I’m exceedingly excited about this sequence. The Embedded Agency sequence laid out a core set of confusions, and it seems like this is a formal system that deals with those issues far better than the current alternatives e.g. the cybernetics model. This post lays out the basics of Cartesian Frames clearly and communicates key parts of the overall approach (“reasoning like Pearl’s to objects like game theory’s, with a motivation like Hutter’s”). I’ve also never seen math explained with as much helpful philosophical justification (e.g. “Part of the point of the Cartesian frame framework is that we are not privileging either interpretation”), and I appreciate all of that quite a bit.
It seems likely that by the end of this sequence it will be on a list of my all-time favorite things posted to LessWrong 2.0. I’m looking forward to getting to grips with Cartesian Frames, understanding how they work, and to start applying those intuitions to my other discussions of agency.
I’m also curating it a little quickly to let people know that Scott is giving a talk on this sequence this Sunday at 12:00PM PT. Furthermore, Scott is holding weekly office hours (see the same link for more info) for people to ask questions, and Diffractor is running a reading group in the MIRIx Discord, which I recommend people PM him to get an invite to (I just did so myself, it’s a nice Discord server).
Curated.
I’m exceedingly excited about this sequence. The Embedded Agency sequence laid out a core set of confusions, and it seems like this is a formal system that deals with those issues far better than the current alternatives e.g. the cybernetics model. This post lays out the basics of Cartesian Frames clearly and communicates key parts of the overall approach (“reasoning like Pearl’s to objects like game theory’s, with a motivation like Hutter’s”). I’ve also never seen math explained with as much helpful philosophical justification (e.g. “Part of the point of the Cartesian frame framework is that we are not privileging either interpretation”), and I appreciate all of that quite a bit.
It seems likely that by the end of this sequence it will be on a list of my all-time favorite things posted to LessWrong 2.0. I’m looking forward to getting to grips with Cartesian Frames, understanding how they work, and to start applying those intuitions to my other discussions of agency.
I’m also curating it a little quickly to let people know that Scott is giving a talk on this sequence this Sunday at 12:00PM PT. Furthermore, Scott is holding weekly office hours (see the same link for more info) for people to ask questions, and Diffractor is running a reading group in the MIRIx Discord, which I recommend people PM him to get an invite to (I just did so myself, it’s a nice Discord server).