I’ve recently been leaning more in the direction of there being multiple coherent approaches to the Counterfactual Mugging problem, but I was still feeling quite confused by it. I really think that the multi-agent perspective adds a lot of clarity.
Cousin_it and I discovered the Counterfactual Prisoner’s Dilemma, which it similar to the Counterfactual Mugging, but presents a case where the kind of agent that pay attention to their counterfactual selves does better in each arm. I think it presents a limitation to thinking of yourself as completely disconnected from agents in other branches, but I suppose we can still model the situation as independent agents with some kind of subjunctive link.
You may find it interesting that I’ve also argued in favour of viewing counterfactuals as circular here and that I even ran a competition on this last year.
Fantastic post.
I’ve recently been leaning more in the direction of there being multiple coherent approaches to the Counterfactual Mugging problem, but I was still feeling quite confused by it. I really think that the multi-agent perspective adds a lot of clarity.
Cousin_it and I discovered the Counterfactual Prisoner’s Dilemma, which it similar to the Counterfactual Mugging, but presents a case where the kind of agent that pay attention to their counterfactual selves does better in each arm. I think it presents a limitation to thinking of yourself as completely disconnected from agents in other branches, but I suppose we can still model the situation as independent agents with some kind of subjunctive link.
You may find it interesting that I’ve also argued in favour of viewing counterfactuals as circular here and that I even ran a competition on this last year.