4) Writing P is equivalent to supplying only one bit: should P pay up if asked?
Not if the correct decision depends on an abstract fact that you can’t access, but can reference.
In general, the distinction is important. But, for this puzzle, the proposition “asked” is equivalent to the relevant “abstract fact”. The agent is asked iff the millionth digit of pi is odd. So point (4) already provides as much of a conditional strategy as is possible.
It’s assumed that the agent doesn’t know if the digit is odd (and whether it’ll be in the situation described in the post) at this point. The proposal to self-modify is a separate event that precedes the thought experiment.
I see, so there’s indeed just one bit, and it should be “don’t cooperate”.
This is interesting in that UDT likes to ignore epistemic significance of observations, but here we have an observation that implies something about the world, and not just tells where the agent is. How does one reason about strategies if different branches of those strategies tell something about the value of the other branches?..
In general, the distinction is important. But, for this puzzle, the proposition “asked” is equivalent to the relevant “abstract fact”. The agent is asked iff the millionth digit of pi is odd. So point (4) already provides as much of a conditional strategy as is possible.
It’s assumed that the agent doesn’t know if the digit is odd (and whether it’ll be in the situation described in the post) at this point. The proposal to self-modify is a separate event that precedes the thought experiment.
Yes. Similarly, it doesn’t know whether it will be asked (rather than do the asking) at this point.
I see, so there’s indeed just one bit, and it should be “don’t cooperate”.
This is interesting in that UDT likes to ignore epistemic significance of observations, but here we have an observation that implies something about the world, and not just tells where the agent is. How does one reason about strategies if different branches of those strategies tell something about the value of the other branches?..