The part that I don’t get is the reason why the agent is betting ahead of time implies evaluation according to edt, while the agent is reasoning during its action implies evaluation according to cdt. Sorry if I’m missing something trivial, but I’d like to receive an explanation because this seems a fundamental part of the argument.
Oh right, OK. That’s because of the general assumption that rational agents bet according to their beliefs. If a CDT agent doesn’t think of a bet as intervening on a situation, then when betting ahead of time, it’ll just bet according to its probabilities. But during the decision, it is using the modified (interventional) probabilities. That’s how CDT makes decisions. So any bets which have to be made simultaneously, as part of the decision, will be evaluated according to those modified beliefs.
This is an old post, but my idea of CDT is that it’s a rule for making decisions, not for setting beliefs. Thus the agent never believes in the outcome given by CDT, just that it should choose according to the payoffs it calculates. This is a seemingly weird way to do things, but apart from that is there a reason I should think about CDT as a prescription for forming beliefs while I am acting?
My confusion was: even “when the agent is acting”, I think it would still be appropriate to describe its beliefs according to EDT. However, I was confused by thinking about ”...and then offering a bet”. As far as I can tell, this is just an unnecessary bit of storytelling set around a two step decision problem, and a CDT agent has to evaluate the prospects of each decision according to CDT.
The part that I don’t get is the reason why the agent is betting ahead of time implies evaluation according to edt, while the agent is reasoning during its action implies evaluation according to cdt. Sorry if I’m missing something trivial, but I’d like to receive an explanation because this seems a fundamental part of the argument.
Oh right, OK. That’s because of the general assumption that rational agents bet according to their beliefs. If a CDT agent doesn’t think of a bet as intervening on a situation, then when betting ahead of time, it’ll just bet according to its probabilities. But during the decision, it is using the modified (interventional) probabilities. That’s how CDT makes decisions. So any bets which have to be made simultaneously, as part of the decision, will be evaluated according to those modified beliefs.
This is an old post, but my idea of CDT is that it’s a rule for making decisions, not for setting beliefs. Thus the agent never believes in the outcome given by CDT, just that it should choose according to the payoffs it calculates. This is a seemingly weird way to do things, but apart from that is there a reason I should think about CDT as a prescription for forming beliefs while I am acting?
My confusion was: even “when the agent is acting”, I think it would still be appropriate to describe its beliefs according to EDT. However, I was confused by thinking about ”...and then offering a bet”. As far as I can tell, this is just an unnecessary bit of storytelling set around a two step decision problem, and a CDT agent has to evaluate the prospects of each decision according to CDT.