My argument is that we ARE thinking ahead about counterfactual mugging right now, in considering the question
When we think about counterfactual muggings, we naturally imagine the possibility of facing a counterfactual mugging in the future. I don’t dispute the value of pre-committing either to take a specific action or to acting updatelessly. However, instead of imagining a future mugging, we could also imagine a present mugging where we didn’t have time to make any pre-commitments. I don’t think it is immediately obvious that we should think updatelessly, instead I believe that it requires further justification.
The role of thinking about decision theory now is to help guide the actions of my future self
This is effectively an attempt at proof-by-definition
I think the average person is going to be thinking about things like duty, honor, and consistency which can serve some of the purpose of updatelessness. But sure, updateful reasoning is a natural kind of starting point, particularly coming from a background of modern economics or bayesian decision theory
If someone’s default is already updateless reasoning, then there’s no need for us to talk them into it. It’s only people with an updateful default that we need to convince (until recently I had an updateful default).
And when we think about problems like counterfactual mugging, the description of the problem requires that there’s both the possibility of heads and tails
It requires a counterfactual possibility, not an actual possibility. And a counterfactual possibility isn’t actual, it’s counter to the factual. So it’s not clear this has any relevance.
It looks like to me that you’re tripping yourself up with verbal arguments that aren’t at all obviously true. The reason why I believe that the Counterfactual Prisoner’s Dilemma is important is because it is a mathematical result that doesn’t require much in the way of assumptions. Sure, it still has to be interpreted, but it seems hard to find an interpretations that avoids the conclusion that the updateful perspective doesn’t quite succeed on its own terms.
When we think about counterfactual muggings, we naturally imagine the possibility of facing a counterfactual mugging in the future. I don’t dispute the value of pre-committing either to take a specific action or to acting updatelessly. However, instead of imagining a future mugging, we could also imagine a present mugging where we didn’t have time to make any pre-commitments. I don’t think it is immediately obvious that we should think updatelessly, instead I believe that it requires further justification.
This is effectively an attempt at proof-by-definition
If someone’s default is already updateless reasoning, then there’s no need for us to talk them into it. It’s only people with an updateful default that we need to convince (until recently I had an updateful default).
It requires a counterfactual possibility, not an actual possibility. And a counterfactual possibility isn’t actual, it’s counter to the factual. So it’s not clear this has any relevance.
It looks like to me that you’re tripping yourself up with verbal arguments that aren’t at all obviously true. The reason why I believe that the Counterfactual Prisoner’s Dilemma is important is because it is a mathematical result that doesn’t require much in the way of assumptions. Sure, it still has to be interpreted, but it seems hard to find an interpretations that avoids the conclusion that the updateful perspective doesn’t quite succeed on its own terms.