It is not the responsibility of a decision theory to tell you how to form opinions about the world; it should tell you how to use the opinions you have. EDT does not mean reference class forecasting; it means expecting utility according to the opinions you would actually have if you did the thing, not ignoring the fact that doing the thing would give you information.
Or in other words, it means acting on your honest opinion of what will give you the best result, and not a dishonest opinion formed by pretending that your opinions wouldn’t change if you did something.
I think this deflationary conception of decision theory has serious problems. First is that because it doesn’t pin down a decision-making algorithm, it’s hard to talk about what choices it makes—you can argue for choices but you can’t demonstrate them without showing how they’re generated in full. Second is that it introduces more opportunities to fool yourself with verbal reasoning. Third because historically I think it’s resulted in a lot of wasted words in philosophy journals, although maybe this is just objection one again.
It is not the responsibility of a decision theory to tell you how to form opinions about the world; it should tell you how to use the opinions you have. EDT does not mean reference class forecasting; it means expecting utility according to the opinions you would actually have if you did the thing, not ignoring the fact that doing the thing would give you information.
Or in other words, it means acting on your honest opinion of what will give you the best result, and not a dishonest opinion formed by pretending that your opinions wouldn’t change if you did something.
I think this deflationary conception of decision theory has serious problems. First is that because it doesn’t pin down a decision-making algorithm, it’s hard to talk about what choices it makes—you can argue for choices but you can’t demonstrate them without showing how they’re generated in full. Second is that it introduces more opportunities to fool yourself with verbal reasoning. Third because historically I think it’s resulted in a lot of wasted words in philosophy journals, although maybe this is just objection one again.