I’m the naive causal decision theorist in response to the Smoking Lesion case. I just do not grok the intuition for not smoking in that world. Anyone want to try and change my mind?
(edit: not sure it makes sense to “grok” intuitions because they might not have content in that way. Maybe I mean I don’t “have” it)
My objection is that Smoking Lesion is a decision problem which we can’t drop arbitrary decision procedures into to see how they do; its necessary that the decision procedure might have a lesion influencing it. If you drop an CDT decision procedure into the problem, then the claimed population statistics can’t apply to you, since CDT always smokes in this problem—either you’re a CDT mutant and would be mistaken to apply the population statistics to yourself, or everyone is CDT and the population statistics can’t be as claimed. Similarly with EDT. Therefore, to me, this decision problem isn’t a legitimate test of a decision procedure: you can only test the decision procedure by lying to it about the problem (making it believe the problem-statement statistics are representative of it), or by mangling the decision procedure (adding a lesion into it somehow).
Maybe I am confused (and it’s been a while since I thought about these parts of decision theory), but I thought smoking lesion is usually the test case for showing why EDT is broken, and newcombs is usually the test case for why CDT is broken, so it makes sense that Smoking Lesion wouldn’t convince you that CDT is wrong.
Ah that’s helpful. I remember being frustrated hearing about it in an 80K episode with Joe Carlsmith, where (to my memory) it was an example which was supposed to show you that naive decision theory (where it doesn’t matter whether you smoke or not, because you either have or don’t have the lesion already) is insufficient.
I don’t understand the question. What intuition for not smoking are you talking about? CDT prefers smoking. Are you asking why EDT abstains from smoking? I’m not the best defender, as I don’t really think EDT is workable, but as I understand it EDT updates it’s world state based on actions, meaning that it prefers the world where you don’t have the lesion and don’t WANT to smoke.
I’m the naive causal decision theorist in response to the Smoking Lesion case. I just do not grok the intuition for not smoking in that world. Anyone want to try and change my mind?
(edit: not sure it makes sense to “grok” intuitions because they might not have content in that way. Maybe I mean I don’t “have” it)
My objection is that Smoking Lesion is a decision problem which we can’t drop arbitrary decision procedures into to see how they do; its necessary that the decision procedure might have a lesion influencing it. If you drop an CDT decision procedure into the problem, then the claimed population statistics can’t apply to you, since CDT always smokes in this problem—either you’re a CDT mutant and would be mistaken to apply the population statistics to yourself, or everyone is CDT and the population statistics can’t be as claimed. Similarly with EDT. Therefore, to me, this decision problem isn’t a legitimate test of a decision procedure: you can only test the decision procedure by lying to it about the problem (making it believe the problem-statement statistics are representative of it), or by mangling the decision procedure (adding a lesion into it somehow).
Maybe I am confused (and it’s been a while since I thought about these parts of decision theory), but I thought smoking lesion is usually the test case for showing why EDT is broken, and newcombs is usually the test case for why CDT is broken, so it makes sense that Smoking Lesion wouldn’t convince you that CDT is wrong.
Ah that’s helpful. I remember being frustrated hearing about it in an 80K episode with Joe Carlsmith, where (to my memory) it was an example which was supposed to show you that naive decision theory (where it doesn’t matter whether you smoke or not, because you either have or don’t have the lesion already) is insufficient.
I don’t understand the question. What intuition for not smoking are you talking about? CDT prefers smoking. Are you asking why EDT abstains from smoking? I’m not the best defender, as I don’t really think EDT is workable, but as I understand it EDT updates it’s world state based on actions, meaning that it prefers the world where you don’t have the lesion and don’t WANT to smoke.