I mean like, I can give you some names. My friend Ethan who’s getting a Ph.D was one person. Schwarz knows a lot about decision theory and finds the view crazy—MacAskill doesn’t like it either.
Is there anything about those cases that suggest it should generalize to every decision theorist, or that this is as good a proxy for how much FDT works as the beliefs of earth scientists are for whether the Earth is flat or not?
For instance, your samples consist of a philosopher not specialized in decision theory, one unaccountable PhD, and one single person who is both accountable and specializes in decision theory. Somehow, I feel as if there is a difference between generalizing from that and generalizing from every credentialed expert that one could possibly contact. In any case, its dubious to generalize from that to “every decision theorist would reject FDT in the same way every earth scientist would reject flat earth”, even if we condition on you being totally honest here and having fairly represented FDT to your friend.
I think everyone here would bet $1,000 that if every earth scientist knew about flat earth, they would nearly universally dismiss it (in contrast to debating over it or universally accepting it) without hesitation. However, I would be surprised if you would bet $1,000 that if every decision theorist knew about FDT, they would nearly universally dismiss it.
What’s your explanations of why virtually no published papers defend it and no published decision theorists defend it? You really think none of them have thought of it or anything in the vicinity?
Yes. Well, almost. Schwarz brings up disposition-based decision theory, which appears similar though might not be identical to FDT, and every paper I’ve seen on it appears to defend it as an alternative to CDT. There are some looser predecessors to FDT as well, such as Hofstadter’s superrationality, but that’s too different imo.
Given Schwarz’ lack of reference to any paper describing any decision theory even resembling FDT, I’d wager that FDT’s obviousness is merely only in retrospect.
I mean like, I can give you some names. My friend Ethan who’s getting a Ph.D was one person. Schwarz knows a lot about decision theory and finds the view crazy—MacAskill doesn’t like it either.
Is there anything about those cases that suggest it should generalize to every decision theorist, or that this is as good a proxy for how much FDT works as the beliefs of earth scientists are for whether the Earth is flat or not?
For instance, your samples consist of a philosopher not specialized in decision theory, one unaccountable PhD, and one single person who is both accountable and specializes in decision theory. Somehow, I feel as if there is a difference between generalizing from that and generalizing from every credentialed expert that one could possibly contact. In any case, its dubious to generalize from that to “every decision theorist would reject FDT in the same way every earth scientist would reject flat earth”, even if we condition on you being totally honest here and having fairly represented FDT to your friend.
I think everyone here would bet $1,000 that if every earth scientist knew about flat earth, they would nearly universally dismiss it (in contrast to debating over it or universally accepting it) without hesitation. However, I would be surprised if you would bet $1,000 that if every decision theorist knew about FDT, they would nearly universally dismiss it.
What’s your explanations of why virtually no published papers defend it and no published decision theorists defend it? You really think none of them have thought of it or anything in the vicinity?
Yes. Well, almost. Schwarz brings up disposition-based decision theory, which appears similar though might not be identical to FDT, and every paper I’ve seen on it appears to defend it as an alternative to CDT. There are some looser predecessors to FDT as well, such as Hofstadter’s superrationality, but that’s too different imo.
Given Schwarz’ lack of reference to any paper describing any decision theory even resembling FDT, I’d wager that FDT’s obviousness is merely only in retrospect.