This formulation or variant of TDT (I’m not sure if Eliezer’s TDT does or not) requires that before a decision problem is handed to it, the world is divided into the agent itself (X), other agents (Y), and “dumb matter” (G). I think this is misguided, since the world doesn’t really divide cleanly into these 3 parts. But if this is the approach a decision theory researcher wants to take, they should at least acknowledge the “recognize myself and other agents in the world” problem as a problem, and say something about how this might be done in principle.
We discussed it by email a bit more, but I don’t think he came up with a very good answer. I’ll forward you the exchange if you PM me your email address.
This formulation or variant of TDT (I’m not sure if Eliezer’s TDT does or not) requires that before a decision problem is handed to it, the world is divided into the agent itself (X), other agents (Y), and “dumb matter” (G). I think this is misguided, since the world doesn’t really divide cleanly into these 3 parts. But if this is the approach a decision theory researcher wants to take, they should at least acknowledge the “recognize myself and other agents in the world” problem as a problem, and say something about how this might be done in principle.
Given that this has no response to it, I’m curious as to whether Orthonormal has responded to you regarding this either off list or elsewhere?
We discussed it by email a bit more, but I don’t think he came up with a very good answer. I’ll forward you the exchange if you PM me your email address.