I’m confused, does FDT require some form of anthropic reasoning and simulationism to justify its actions in transparent Newcomb problems (such as MacAskill’s bomb)?
So am I correct in understanding that “you could be in a simulation to see how you would act” is just an intuition pump to help people comprehend the counterfactual reasoning used in FDT?
It’s a separate issue entirely. Scenarios in which you could be in a temporary simulation (especially in which the simulation outcome may be used to determine something for another instance of your decision process) are different and should be analysed differently from those in which you are definitely not.
Why do you believe that I believe that this is a scenario in which you are definitely not in a simulation? I do not.
I am saying that in general, FDT does not require that the agent must reason about whether they are in a simulation. In the published Bomb scenario in particular it is not stated whether the agent may be in a simulation, and it is also not stated whether the agent knows or believes that they may be in a simulation. In principle, all these combinations of cases must be considered separately.
Since the scenario does not make any statement in this respect, I do believe that it was not intended by the scenario author that the agent should reason as if they may be in a simulation. That would be just one of infinitely many unstated possibilities that might affect the analysis if they were considered, all of which would complicate and detract from the issue they intended to discuss.
So I do believe that the analysis described in the original scenario was carried out for an agent that does not consider whether or not they may be in a simulation, as distinct from them actually being definitely not in a simulation.
After all, the fact of the matter is that they are in a simulation. We are simulating what such an agent should do, and there is no “real” agent in this case.
I’m confused, does FDT require some form of anthropic reasoning and simulationism to justify its actions in transparent Newcomb problems (such as MacAskill’s bomb)?
No, it does not. However MacAskill did not correctly perform the FDT analysis.
So am I correct in understanding that “you could be in a simulation to see how you would act” is just an intuition pump to help people comprehend the counterfactual reasoning used in FDT?
It’s a separate issue entirely. Scenarios in which you could be in a temporary simulation (especially in which the simulation outcome may be used to determine something for another instance of your decision process) are different and should be analysed differently from those in which you are definitely not.
Why do you believe this is a scenario in which you are definitely not in a simulation?
Why do you believe that I believe that this is a scenario in which you are definitely not in a simulation? I do not.
I am saying that in general, FDT does not require that the agent must reason about whether they are in a simulation. In the published Bomb scenario in particular it is not stated whether the agent may be in a simulation, and it is also not stated whether the agent knows or believes that they may be in a simulation. In principle, all these combinations of cases must be considered separately.
Since the scenario does not make any statement in this respect, I do believe that it was not intended by the scenario author that the agent should reason as if they may be in a simulation. That would be just one of infinitely many unstated possibilities that might affect the analysis if they were considered, all of which would complicate and detract from the issue they intended to discuss.
So I do believe that the analysis described in the original scenario was carried out for an agent that does not consider whether or not they may be in a simulation, as distinct from them actually being definitely not in a simulation.
After all, the fact of the matter is that they are in a simulation. We are simulating what such an agent should do, and there is no “real” agent in this case.