My personal ranking of decision theories goes EDT > UDT/FDT > CDT
I don’t really see why I should believe the only important thing to consider about my decisions is their causal impact. Even more convincing to me than Newcomb’s problem is the perfect deterministic twin prisoner’s dilemma. On the other hand, the UDT/FDT belief that the true theory of rationality can’t be diachronically inconsistent seems like wishful thinking to me. There is a certain sort of beauty and elegance in thinking that the correct theory about what actions to take is the same as the theory about what dispositions it would be luckiest to have, but I don’t know why I should believe that either. EDT is closer to my common sense: it never makes you sacrifice your expected utility on the alter of theoretical ideas about causality or subjunctive dependency or ideal-agenthood. It never forces you to think about possible worlds that you know aren’t the actual world.
My personal ranking of decision theories goes EDT > UDT/FDT > CDT
I don’t really see why I should believe the only important thing to consider about my decisions is their causal impact. Even more convincing to me than Newcomb’s problem is the perfect deterministic twin prisoner’s dilemma. On the other hand, the UDT/FDT belief that the true theory of rationality can’t be diachronically inconsistent seems like wishful thinking to me. There is a certain sort of beauty and elegance in thinking that the correct theory about what actions to take is the same as the theory about what dispositions it would be luckiest to have, but I don’t know why I should believe that either. EDT is closer to my common sense: it never makes you sacrifice your expected utility on the alter of theoretical ideas about causality or subjunctive dependency or ideal-agenthood. It never forces you to think about possible worlds that you know aren’t the actual world.