The point of UDT as I understand it is that you should be the sort of person who predictably one-boxes in NP. This seems incorrect to me. I think if you are the sort of person who one-boxes in a surprise NP, you will have worse outcomes in general, and that if you have a surprise NP, you should two-box. If you know you will be confronted with NP tomorrow, then sure, you should decide to one-box ahead of time. But I think deciding now to “be the sort of person who would one-box in NP,” (or equivalently, deciding now to commit to a decision theory which will result in that) is a mistake.
Eliezer Yudkowsky and the whole UDT crowd seem to think that you should commit to a decision theory which seems like a bad one to me, on the basis that it would be rational to have precommitted if you end up in this situation. They seem to have convinced most LW people of this. I think they are wrong. I think CDT is a better decision theory which is more intuitive. I agree CDT gives a suboptimal outcome in surprise-NP, but I think any decision theory can give a good or bad outcome in corner-cases, along the lines of “You meet a superintelligent agent which will punish people who use (good decision theory) and reward those who use (bad decision theory).” Thus, NP shouldn’t count as a strike against CDT.
The point of UDT as I understand it is that you should be the sort of person who predictably one-boxes in NP. This seems incorrect to me. I think if you are the sort of person who one-boxes in a surprise NP, you will have worse outcomes in general, and that if you have a surprise NP, you should two-box. If you know you will be confronted with NP tomorrow, then sure, you should decide to one-box ahead of time. But I think deciding now to “be the sort of person who would one-box in NP,” (or equivalently, deciding now to commit to a decision theory which will result in that) is a mistake.
Eliezer Yudkowsky and the whole UDT crowd seem to think that you should commit to a decision theory which seems like a bad one to me, on the basis that it would be rational to have precommitted if you end up in this situation. They seem to have convinced most LW people of this. I think they are wrong. I think CDT is a better decision theory which is more intuitive. I agree CDT gives a suboptimal outcome in surprise-NP, but I think any decision theory can give a good or bad outcome in corner-cases, along the lines of “You meet a superintelligent agent which will punish people who use (good decision theory) and reward those who use (bad decision theory).” Thus, NP shouldn’t count as a strike against CDT.