Let me explain about Sam Beckett (which admittedly I should have done at the outset): In each episode of Quantum Leap, Sam’s consciousness teleports (“leaps”) into the brain of some random person, and Sam then has to Do Something Important (e.g. Stop Something Bad From Happening). No-one else expects or notices the leap.
CDT is not correct in game-theoretic situations where other agents can know things about you, with the effect of its incorrectness gradual.
Assuming for argument’s sake that Sam’s “leap” was not foreseen by “Omega-like” beings, or anyone else, other agents can only be influenced by the kind of person who was there prior to the leap, not the kind of person Sam is.
(Note: I’m also assuming for argument’s sake that after making that one decision, Sam “leaps out” leaving the original decision-maker in his place.)
I’m not sure whether I’ve got this exactly right yet, but whatever the defects of the wording, surely there’s some problem statement for which CDT is trivially correct.
It’s not at all clear in what sense one can be correct about “hoping for a particular outcome”.
It’s simply a question of: which of these possibilities, if you observed them, would maximize your expected final utility. There is a ‘fact of the matter’ about this, regardless of whether the spectator’s judgements make any difference.
The problem statement to which EDT is supposed to be an answer seems to be nonsense.
The trouble is that they’re all different kinds of nonsense. Sam doesn’t and couldn’t exist. Spectators don’t exist and make no difference if they do, and TDT-God doesn’t and couldn’t exist. (I don’t mean to denigrate TDT—I think it gives better answers than CDT or EDT. In some weird sense, TDT-God is a better approximation to “the decision-maker themselves” than Sam Beckett.)
It’s not at all clear in what sense one can be correct about “hoping for a particular outcome”.
It’s simply a question of: which of these possibilities, if you observed them, would maximize your expected final utility. There is a ‘fact of the matter’ about this, regardless of whether the spectator’s judgements make any difference.
If you take an updateless look at the situation, observations never influence utility. You can consider relevant “observational events” that contain the worlds that you expect being able to influence in the future given what you’ve observed, and then different observational events would have different utility. But possible reasons to actually compare these numbers are nonobvious (e.g. you might be able to control your observations, but then it’s not necessarily a good way to parse the consequences of that control decision), so you could just as well treat them as unrelated. Also, these are heuristic rules for simplifying the updateless calculation (by moving a constant term outside maximization operator), and given that you are stipulated to be unable to influence anything, I wonder if these should just all be empty, giving you trivially zero utility, both for all observations and a priori.
Let me explain about Sam Beckett (which admittedly I should have done at the outset): In each episode of Quantum Leap, Sam’s consciousness teleports (“leaps”) into the brain of some random person, and Sam then has to Do Something Important (e.g. Stop Something Bad From Happening). No-one else expects or notices the leap.
Assuming for argument’s sake that Sam’s “leap” was not foreseen by “Omega-like” beings, or anyone else, other agents can only be influenced by the kind of person who was there prior to the leap, not the kind of person Sam is.
(Note: I’m also assuming for argument’s sake that after making that one decision, Sam “leaps out” leaving the original decision-maker in his place.)
I’m not sure whether I’ve got this exactly right yet, but whatever the defects of the wording, surely there’s some problem statement for which CDT is trivially correct.
It’s simply a question of: which of these possibilities, if you observed them, would maximize your expected final utility. There is a ‘fact of the matter’ about this, regardless of whether the spectator’s judgements make any difference.
The trouble is that they’re all different kinds of nonsense. Sam doesn’t and couldn’t exist. Spectators don’t exist and make no difference if they do, and TDT-God doesn’t and couldn’t exist. (I don’t mean to denigrate TDT—I think it gives better answers than CDT or EDT. In some weird sense, TDT-God is a better approximation to “the decision-maker themselves” than Sam Beckett.)
If you take an updateless look at the situation, observations never influence utility. You can consider relevant “observational events” that contain the worlds that you expect being able to influence in the future given what you’ve observed, and then different observational events would have different utility. But possible reasons to actually compare these numbers are nonobvious (e.g. you might be able to control your observations, but then it’s not necessarily a good way to parse the consequences of that control decision), so you could just as well treat them as unrelated. Also, these are heuristic rules for simplifying the updateless calculation (by moving a constant term outside maximization operator), and given that you are stipulated to be unable to influence anything, I wonder if these should just all be empty, giving you trivially zero utility, both for all observations and a priori.