You're Not One "You" - How Decision Theories Are Talking Past Each Other
midwittgenstein.substack.com
I think there’s a lot of cross-talk and confusion around how different decision theories approach a class of decision problems, specifically in the criticisms FDT proponents have of more established theories. I want to briefly go through why I think these disagreements come from some muddy abstractions (namely, treating agents in a decision problem as one homogenous/continuous agent rather than multiple distinct agents at different timesteps). I think spelling this out explicitly shows why FDT is a bit confused in its criticisms of more “standard” recommendations, and moreover why the evidence in favour of it (outperforming on certain problems) ends up actually being a kind of circular argument.
You're Not One "You" - How Decision Theories Are Talking Past Each Other
You're Not One "You" - How Decision Theories…
You're Not One "You" - How Decision Theories Are Talking Past Each Other
I think there’s a lot of cross-talk and confusion around how different decision theories approach a class of decision problems, specifically in the criticisms FDT proponents have of more established theories. I want to briefly go through why I think these disagreements come from some muddy abstractions (namely, treating agents in a decision problem as one homogenous/continuous agent rather than multiple distinct agents at different timesteps). I think spelling this out explicitly shows why FDT is a bit confused in its criticisms of more “standard” recommendations, and moreover why the evidence in favour of it (outperforming on certain problems) ends up actually being a kind of circular argument.