I liked the article. It was accessible and it showed how various TDT-ish theories still run into problems at the level of “converting the world problem into math”. However it felt as though the causal networks were constructed in a way that assumed away the standard disagreements about Newcombe’s problem itself...
Specifically, it seems as though the first, second, and fourth, and maybe the last diagrams should have had a “Magic” node that points to “Your Decision” and which is neither determined by the history of the universe nor accessible to Omega. Philosophers who one box on Newcome generally assert that what Omega is claimed to be doing is impossible in the general case.
Another interesting way of disrupting the standard causal interpretation is to posit that Omega’s amazing prediction powers are a function of something like a Time Turner, so that your actual decision controls the money which produces a causal loop due to a backwards arrow from a future Omega who observes the monetary outcome and communicates to a past Omega who controls the outcome according to a rule-enforcing intent.
I understand that objections to Omega’s reality don’t necessarily address Newcombe in a way that speaks to the setup’s value for AGI ethics, but it still seems worth footnoting that there is an open question of physical (or metaphysical?) fact that is being assumed for the sake of AGI ethics. If the assumption is false in reality, and an actual AGI was built that naively assumed it was true (as a sort of “philosophical bug”?), then that might have complicated and perhaps unpleasant real world outcomes.
I liked the article. It was accessible and it showed how various TDT-ish theories still run into problems at the level of “converting the world problem into math”. However it felt as though the causal networks were constructed in a way that assumed away the standard disagreements about Newcombe’s problem itself...
Specifically, it seems as though the first, second, and fourth, and maybe the last diagrams should have had a “Magic” node that points to “Your Decision” and which is neither determined by the history of the universe nor accessible to Omega. Philosophers who one box on Newcome generally assert that what Omega is claimed to be doing is impossible in the general case.
Another interesting way of disrupting the standard causal interpretation is to posit that Omega’s amazing prediction powers are a function of something like a Time Turner, so that your actual decision controls the money which produces a causal loop due to a backwards arrow from a future Omega who observes the monetary outcome and communicates to a past Omega who controls the outcome according to a rule-enforcing intent.
I understand that objections to Omega’s reality don’t necessarily address Newcombe in a way that speaks to the setup’s value for AGI ethics, but it still seems worth footnoting that there is an open question of physical (or metaphysical?) fact that is being assumed for the sake of AGI ethics. If the assumption is false in reality, and an actual AGI was built that naively assumed it was true (as a sort of “philosophical bug”?), then that might have complicated and perhaps unpleasant real world outcomes.
An AGI that functioned as deterministic software would be in actual Newcomb-like situations every time it was copied...
Yes. In that special case the assumption is definitely valid :-)
Modulo the halting problem.