I think expected utility theory is pretty well understood, and this post plays around with details of a well understood theory, while naturalized decision theory is not well understood at all.
I think most of our disagreement actually hinges on this part. My feeling is that I, at least, don’t understand EU well enough; when I look at the foundations which are supposed to argue decisively in its favor, they’re not quite as solid as I’d like.
If I was happy with the VNM assumption of probability theory (which I feel is circular, since Dutch Book assumes EU), I think my position would be similar to this (linked by Alex), which strongly agrees with all of the axioms but continuity, and takes continuity as provisionally reasonable. Continuity would be something to maybe dig deeper into at some point, but not so likely to bear fruit that I’d want to investigate right away.
However, what’s really interesting is justification of EU and probability theory in one stroke. The justification of the whole thing from only money-pump/dutch-book style arguments seems close enough to be tantalizing, while also having enough hard-to-justify parts to make it a real possibility that such a justification would be of an importantly generalized DT.
First, [...] I don’t think that thinking about Dutch books lead to the invention of Logical Inductors (Although maybe they would have if I followed the right path), and I don’t think that the post hoc connection provides much evidence that thinking about dutch books is useful.
All I have to say here is that I find it somewhat plausible outside-view; an insight from a result need not be an original generator of the result. I think max-margin classifiers in machine learning are like this; the learning theory which came from explaining why they work was then fruitful in producing other algorithms. (I could be wrong here.)
Second, I think that in a way Logical Uncertainty is about resource bounded Probability theory, and this is why a weakening of dutch books helped. On the other hand, Naturalized Decision Theory is not about resource bounded Expected Utility Theory.
I don’t think naturalized DT is exactly what I’m hoping to get. My highest hope that I have any concrete reason to expect is a logically-uncertain DT which is temporally consistent (without a parameter for how long to run the LI).
I think most of our disagreement actually hinges on this part. My feeling is that I, at least, don’t understand EU well enough; when I look at the foundations which are supposed to argue decisively in its favor, they’re not quite as solid as I’d like.
If I was happy with the VNM assumption of probability theory (which I feel is circular, since Dutch Book assumes EU), I think my position would be similar to this (linked by Alex), which strongly agrees with all of the axioms but continuity, and takes continuity as provisionally reasonable. Continuity would be something to maybe dig deeper into at some point, but not so likely to bear fruit that I’d want to investigate right away.
However, what’s really interesting is justification of EU and probability theory in one stroke. The justification of the whole thing from only money-pump/dutch-book style arguments seems close enough to be tantalizing, while also having enough hard-to-justify parts to make it a real possibility that such a justification would be of an importantly generalized DT.
All I have to say here is that I find it somewhat plausible outside-view; an insight from a result need not be an original generator of the result. I think max-margin classifiers in machine learning are like this; the learning theory which came from explaining why they work was then fruitful in producing other algorithms. (I could be wrong here.)
I don’t think naturalized DT is exactly what I’m hoping to get. My highest hope that I have any concrete reason to expect is a logically-uncertain DT which is temporally consistent (without a parameter for how long to run the LI).