It may be worth thinking about why proponents of a very popular idea in this community don’t know of its academic analogues, despite them having existed since the early 90s[1] and appearing on the introductory SEP page for dynamic choice.
Academics may in turn ask: clearly LessWrong has some blind spots, but how big?
It may be worth thinking about why proponents of a very popular idea in this community don’t know of its academic analogues
I don’t think this is fair, because even though component ideas behind UDT/FDT have academic analogues, it doesn’t look like someone put them together into a single decision theory formulation in academic literature, at least prior to MIRI’s “Cheating Death in Damascus” being published. Also “Cheating Death in Damascus” does cite both Meacham and Spohn (and others) and it seems excusable for me to have forgotten those references since they were both published after I wrote about UDT and again were only component ideas of it, plus I haven’t actively worked on decision theory for several years.
I think Sami’s comment is entirely fair given the language and framing of the original post. It is of course fine to forget about references, but e.g. “I find it curious that none of my ideas have a following in academia or have been reinvented/rediscovered by academia” and “Clearly academia has some blind spots, but how big?” reads like you don’t consider it a possilbity that you might have re-invented something yourself, and that academics are at fault for not taking up your ideas.
(It sucks to debate this, but ignoring it might be interpreted as tacit agreement. Maybe I should have considered the risk that something like this would happen and not written my OP.)
When I wrote the OP, I was pretty sure that the specific combination of ideas in UDT has not been invented or re-invented or have much of a following in academia, at least as of 2019 when Cheating Death in Damascus was published, because the authors of that paper obviously did a literature search and would have told me if they had found something very similar to UDT in the literature, and I think I also went through the papers it referenced as being related and did not find something that had all of the elements of UDT (that’s probably why your references look familiar to me). Plus FDT was apparently considered novel enough that the reviewers of the paper didn’t tell the authors that they had to call it by the name of an existing academic decision theory.
So it’s not that I “don’t consider it a possibility that you might have re-invented something yourself” but that I had good reason to think that’s not the case?
I think there is nothing surprising that small community of nerds writing in spare time has blind spots, but when large professional community has such blind spots that’s surprising.
On your first point: as Sami writes, resolute choice is mentioned in the introductory SEP article on dynamic choice (it even has its own section!), as well as in the SEP article on decision theory. And SEP is the first place you go when you want to learn about philosophical topics and find references.
On your second point: as I wrote in my comment above, (i) academics have produced seemingly similar ideas to e.g. updatelessness (well before they were written up on LW) so it is unclear why academics should engage with less rigorous, unpublished proposals that appear to be similar (in other words, I don’t think the phrase “blind spots” is warranted), and (ii) when academics have commented on or engaged with LW DT ideas, they have to my knowledge largely been critical (e.g. see the post by Wolfgang Schwarz I linked above, as well as the quote from Greaves)[1].
To clarify, by “blind spot” I wasn’t complaining that academia isn’t engaging specifically with posts written up on LW, but more that nobody in academia seems to think that the combination of “updateless+logical” is clearly the most important or promising direction to explore in decision theory.
It may be worth thinking about why proponents of a very popular idea in this community don’t know of its academic analogues, despite them having existed since the early 90s[1] and appearing on the introductory SEP page for dynamic choice.
Academics may in turn ask: clearly LessWrong has some blind spots, but how big?
And it’s not like these have been forgotton; e.g., McClennen’s (1990) work still gets cited regularly.
I don’t think this is fair, because even though component ideas behind UDT/FDT have academic analogues, it doesn’t look like someone put them together into a single decision theory formulation in academic literature, at least prior to MIRI’s “Cheating Death in Damascus” being published. Also “Cheating Death in Damascus” does cite both Meacham and Spohn (and others) and it seems excusable for me to have forgotten those references since they were both published after I wrote about UDT and again were only component ideas of it, plus I haven’t actively worked on decision theory for several years.
I think Sami’s comment is entirely fair given the language and framing of the original post. It is of course fine to forget about references, but e.g. “I find it curious that none of my ideas have a following in academia or have been reinvented/rediscovered by academia” and “Clearly academia has some blind spots, but how big?” reads like you don’t consider it a possilbity that you might have re-invented something yourself, and that academics are at fault for not taking up your ideas.
(It sucks to debate this, but ignoring it might be interpreted as tacit agreement. Maybe I should have considered the risk that something like this would happen and not written my OP.)
When I wrote the OP, I was pretty sure that the specific combination of ideas in UDT has not been invented or re-invented or have much of a following in academia, at least as of 2019 when Cheating Death in Damascus was published, because the authors of that paper obviously did a literature search and would have told me if they had found something very similar to UDT in the literature, and I think I also went through the papers it referenced as being related and did not find something that had all of the elements of UDT (that’s probably why your references look familiar to me). Plus FDT was apparently considered novel enough that the reviewers of the paper didn’t tell the authors that they had to call it by the name of an existing academic decision theory.
So it’s not that I “don’t consider it a possibility that you might have re-invented something yourself” but that I had good reason to think that’s not the case?
I think there is nothing surprising that small community of nerds writing in spare time has blind spots, but when large professional community has such blind spots that’s surprising.
On your first point: as Sami writes, resolute choice is mentioned in the introductory SEP article on dynamic choice (it even has its own section!), as well as in the SEP article on decision theory. And SEP is the first place you go when you want to learn about philosophical topics and find references.
On your second point: as I wrote in my comment above, (i) academics have produced seemingly similar ideas to e.g. updatelessness (well before they were written up on LW) so it is unclear why academics should engage with less rigorous, unpublished proposals that appear to be similar (in other words, I don’t think the phrase “blind spots” is warranted), and (ii) when academics have commented on or engaged with LW DT ideas, they have to my knowledge largely been critical (e.g. see the post by Wolfgang Schwarz I linked above, as well as the quote from Greaves)[1].
Cheating Death in Damascus getting published in the Journal of Philosophy is a notable exception though!
To clarify, by “blind spot” I wasn’t complaining that academia isn’t engaging specifically with posts written up on LW, but more that nobody in academia seems to think that the combination of “updateless+logical” is clearly the most important or promising direction to explore in decision theory.