The normal VNM approach is to start with an agent whose behavior satisfies some common sense conditions: can't be money pumped and so on.

Nitpicks: (1) the vNM theorem is about preference, not choice and behavior; and (2) "can't be money pumped" is not one of the conditions in the theorem.

and Silvia's work

Typo: it's Sylvia.

I wrote "I'm really not sure at this point whether UDT is even on the right track" in UDT shows that decision theory is more puzzling than ever which I think you've read? Did you perhaps miss that part?

Yes, missed or forgot about that sentence, sorry.

(BTW this issue/doubt about whether UDT / paying CM is normative for humans is item 1 in the above linked post. Thought I'd point that out since it may not be obvious at first glance.)

Thanks.

Do you have more examples where making such distinctions would be helpful?

I was mostly thinking about discussions surrounding what the "correct" decision theory, is whether you should pay in CM, and so on.

Here's a related idea that is maybe clearer: Suppose an agent has the ability to self-modify to use any decision theory, would they decide to stick with their current decision theory? (I'm actually not sure what term has been explicitly defined to mean this, so I'll just call it "self-endorsement" for now.)

This sounds similar to what's called "self-recommendation"—see e.g. Skyrms (1982, pp. 707-709), Meacham (2010, §3.3) and Pettigrew (2023). In the abstract Pettigrew writes: "A decision theory is self-recommending if, when you ask it which decision theory you should use, it considers itself to be among the permissible options.". 

I have actually been thinking about ways of extending Pettigrew's work to theories of dynamic choice. That is: is sophistication/resoluteness self-recommending? I don't think it is immediately clear what the answers are, and it might depend on the interpretations of sophistication and resoluteness one adopts, but yeah, I do agree that it seems like sophistication might be self-undermining.

Thanks for the clarification!

I do understand from the SEP, like Wei, that sophisticated means "backwards planning", and resolute means "being able to commit to a policy" (correct me if I'm wrong).

That seems roughly correct, but note that there are different interpretations of resolute choice floating around^[1], and I think McClennen's (1990) presentation is somewhat unclear at times. Sometimes resoluteness seems to be about the ability to make internal commitments, and other times it seems to be about being sensitive to the dynamic context in a particular way, and I think these can come apart. You might be interested in these notes I wrote while reading McClennen's book. 

My usage of "dynamic instability" (which might be contrary to academic usage) was indeed what Wei mentions: "not needing commitments". Or equivalently, I say a decision theory is dynamically stable if itself and its resolute version always act the same.

Then that sounds a bit question-begging. Do you think dynamic instability is a problem (normatively speaking)? 

1. ^{^}

   See e.g. Gauthier (1997) and Buchak (2013, §6).

I think Sami's comment is entirely fair given the language and framing of the original post. It is of course fine to forget about references, but e.g. "I find it curious that none of my ideas have a following in academia or have been reinvented/rediscovered by academia" and "Clearly academia has some blind spots, but how big?" reads like you don't consider it a possilbity that you might have re-invented something yourself, and that academics are at fault for not taking up your ideas.

I don't think cohesive decision theory is being discussed much, but I'm not sure. Perhaps because the theory is mainly used to argue against the claim that "every decision rule will lead agents who can’t bind themselves to disaster" (p. 20, footnote 34) in the paper, and discussion of its independent interest is relegated to a footnote (footnote 34).

It would be interesting to get an overview of what these are. Or if that's too hard to write down, and there are no ready references, what are your own interests in decision theory?

Yeah, that would be too hard. You might want to look at these SEP entries: Decision Theory, Normative Theories of Rational Choice: Expected Utility, Normative Theories of Rational Choice: Rivals to Expected Utility and Causal Decision Theory. To give an example of what I'm interested in, I think it is really important to take into account unawareness and awareness growth (see §5.3 of the first entry listed above) when thinking about how ordinary agents should make decisions. (Also see this post.)

I'm not sure I wouldn't pay either. I see it as more of an interesting puzzle than having a definitive answer. ETA: Although I'm more certain that we should build AIs that do pay. Is that also unclear to you? (If so why might we not want to build such AIs?)

Okay, interesting! I thought UDT was meant to pay in CM, and that you were convinced of (some version of) UDT.

On the point about AI (not directly responding to your question, to which I don't have an answer): I think it's really important to be clear about whether we are discussing normative, constructive or descriptive decision theory (using Elliott Thornley's distinction here). For example, the answers to "is updatelessness normatively compelling?", "should we build an updateless AI?" and "will some agents (e.g. advanced AIs) commit to being updateless?" will most likely come apart (it seems to me). And I think that discussions on LW about decision theory are often muddled due to not making clear what is being discussed.

There are many many interesting questions in decision theory, and "dimensions" along which decision theories can vary, not just the three usually discussed on LessWrong. It's not clear to me why (i) philosophers should focus on the dimensions you primarily seem to be interested in, and (ii) what is so special about the particular combination you mention (is there some interesting interaction I don't know about maybe?). Furthermore, note that most philosophers probably do not share your intuitions: I'm pretty sure most of them would e.g. pay in counterfactual mugging. (And I have not seen a good case for why it would be rational to pay.) I don't mean to be snarky, but you could just be wrong about what the open problems are.

I haven't looked into academic DT literature in years, so you're probably more familiar with it. Do you know if they're puzzled/confused by the same problems that we are? 

I wouldn't say so, no. But I'm not entirely sure if I understand what the open problems are. Reading your list of seven issues, I either (i) don't understand what you are asking, (ii) disagree with the framing/think the question is misguided, or (iii) think there is an obvious answer (which makes me think that I'm missing something). With that said, I haven't read all the posts you reference, so perhaps I should read those first.

This is indeed what happens to the best-known decision theories (CDT and EDT): they want to commit to paying, but if they don’t, by the time they get to the Heads world they don’t pay. We call this dynamic instability, because different (temporal) versions of the agent seem to be working against each other.

Unless you are using "dynamic stability" to mean something other than "dynamic consistency", I don't think this is quite right. The standard philosophical theory of dynamic choice, sophisticated choice (see e.g. the SEP entry on decision theory), would not pay but is still dynamically consistent.