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Timeless Decision Theory Paper Released

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Re: Timeless Decision Theory Paper Released

#2

Post by noahlt »

The title of the paper is a bit misleading, and rhetorically clever if intentional. When I read this headline the first time, I parsed it as "Timeless (Decision Theory Paper) Released", so that "timeless" was an adjective describing the (non-specific) "decision theory paper", which had apparently just been released. :-)

Re: Timeless Decision Theory Paper Released

#4

Post by abecedarius »

The linked paper, TDT-v01o.pdf, is bit-identical to a draft I downloaded in November. Which is odd since I thought I remembered a few drafty features in it like incomplete references to be filled in later, and it ends with "This manuscript was cut off here" and a one-entry bibliography.

Did they link to the wrong version?

Re: Timeless Decision Theory Paper Released

#5

Post by ewjordan »

abecedarius wrote: post #4

The linked paper, TDT-v01o.pdf, is bit-identical to a draft I downloaded in November. Which is odd since I thought I remembered a few drafty features in it like incomplete references to be filled in later, and it ends with "This manuscript was cut off here" and a one-entry bibliography. Did they link to the wrong version?

Did they link to the wrong version?

It certainly looks like it. Maybe if Eliezer sees this he can post a link to the actual finished copy?

FWIW, though, whether finished or not there's a lot of really interesting stuff in there, definitely worth a read, even if you know/care nothing about/for decision theory.

Re: Timeless Decision Theory Paper Released

#9

Post by endtime »

noahlt wrote: post #2

The title of the paper is a bit misleading, and rhetorically clever if intentional. When I read this headline the first time, I parsed it as "Timeless (Decision Theory Paper) Released", so that "timeless" was an adjective describing the (non-specific) "decision theory paper", which had apparently just been released. :-)

I don't think it's intentional - TDT is so named with good reason. I'm not sure I can explain why at almost 5AM, but it has to do with sort of treating one-shot games as iterated games, or something roughly similar in spirit to that. One way to think about it is to imagine that you may be a simulation of yourself being used to predict the real you's behavior, and therefore to adopt the behavior that you would want the simulator/predictor to predict from you. Now, if you're not a simulation of yourself, you still need to adopt that decision theory so that when you are simulated, the simulations behave that way. At least, that's how it solves Newcomb's Problem - that's quite possibly not a good overall summary of TDT.
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