Let’s imagine a kind of symmetric counterfactual mugging. In case of heads, Omega says: “The coin came up heads, now you can either give me $100 or refuse. After that, I’ll give you $10000 if you would’ve given me $100 in case of tails”. In case of tails, Omega says the same thing, but with heads and tails reversed. In this situation, an agent who doesn’t care about counterfactual selves always gets 0 regardless of the coin, while an agent who does care always gets $9900 regardless of the coin.
I can’t think of any situation where the opposite happens (the non-caring agent gets more with certainty). To me that suggests the caring agent is more rational.
Yeah, I actually stumbled upon this argument myself this morning. Has anyone written this up beyond this comment as this seems like the most persuasive argument for paying? This suggests that never caring is not a viable position.
I was thinking today about whether there are any intermediate positions, but I don’t think they are viable. Only caring about counterfactuals when you have a prisoner’s dilemma-like situation seems an unprincipled fudge.
Do you think you’ll write a post on it? Because I was thinking of writing a post, but if you were planning on doing this then that would be even better as it would probably get more attention.
In this situation, an agent who doesn’t care about counterfactual selves always gets 0 regardless of the coin
Since the agent is very correlated with its counterfactual copy, it seems that superrationality (or even just EDT) would make the agent pay $100, and get the $10000.
Let’s imagine a kind of symmetric counterfactual mugging. In case of heads, Omega says: “The coin came up heads, now you can either give me $100 or refuse. After that, I’ll give you $10000 if you would’ve given me $100 in case of tails”. In case of tails, Omega says the same thing, but with heads and tails reversed. In this situation, an agent who doesn’t care about counterfactual selves always gets 0 regardless of the coin, while an agent who does care always gets $9900 regardless of the coin.
I can’t think of any situation where the opposite happens (the non-caring agent gets more with certainty). To me that suggests the caring agent is more rational.
Yeah, I actually stumbled upon this argument myself this morning. Has anyone written this up beyond this comment as this seems like the most persuasive argument for paying? This suggests that never caring is not a viable position.
I was thinking today about whether there are any intermediate positions, but I don’t think they are viable. Only caring about counterfactuals when you have a prisoner’s dilemma-like situation seems an unprincipled fudge.
Yeah. I don’t remember seeing this argument before, it just came to my mind today.
Do you think you’ll write a post on it? Because I was thinking of writing a post, but if you were planning on doing this then that would be even better as it would probably get more attention.
No, wasn’t planning. Go ahead and write the post, and maybe link to my comment as independent discovery.
Of course
Since the agent is very correlated with its counterfactual copy, it seems that superrationality (or even just EDT) would make the agent pay $100, and get the $10000.
Actually, the counterfactual agent makes a different observation (heads instead of tails) so their actions aren’t necessarily linked