Peers get the same results from the same actions. It’s not exactly clear what “same action” or “same result” means—is “one boxing on the 100th run” the same as “one boxing on the 101st run” or “box 100 with $1m in it” the same as “box 101 with $1m in it”? I think we should think of peers as being defined with respect to a particular choice of variables representing actions and results.
I think the definitions of these things aren’t immediately obvious, but it seems like we might be able to figure them out sometimes. Given a decision problem, it seems to me that “the things that I can do” and “the things that I care about” might often be known to me. It seems to be the case that I can also define some variables that represent copies of these things from your point of view, although it’s a bit less obvious how to do that.
If we think about predictions vs outcomes, we judge good predictions to be ones that have a good match to outcomes. Similarly, a “peer inference” is a bit like a prediction—I think this group of action-outcome pairs will be similar to my own—and the outcome that can be assessed at the end is whether they actually are similar to my own action and outcome. I can’t assess whether they “would have been” peers “had I taken a different action”, but maybe I don’t need to. For example: if I assess some group of people to be my peers relative to a particular decision problem, and all the people who take action 1 end up winners while all the people who take action 2 end up losers, and I take action 1 and end up a winner then I have done well relative to the group of people I assessed to be my peers, regardless of “what would have happened had I taken action 2″.
There is a sense in which I feel like peers ought to also be a group that it is relevant to judge myself against—I want to take actions that do better than my peers, in some sense. Maybe defining actions and outcomes addresses this concern? I’m not sure.
I think a substantial problem with this theory is the fact that I may often find that the group of peers for some problem contains only me, which leaves us without a useful definition for a counterfactual.
Peers get the same results from the same actions. It’s not exactly clear what “same action” or “same result” means—is “one boxing on the 100th run” the same as “one boxing on the 101st run” or “box 100 with $1m in it” the same as “box 101 with $1m in it”? I think we should think of peers as being defined with respect to a particular choice of variables representing actions and results.
I think the definitions of these things aren’t immediately obvious, but it seems like we might be able to figure them out sometimes. Given a decision problem, it seems to me that “the things that I can do” and “the things that I care about” might often be known to me. It seems to be the case that I can also define some variables that represent copies of these things from your point of view, although it’s a bit less obvious how to do that.
If we think about predictions vs outcomes, we judge good predictions to be ones that have a good match to outcomes. Similarly, a “peer inference” is a bit like a prediction—I think this group of action-outcome pairs will be similar to my own—and the outcome that can be assessed at the end is whether they actually are similar to my own action and outcome. I can’t assess whether they “would have been” peers “had I taken a different action”, but maybe I don’t need to. For example: if I assess some group of people to be my peers relative to a particular decision problem, and all the people who take action 1 end up winners while all the people who take action 2 end up losers, and I take action 1 and end up a winner then I have done well relative to the group of people I assessed to be my peers, regardless of “what would have happened had I taken action 2″.
There is a sense in which I feel like peers ought to also be a group that it is relevant to judge myself against—I want to take actions that do better than my peers, in some sense. Maybe defining actions and outcomes addresses this concern? I’m not sure.
I think a substantial problem with this theory is the fact that I may often find that the group of peers for some problem contains only me, which leaves us without a useful definition for a counterfactual.