“The authors were trying to figure out what is rational for human beings, and that solution seems too alien for us to accept and/or put into practice.”
I’m not sure about that. A lot of people intuitively endorse one-boxing on Newcomb, and probably a comparable fraction would endorse the 2⁄3 strategy for Absent-Minded Driver.
“Well, the authors don’t say (they never bothered to argue against it)”
They do mention and dismiss mystical /psychic causation, the idea that in choosing what we will do we also choose for all identical minds/algorithms
“The authors were trying to solve one particular case of time inconsistency. They didn’t have all known instances of time/dynamic/reflective inconsistencies/paradoxes/puzzles laid out in front of them, to be solved in one fell swoop.”
Decision theorists have a lot of experience with paradoxical-seeming results of standard causal decision theory where ‘rational agents’ lose in certain ways. Once that conclusion has been endorsed by the field in some cases, it’s easy to dismiss further such results: “we already know rational agents lose on all sorts of seemingly easy problems, such that they would precommit/self-modify to avoid making rational decisions, so how is this further instance a reason to change the very definition of rationality?” There could be substantial path-dependence here.
I’m not sure about that. A lot of people intuitively endorse one-boxing on Newcomb, and probably a comparable fraction would endorse the 2⁄3 strategy for Absent-Minded Driver.
Aumann et al.’s solution is also p=2/3. They just propose to use a roundabout (but perhaps more intuitive?) algorithm to compute it.
They do mention and dismiss mystical /psychic causation, the idea that in choosing what we will do we also choose for all identical minds/algorithms
That was in the context of arguing against P&R’s reasoning, which leads to p=4/9.
There could be substantial path-dependence here.
Yes, and that argues for not proposing solutions until we can see the whole problem (or set of problems) and solve it all at once. Well maybe that’s kind of unrealistic, so perhaps just keeping in mind the possible path-dependence and try to mitigate it.
BTW, did you know that you can quote people by using “>”? Click on the “help” link under the comment edit box for more info.
“The authors were trying to figure out what is rational for human beings, and that solution seems too alien for us to accept and/or put into practice.”
I’m not sure about that. A lot of people intuitively endorse one-boxing on Newcomb, and probably a comparable fraction would endorse the 2⁄3 strategy for Absent-Minded Driver.
“Well, the authors don’t say (they never bothered to argue against it)”
They do mention and dismiss mystical /psychic causation, the idea that in choosing what we will do we also choose for all identical minds/algorithms
“The authors were trying to solve one particular case of time inconsistency. They didn’t have all known instances of time/dynamic/reflective inconsistencies/paradoxes/puzzles laid out in front of them, to be solved in one fell swoop.”
Decision theorists have a lot of experience with paradoxical-seeming results of standard causal decision theory where ‘rational agents’ lose in certain ways. Once that conclusion has been endorsed by the field in some cases, it’s easy to dismiss further such results: “we already know rational agents lose on all sorts of seemingly easy problems, such that they would precommit/self-modify to avoid making rational decisions, so how is this further instance a reason to change the very definition of rationality?” There could be substantial path-dependence here.
Aumann et al.’s solution is also p=2/3. They just propose to use a roundabout (but perhaps more intuitive?) algorithm to compute it.
That was in the context of arguing against P&R’s reasoning, which leads to p=4/9.
Yes, and that argues for not proposing solutions until we can see the whole problem (or set of problems) and solve it all at once. Well maybe that’s kind of unrealistic, so perhaps just keeping in mind the possible path-dependence and try to mitigate it.
BTW, did you know that you can quote people by using “>”? Click on the “help” link under the comment edit box for more info.