To Omega in the Newcomb’s problem humans are just automatons without a hint of agency.
I think there’s such a thing as too much dissolving of useful concepts. Just because you know how humans run doesn’t mean they cease to behave as agents. A human, especially when engaging in goal-directed behavior, is indeed acting as a causal component of the universe that takes in energy and turns it into optimization of events and waste-heat.
Just because you know how humans run doesn’t mean they cease to behave as agents.
So the question is whether agency is a good abstraction when you know everything there is to know about a complex-enough system. My experience in software development suggests that, while you can encode some requirements as “goals”, you rarely think about your code as having a human-like “capacity to act”. On the other hand software agent is a useful concept.
A human, especially when engaging in goal-directed behavior, is indeed acting as a causal component of the universe that takes in energy and turns it into optimization of events and waste-heat.
“is” seems too strong a term. “Can be usefully modeled as in some cases” seems more accurate.
I think there’s such a thing as too much dissolving of useful concepts. Just because you know how humans run doesn’t mean they cease to behave as agents. A human, especially when engaging in goal-directed behavior, is indeed acting as a causal component of the universe that takes in energy and turns it into optimization of events and waste-heat.
So the question is whether agency is a good abstraction when you know everything there is to know about a complex-enough system. My experience in software development suggests that, while you can encode some requirements as “goals”, you rarely think about your code as having a human-like “capacity to act”. On the other hand software agent is a useful concept.
“is” seems too strong a term. “Can be usefully modeled as in some cases” seems more accurate.