I wonder how the examples given interacts with the sorts of decision theories popular here? TDT for example is explicitly designed to be context-independent—“make this decision as if you were deciding for all circumstances.” That optimizes for success in the prisoner’s dilemma, but appears to be detrimental here. The correct decision is to fight HARD the first time, but be cautiously guarded thereafter. However TDT instructs you to (literally) cut off consideration of this sort of surrounding context. You could hard-wire as input whether it is the first time encountering the situation, but that seems more than a little arbitrary and forced...
Nah, the semiotics of the action really are things which actually happen (physically located in the minds of observers) and which are caused by the action. Decision theories will automatically account for them just like any other effect of an action.
TDT doesn’t ignore the surrounding contex, it says “make this decision as if you were deciding for all circumstances which are exactly the same as this one”.
I wonder how the examples given interacts with the sorts of decision theories popular here? TDT for example is explicitly designed to be context-independent—“make this decision as if you were deciding for all circumstances.” That optimizes for success in the prisoner’s dilemma, but appears to be detrimental here. The correct decision is to fight HARD the first time, but be cautiously guarded thereafter. However TDT instructs you to (literally) cut off consideration of this sort of surrounding context. You could hard-wire as input whether it is the first time encountering the situation, but that seems more than a little arbitrary and forced...
Nah, the semiotics of the action really are things which actually happen (physically located in the minds of observers) and which are caused by the action. Decision theories will automatically account for them just like any other effect of an action.
TDT doesn’t ignore the surrounding contex, it says “make this decision as if you were deciding for all circumstances which are exactly the same as this one”.
That just shifted the problem without resolving it though: How do you decide what makes the circumstances the same or different?