As I understand it, the purpose of bothering to advocate TDT is that it beats CDT in the hypothetical case of dealing with Omega (who does not exist), and is therefore more robust, then this failure in a non-hypothetical situation suggests a flaw in its robustness, and it should be regarded as less reliable than it may have been regarded previously.
The decision you refer to here… I’m assuming it is this still the Eliezer->Roko decision? (This discussion is not the most clearly presented.) If so for your purposes you can safely consider ‘TDT/CDT’ irrelevant. While acausal (TDTish) reasoning is at play in establishing a couple of the important premises, they are not relevant to the reasoning that you actually seem to be criticising.
ie. The problems you refer to here are not the fault of TDT or of abstract reasoning at all—just plain old human screw ups with hasty reactions.
I’m assuming it is this still the Eliezer->Roko decision? (This discussion is not the most clearly presented.)
That’s the one, that being the one specific thing I’ve been talking about all the way through.
Vladimir Nesov cited acausal decision theories as the reasoning here and here—if not TDT, then a similar local decision theory. If that is not the case, I’m sure he’ll be along shortly to clarify.
(I stress “local” to note that they suffer a lack of outside review or even notice. A lack of these things tends not to work out well in engineering or science either.)
That’s the one, that being the one specific thing I’ve been talking about all the way through.
Good, that had been my impression.
Independently of anything that Vladmir may have written it is my observation that the ‘TDT-like’ stuff was mostly relevant to the question “is it dangerous for people to think X?” Once that has been established the rest of the decision making, what to do after already having reached that conclusion, was for most part just standard unadorned human thinking. From what I have seen (including your references to reputation self sabotage by SIAI) you were more troubled by the the latter parts than the former.
Even if you do care about the more esoteric question “is it dangerous for people to think X?” I note that ‘garbage in, garbage out’ applies here as it does elsewhere.
(I just don’t like to see TDT unfairly maligned. Tarnished by association as it were.)
The decision you refer to here… I’m assuming it is this still the Eliezer->Roko decision? (This discussion is not the most clearly presented.) If so for your purposes you can safely consider ‘TDT/CDT’ irrelevant. While acausal (TDTish) reasoning is at play in establishing a couple of the important premises, they are not relevant to the reasoning that you actually seem to be criticising.
ie. The problems you refer to here are not the fault of TDT or of abstract reasoning at all—just plain old human screw ups with hasty reactions.
That’s the one, that being the one specific thing I’ve been talking about all the way through.
Vladimir Nesov cited acausal decision theories as the reasoning here and here—if not TDT, then a similar local decision theory. If that is not the case, I’m sure he’ll be along shortly to clarify.
(I stress “local” to note that they suffer a lack of outside review or even notice. A lack of these things tends not to work out well in engineering or science either.)
Good, that had been my impression.
Independently of anything that Vladmir may have written it is my observation that the ‘TDT-like’ stuff was mostly relevant to the question “is it dangerous for people to think X?” Once that has been established the rest of the decision making, what to do after already having reached that conclusion, was for most part just standard unadorned human thinking. From what I have seen (including your references to reputation self sabotage by SIAI) you were more troubled by the the latter parts than the former.
Even if you do care about the more esoteric question “is it dangerous for people to think X?” I note that ‘garbage in, garbage out’ applies here as it does elsewhere.
(I just don’t like to see TDT unfairly maligned. Tarnished by association as it were.)