It is a nice feature that Psy-kosh’s problem that it pumps the confusing intuitions we see in scenarios like the Sleep Beauty problem without recourse to memory erasing drugs or teleporters—I think it tells us something important about this class of problem. But mathematically the problem is equivalent to one where the coin-flip doesn’t make nine people deciders but copies you nine times- I don’t think there is a good justification for labeling these problems differently.
The interesting question is what this example tells us about the nature of this class of problem- and I’m having trouble putting my finger on just what that is.
So I have an idea- which is either going to make perfect sense to people right away or it’s going to have to wait for a post from me (on stuff I’ve said I’d write a post on forever). The short and sweet of it is: There is only one decision theoretic agent in this problem (never nine) and that agent gets no new information with which to update on. I need to sleep but I’ll start writing in the morning.
It is a nice feature that Psy-kosh’s problem that it pumps the confusing intuitions we see in scenarios like the Sleep Beauty problem without recourse to memory erasing drugs or teleporters—I think it tells us something important about this class of problem. But mathematically the problem is equivalent to one where the coin-flip doesn’t make nine people deciders but copies you nine times- I don’t think there is a good justification for labeling these problems differently.
The interesting question is what this example tells us about the nature of this class of problem- and I’m having trouble putting my finger on just what that is.
RIght. That’s the question I wanted people to answer, not just solve the object-level problem (UDT solves it just fine).
So I have an idea- which is either going to make perfect sense to people right away or it’s going to have to wait for a post from me (on stuff I’ve said I’d write a post on forever). The short and sweet of it is: There is only one decision theoretic agent in this problem (never nine) and that agent gets no new information with which to update on. I need to sleep but I’ll start writing in the morning.