cousin_it comments on Problematic Problems for TDT

[cousin_it]

Maybe I’m missing something, but the formalization looks easy enough to me...

def tdt_utility():
  if tdt(tdt_utility) == 1:
    box1 = 1000
    box2 = 1000000
  else:
    box1 = 1000
    box2 = 0
  if tdt(tdt_utility) == 1:
    return box2
  else:
    return box1+box2

def your_utility():
  if tdt(tdt_utility) == 1:
    box1 = 1000
    box2 = 1000000
  else:
    box1 = 1000
    box2 = 0
  if you(your_utility) == 1:
    return box2
  else:
    return box1+box2

The functions tdt() and you() accept the source code of a function as an argument, and try to maximize its return value. The implementation of tdt() could be any of our formalizations that enumerate proofs successively, which all return 1 if given the source code to tdt_utility. The implementation of you() could be simply “return 2”.

[BrandonReinhart]

Thanks for this. I hadn’t seen someone pseudocode this out before. This helps illustrate that interesting problems lie in the scope above (callers to tdt_uility() etc) and below (implementation of tdt() etc).

I wonder if there is a rationality exercise in ‘write pseudocode for problem descriptions, explore the callers and implementations’.