A frame that helps with logical updatelessness is acausal trade. A UDT agent in a particular situation coordinates with its other instances in other situations by adopting a shared policy that doesn’t depend on details of the current situation, and then carrying out what the policy prescribes for the current situation. The same generalizes to coordination with other agents, or very unusual variants of the same agent, such as those that have different states of logical uncertainty, or different priors, or different preferences.
With acausal trade, we shouldn’t insist on a single global policy of mysterious origin, but consider how hypothetical agents negotiate many contracts of smaller scopes with each other. These contracts nudge the agents that subscribe to them and not others, with every agent weaving its actions out of relevant contracts, and negotiating contracts with relevant other hypothetical agents.
Thus an agent O knowing that 100th digit of pi is odd might hold a tripartite negotiation with both a hypothetical agent E that knows that 100th digit of pi is even, and an agent U that doesn’t know parity of this digit. We might say that (a sane) E doesn’t exist, so doesn’t merit consideration, but it does merit consideration for U who doesn’t know, and U does merit consideration for O. This gives a situation where O cares about E’s position in negotiating a coordination policy/contract. The meaning of E’s position for O is mediated by U’s understanding of E, which is not much different from U’s understanding of O.
A frame that helps with logical updatelessness is acausal trade. A UDT agent in a particular situation coordinates with its other instances in other situations by adopting a shared policy that doesn’t depend on details of the current situation, and then carrying out what the policy prescribes for the current situation. The same generalizes to coordination with other agents, or very unusual variants of the same agent, such as those that have different states of logical uncertainty, or different priors, or different preferences.
With acausal trade, we shouldn’t insist on a single global policy of mysterious origin, but consider how hypothetical agents negotiate many contracts of smaller scopes with each other. These contracts nudge the agents that subscribe to them and not others, with every agent weaving its actions out of relevant contracts, and negotiating contracts with relevant other hypothetical agents.
Thus an agent O knowing that 100th digit of pi is odd might hold a tripartite negotiation with both a hypothetical agent E that knows that 100th digit of pi is even, and an agent U that doesn’t know parity of this digit. We might say that (a sane) E doesn’t exist, so doesn’t merit consideration, but it does merit consideration for U who doesn’t know, and U does merit consideration for O. This gives a situation where O cares about E’s position in negotiating a coordination policy/contract. The meaning of E’s position for O is mediated by U’s understanding of E, which is not much different from U’s understanding of O.