You could include them in reflexive decision theories. When formalised, I suspect there may not be much of a distinction between theories that can know about themselves and theories that can modify themselves.
Most of the others just say “better” instead of saying what the desired sort of theory actually does.
Actually, it’s precisely for this reason that “reflexive” doesn’t work for what I originally wanted: I wanted to use a word to denote TDT, UDT, ADT, etc, not in terms of how they work but in terms of satisfying the five conditions, the most important of which is that they out-perform CDT. How a decision theory works is a secondary consideration to how well it works.
Snap!
Most of the others just say “better” instead of saying what the desired sort of theory actually does.
Then what do we call decision theories capable of proving statements about self-modification?
You could include them in reflexive decision theories. When formalised, I suspect there may not be much of a distinction between theories that can know about themselves and theories that can modify themselves.
As a mathematician, I prefer using different notations for things until I’ve proved they’re identical. And in this case, I rather suspect they’re not.
Actually, it’s precisely for this reason that “reflexive” doesn’t work for what I originally wanted: I wanted to use a word to denote TDT, UDT, ADT, etc, not in terms of how they work but in terms of satisfying the five conditions, the most important of which is that they out-perform CDT. How a decision theory works is a secondary consideration to how well it works.