 always cooperates. It cooperates against UDT. It cooperates against CDT. It cooperates everything.
...But this isn't due to
Actually, I think that you are misunderstanding me. UDT's current epistemic state (at the start of the game) is encoded into BOT^UDT. No mind reading involved. Just a coincidence. [Really, your current epistemic state is part of your program]
Your argument is like saying that UDT usually gets $1001000 in Newcomb's problem because whether or not the box was full depended on whether or not UDT one-boxed when in a different epistemic state.
OK. Let me say this another way that involves more equations.
So let's let U(X,Y) be the utility that X gets when it plays prisoner's dilemma against Y. For a program X, let BOT^X be the program where BOT^X(Y) = X(BOT^X). Notice that BOT^X(Y) does not depend on Y. Therefore, depending upon what X is BOT^X is either equivalent CooperateBot or equivalent to DefectBot.
Now, you are claiming that UDT plays optimally against BOT_UDT because for any strategy X U(X, BOT^X) <= U(UDT, BOT^UDT) This is true, because X(BOT^X) = BOT^X(X) by the definition of BOT^X. T...
No. BOT(X) is cooperate for all X. It behaves in exactly the same way that CooperateBot does, it just runs different though equivalent code.
And my point was that CDT does better against BOT than UDT does. I was asked for an example where CDT does better than UDT where the universe cannot read your mind except via through your actions in counterfactuals. This is an example of such. In fact, in this example, the universe doesn't read your mind at all.
Also your argument that UDT cannot possibly do better against BOT than it does in analogous to the argument t...
It's not UDT. It's the strategy that against any opponent does what UDT would do against it. In particular, it cooperates against any opponent. Therefore it is CooperateBot. It is just coded in a funny way.
To be clear letting Y(X) be what Y does against X we have that BOT(X) = UDT(BOT) = C This is different from UDT. UDT(X) is D for some values of X. The two functions agree when X=UDT and in relatively few other cases.
I think you mean that rational agents cannot be successfully blackmailed by others agents that for which it is common knowledge that the other agents can simulate them accurately and will only use blackmail if they predict it to be successful. All of this of course in the absence of mitigating circumstances (including for example the theoretical likelihood of other agents that reward you for counterfactualy giving into blackmail under these circumstances).
I suppose. On the other hand, is that because other people can read your mind or because you have emotional responses that you cannot suppress and are correlated to what you are thinking? This is actually critical to what counterfactuals you want to construct.
Consider for example the terrorist who would try to bring down an airplane that he is on given the opportunity. Unfortunately, he's an open book and airport security would figure out that he's up to something and prevent him from flying. This is actually inconvenient since it also means he can't use a...
I'm sure we could think of some
OK. Name one.
Fine. Your opponent actually simulates what UDT would do if Omega had told it that and returns the appropriate response (i.e. it is CooperateBot, although perhaps your finite prover is unable to verify that).
Actually, this is a somewhat general phenomenon. Consider for example, the version of Newcomb's problem where the box is full "if and only if UDT one-boxes in this scenario".
UDT's optimality theorem requires the in the counterfactual where it is replaced by a different decision theory that all of the "you"'s referenced in the scenario remain "you" rather than "UDT". In the latter counterfactual CDT provably wins. The fact that UDT wins these scenarios is an artifact of how you are constructing your scenarios.
Or how about this example, that simplifies things even further. The game is PD against CooperateBot, BUT before the game starts Omega announces "your opponent will make the same decision that UDT would if I told them this." This announcement causes UDT to cooperate against CooperateBot. CDT on the other hand, correctly deduces that the opponent will cooperate no matter what it does (actually UDT comes to this conclusion too) and therefore decides to defect.
The CDT agents here are equivalent to DefectBot
And the UDT agents are equivalent to CooperateBot. What's your point?
The CDT agents here win because they do not believe that altering their strategy will change the way that their opponents behave. This is actually true in this case, and even true for the UDT agents depending on how you choose to construct your counterfactuals. If a UDT agent suffered a malfunction and defected, it too would do better. In any case, the theorem that UDT agents perform optimally in universes that can only read your mind by knowing what you would do in hypothetical situations is false as this example shows.
UDT bots win in some scenarios where...
Actually thinking about it this way, I have seen the light. CDT makes the faulty assumption that your initial state in uncorrelated with the universe that you find yourself in (who knows, you might wake up in the middle of Newcomb's problem and find that whether or not you get $1000000 depends on whether or not your code is such that you would one-box in Newcomb's problem). UDT goes some ways to correct this issue, but it doesn't go far enough.
I would like to propose a new, more optimal decision theory. Call it ADT for Anthropic Decision Theory. Actually, ...
Basically this, except there's no need to actually do it beforehand.
Actually, no. To implement things correctly, UDT needs to determine its entire strategy all at once. It cannot decide whether to one-box or two-box in Newcomb just by considering the Newcomb that it is currently dealing with. It must also consider all possible hypothetical scenarios where any other agent's action depends on whether or not UDT one-boxes.
Furthermore, UDT cannot decide what it does in Newcomb independently of what it does in the Counterfactual Mugging, because some hypothe...
Well, perhaps. I think that the bigger problem is that under reasonable priors P(Newcomb) and P(anti-Newcomb) are both so incredibly small that I would have trouble finding a meaningful way to approximate their ratio.
How confident are you that UDT actually one-boxes?
Also yeah, if you want a better scenario where UDT loses see my PD against 99% prob. UDT and 1% prob. CDT example.
CDT does not avoid this issue by "setting its priors to the delta function". CDT deals with this issue by being a theory where your course of action only depends on your posterior distribution. You can base your actions only on what the universe actually looks like rather than having to pay attention to all possible universes. Given that it's basically impossible to determine anything about what Kolmogorov priors actually say, being able to totally ignore parts of probability space that you have ruled out is a big deal.
... And this whole issue w...
I guess my point is that it is nonsensical to ask "what does UDT do in situation X" without also specifying the prior over possible universes that this particular UDT is using. Given that this is the case, what exactly do you mean by "losing game X"?
Actually, here's a better counter-example, one that actually exemplifies some of the claims of CDT optimality. Suppose that the universe consists of a bunch of agents (who do not know each others' identities) playing one-off PDs against each other. Now 99% of these agents are UDT agents and 1% are CDT agents.
The CDT agents defect for the standard reason. The UDT agents reason that my opponent will do the same thing that I do with 99% probability, therefore, I should cooperate.
CDT agents get 99% DC and 1% DD. UDT agents get 99% CC and 1% CD. The CDT agents in this universe do better than the UDT agents, yet they are facing a perfectly symmetrical scenario with no mind reading involved.
I think some that favor CDT would claim that you are are phrasing the counterfactual incorrectly. You are phrasing the situation as "you are playing against a copy of yourself" rather than "you are playing against an agent running code X (which just happens to be the same as yours) and thinks you are also running code X". If X=CDT, then TDT and CDT each achieve the result DD. If X=TDT, then TDT achieves CC, but CDT achieves DC.
In other words TDT does beat CDT in the self matchup. But one could argue that self matchup against TDT and self matchup against CDT are different scenarios, and thus should not be compared.
The fact that Newcomblike problems are fairly common in the real world is one facet of that motivation.
I disagree. CDT correctly solves all problems in which other agents cannot read your mind. Real world occurrences of mind reading are actually uncommon.
There's a difference between reasoning about your mind and actually reading your mind. CDT certainly faces situations in which it is advantageous to convince others that it does not follow CDT. On the other hand, this is simply behaving in a way that leads to the desired outcome. This is different from facing situations where you can only convince people of this by actually self-modifying. Those situations only occur when other people can actually read your mind.
Actually, I take it back. Depending on how you define things, UDT can still lose. Consider the following game:
I will clone you. One of the clones I paint red and the other I paint blue. The red clone I give $1000000 and the blue clone I fine $1000000. UDT clearly gets expectation 0 out of this. SMCDT however can replace its code with the following: If you are painted blue: wipe your hard drive If you are painted red: change your code back to standard SMCDT
Thus, SMCDT never actually has to play blue in this game, while UDT does.
OK. Fine. I will grant you this:
UDT is provably optimal if it has correct priors over possible universes and the universe can read its mind only through determining its behavior in hypothetical situations (because UDT basically is just find the behavior pattern that optimizes expected utility and implement that).
On the other hand, SMCDT is provably optimal in situations where it has an accurate posterior probability distribution, and where the universe can read its mind but not its initial state (because it just instantly self-modifies to the optimally per...
Which is actually one of the annoying things about UDT. Your strategy cannot depend simply on your posterior probability distribution, it has to depend on your prior probability distribution. How you even in practice determine your priors for Newcomb vs. anti-Newcomb is really beyond me.
But in any case, assuming that one is more common, UDT does lose this game.
Yes. And likewise if you put an unconditional extortion-refuser in an environment populated by unconditional extortionists.
Fine. How about this: "Have $1000 if you would have two-boxed in Newcomb's problem."
Only if the adversary makes its decision to attempt extortion regardless of the probability of success.
And thereby the extortioner's optimal strategy is to extort independently of the probably of success. Actually, this is probably true is a lot of real cases (say ransomware) where the extortioner cannot actually ascertain the probably of success ahead of time.
Well, if the universe cannot read your source code, both agents are identical and provably optimal. If the universe can read your source code, there are easy scenarios where one or the other does better. For example,
"Here have $1000 if you are a CDT agent" Or "Here have $1000 if you are a UDT agent"
Eliezer thinks his TDT will refuse to give in to blackmail, because outputting another answer would encourage other rational agents to blackmail it.
This just means that TDT loses in honest one-off blackmail situations (in reality, you don't give in to blackmail because it will cause other people to blackmail you whether or not you then self-modify to never give into blackmail again). TDT only does better if the potential blackmailers read your code in order to decide whether or not blackmail will be effective (and then only if your priors say that such ...
I feel like your discussion of predictors makes a few not-necessarily-warranted assumptions about how the predictor deals with self-reference. Then again, I guess anything that doesn't do this fails as a predictor in a wide range of useful cases. It predicts a massive fire will kill 100 people, and so naturally this prediction is used to invalidate the original prediction.
But there is a simple-ish fix. What if you simply ask it to make predictions about what would happen if it (and say all similar predictors) suddenly stopped functioning immediately before this prediction was returned?