Timeless Decision Theory

Applied to Timeless Identity by JenniferRM ago
Applied to Timeless Causality by JenniferRM ago
Applied to Timeless Control by JenniferRM ago

TDT will endorse one-boxing in this scenario and hence endorses the winning decision. When Omega predicts your behavior, it carries out the same abstract computation as you do when you decide whether to one-box or two-box. To make this point clear, we can imagine that Omega makes this prediction by creating a simulation of you and observing its behavior in Newcomb's problem. This simulation will clearly decide according to the same abstract computation as you do as both you and it decide in the same manner. NowNow, given that TDT says to act as if deciding the output of this computation, it tells you to act as if your decision to one-box can determine the behavior of the simulation (or, more generally, Omega's prediction) and hence the filling of the boxes. So TDT correctly endorses one-boxing in Newcomb's problem as it tells the agent to act as if doing so will lead them to get $1,000,000 instead of $1,000.

Timeless decision theory (TDT) is a decision theory, developed by Eliezer Yudkowsky which, in slogan form, says that agents should decide as if they are determining the output of the abstract computation that they implement. This theory was developed in response to the view that rationality should be about winning (that is, about agents achieving their desired ends) rather than about behaving in a manner that we would intuitively label as rational. Prominent existing decision theories (including causal decision theory, or CDT) fail to choose the winning decision in some scenarios and so there is a need to develop a more successful theory.

Applied to Anti-Parfit's Hitchhiker by k64 ago
yesaul10

"Ignorance is a state of mind, stored in neurons, not the environment. The red ball does not know that we are ignorant of it. A probability is a way of quantifying a state of mind. Our ignorance then obeys useful mathematical properties—Bayesian probability theory—allowing us to systematically reduce our ignorance through observation. How would you go about reducing ignorance if there were no way to measure ignorance? What, indeed, is the advantage of not quantifying our ignorance, once we understand that quantifying ignorance reflects a choice about how to think effectively, and not a physical property of red and white balls?"

I want to propose a short note for this priceless observation. Maybe I'm overreacting, and it's not as significant as I see it. Apologies if that is so.

Your conjecture presupposes a unidirectional linear, absolute, and static structure of knowledge - a minimal perspective or not generally applicable. It seems as if you have forgotten about the phenomenon, "a fresh pair of eyes."  Literally meaning employing someone who has not gone the same road as you did (a person "more" ignorant of the problem at hand than you) to help you get out of your informational dead-end.

You have fallen into the same trap as the philosophers who believed that there is a formula to ultimate and absolute knowledge and ultimate state of mind, who prophesized that if only we find and follow this formula, everyone will attain eternal happiness. I'm personally skeptical about measuring the quality, quantity, and practical applicability of knowledge or ignorance. Let alone the questions about what really matters and their mutual interaction. But, unfortunately, your mode of thinking will most likely lead to the same premises and methods found in totalitarian regimes, and ultimately to inability to adapt and to intellectual stagnation. If I were to choose one argument against measuring knowledge, it would be that this will preclude the invention of the "ultimate" knowledge elixir and, as a result, will retain random factors in knowledge-seeking. 

But to indulge your theory a little further, let me mention a few other predictions. For example, the fabric of knowledge is probably not linear or unidirectional, and it probably has local limits (dead-ends). And probably our perception of truths depends on time and our condition. And also, moving in one direction may increase ignorance in the opposite, so to speak. Of this, we have countless accounts.

When I think about epistemology, I sometimes remember Little Gidding. I think it has a very peculiar relationship with your discovery:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Timeless Decision Theory has been replaced by Functional Decision Theory

<more needed>

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Applied to Decision Theory FAQ by Ruby ago