On the topic of decision theories, is there a decision theory that is “least weird” from a “normal human” perspective? Most people don’t factor alternate universes and people who actually don’t exist into their everyday decision making process, and it seems reasonable that there should be a decision theory that resembles humans in that way.
Normal, standard causal decision theory is probably it. You can make a case that people sometimes intuitively use evidential decision theory (“Do it. You’ll be glad you did.”) but if asked to spell out their decision making process, most would probably describe causal decision theory.
People also sometimes use fdt: “don’t throw away that particular piece of trash onto the road! If everyone did that we would live among trash heaps!” Of course throwing away one piece of trash would not directly (mostly) cause others to throw away their trash, the reasoning is using the subjunctive dependence between one’s action and others’ action mediated through human morality and comparing the possible future states’ desirability.
On the topic of decision theories, is there a decision theory that is “least weird” from a “normal human” perspective? Most people don’t factor alternate universes and people who actually don’t exist into their everyday decision making process, and it seems reasonable that there should be a decision theory that resembles humans in that way.
Normal, standard causal decision theory is probably it. You can make a case that people sometimes intuitively use evidential decision theory (“Do it. You’ll be glad you did.”) but if asked to spell out their decision making process, most would probably describe causal decision theory.
People also sometimes use fdt: “don’t throw away that particular piece of trash onto the road! If everyone did that we would live among trash heaps!” Of course throwing away one piece of trash would not directly (mostly) cause others to throw away their trash, the reasoning is using the subjunctive dependence between one’s action and others’ action mediated through human morality and comparing the possible future states’ desirability.