Can you speak more to how higher levels would allow predicting the future better?
I might be mistaken—my understanding of this is that the act of knowing and understanding that other people are on levels 3 and 4 is itself still a level-1 act: it’s an object-level belief about the states of human minds in the universe. And therefore you can be aware of the level-3 and level-4 effects of your own actions (and choose them accordingly), without being on 3 or 4 yourself. To be on level-3 or level-4 involves actually missing information (or at least risking missing it). As I’ve understood it.
And that’s why Zvi put the “Pragmatist” at only level 2, even though he “balances impact at all levels they are aware of slash care about.” He can lie, or he can tell the truth, and he does whatever will bring his net preferred effect across all levels. I think rationalists are the Pragmatist.
Can you speak more to how higher levels would allow predicting the future better?
I might be mistaken—my understanding of this is that the act of knowing and understanding that other people are on levels 3 and 4 is itself still a level-1 act: it’s an object-level belief about the states of human minds in the universe. And therefore you can be aware of the level-3 and level-4 effects of your own actions (and choose them accordingly), without being on 3 or 4 yourself. To be on level-3 or level-4 involves actually missing information (or at least risking missing it). As I’ve understood it.
And that’s why Zvi put the “Pragmatist” at only level 2, even though he “balances impact at all levels they are aware of slash care about.” He can lie, or he can tell the truth, and he does whatever will bring his net preferred effect across all levels. I think rationalists are the Pragmatist.