This is interesting, and I’d like to see more. Specifically, what’s Ziz’s problem, and more generally, preciser stuff.
> By starting the dilemma at a point in logical time after the blackmail letter has already been received, the counterfactuals where the blackmail doesn’t occur have by the definition and conditions of the dilemma not happened, the counterfactuals are not the world the agent actually occupies regardless of their moves prior to the dilemma’s start. The dilemma declares that the letter has been received, it cannot be un-received.
You might be right that UDT is doomed for reasons analogous to this. Namely, that you have to take some things as in the logical past. But I think this is a stupid example, and you should obviously not pay the blackmailer, and FDT / UDT gets this right. The argument you give, if heeded, would enable other agents to figure out which variables about your own actions you’d update about, and then find fixed points they like.
this is Ziz’s original formulation of the dilemma, but it could be seen as somewhat isomorphic to the fatal mechanical blackmail dilemma:
Imagine that the emperor, Evil Paul Ekman loves watching his pet bear chase down fleeing humans and kill them. He has captured you for this purpose and taken you to a forest outside a tower he looks down from. You cannot outrun the bear, but you hold 25% probability that by dodging around trees you can tire the bear into giving up and then escape. You know that any time someone doesn’t put up a good chase, Evil Emperor Ekman is upset because it messes with his bear’s training regimen. In that case, he’d prefer not to feed them to the bear at all. Seizing on inspiration, you shout, “If you sic your bear on me, I will stand still and bare my throat. You aren’t getting a good chase out of me, your highness.” Emperor Ekman, known to be very good at reading microexpressions (99% accuracy), looks closely at you through his spyglass as you shout, then says: “No you won’t, but FYI if that’d been true I’d’ve let you go. OPEN THE CAGE.” The bear takes off toward you at 30 miles per hour, jaw already red with human blood. This will hurt a lot. What do you do?
FDT says stand there and bare your throat in order to make this situation not occur, but that fails to track the point in logical time that the agent actually is placed into at the start of a game where the bear has already been released.
It’s a pretty weird epistemic state to be in, to think that he’s 99% accurate at reading that sort of thing (assuming you mean, he sometimes opens the cage on people who seem from the inside as FDT-theorist-y as you, and 99% of the time they run, and he sometimes doesn’t open the cage on people who seem from the inside as FDT-theorist-y as you, and 99% of them wouldn’t have run (the use of the counterfactual here is suspicious)). But yeah, of course if you’re actually in that epistemic state, you shouldn’t run. That’s just choosing to have a bear released on you.
FDT says stand there and bare your throat in order to make this situation not occur, but that fails to track the point in logical time that the agent actually is placed into at the start of a game where the bear has already been released.
That confuses chronological priority with logical priority. The decision to release the bear is chronologically prior to the decision of the agent to not slice their throat, but logically posterior to it—in other words, it’s not the case that they won’t slice their throat because the bear is released. Rather, is it the case that the bear is released because they won’t slice their throat.
If the agent did slice their throat, the emperor would’ve predicted that and wouldn’t have released the bear.
Whether the bear is released or not is, despite it being a chronologically earlier event, predicated on the action of the agent.
(I’m intentionally ignoring the probabilistic character of the problem because the disagreement lies in missing how FDT works, not in the difference between the predictor being perfect or imperfect.)
This is interesting, and I’d like to see more. Specifically, what’s Ziz’s problem, and more generally, preciser stuff.
> By starting the dilemma at a point in logical time after the blackmail letter has already been received, the counterfactuals where the blackmail doesn’t occur have by the definition and conditions of the dilemma not happened, the counterfactuals are not the world the agent actually occupies regardless of their moves prior to the dilemma’s start. The dilemma declares that the letter has been received, it cannot be un-received.
You might be right that UDT is doomed for reasons analogous to this. Namely, that you have to take some things as in the logical past. But I think this is a stupid example, and you should obviously not pay the blackmailer, and FDT / UDT gets this right. The argument you give, if heeded, would enable other agents to figure out which variables about your own actions you’d update about, and then find fixed points they like.
this is Ziz’s original formulation of the dilemma, but it could be seen as somewhat isomorphic to the fatal mechanical blackmail dilemma:
FDT says stand there and bare your throat in order to make this situation not occur, but that fails to track the point in logical time that the agent actually is placed into at the start of a game where the bear has already been released.
It’s a pretty weird epistemic state to be in, to think that he’s 99% accurate at reading that sort of thing (assuming you mean, he sometimes opens the cage on people who seem from the inside as FDT-theorist-y as you, and 99% of the time they run, and he sometimes doesn’t open the cage on people who seem from the inside as FDT-theorist-y as you, and 99% of them wouldn’t have run (the use of the counterfactual here is suspicious)). But yeah, of course if you’re actually in that epistemic state, you shouldn’t run. That’s just choosing to have a bear released on you.
That confuses chronological priority with logical priority. The decision to release the bear is chronologically prior to the decision of the agent to not slice their throat, but logically posterior to it—in other words, it’s not the case that they won’t slice their throat because the bear is released. Rather, is it the case that the bear is released because they won’t slice their throat.
If the agent did slice their throat, the emperor would’ve predicted that and wouldn’t have released the bear.
Whether the bear is released or not is, despite it being a chronologically earlier event, predicated on the action of the agent.
(I’m intentionally ignoring the probabilistic character of the problem because the disagreement lies in missing how FDT works, not in the difference between the predictor being perfect or imperfect.)
FYI Ziz also thinks one should stand there. https://sinceriously.fyi/narrative-breadcrumbs-vs-grizzly-bear/