“My concern hinges on the way real agents need to make decisions, which is generally not timeless due to computational constraints”—that’s not what the timeless in timeless decision theory refers to.
“I realize this might make timeless decision theories idealized theories of decision making that can then be approximated by computational constrained agents”—well that’s exactly the idea
“But I have this nagging sense that even in that case the approximations may not do everything we want because they are trying to optimize on features that are unachievable for real agents”—This seems to be the central plank of your case. I don’t suppose you could spec it out some more? I have some idea of what you might be thinking, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
“But I have this nagging sense that even in that case the approximations may not do everything we want because they are trying to optimize on features that are unachievable for real agents”—This seems to be the central plank of your case. I don’t suppose you could spec it out some more? I have some idea of what you might be thinking, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
Well since I was confused my reasons for concern have dissolved and timelessness now feels like aiming in the direction of what you want, although it would probably make sense to consider stepping back further such that you are not trapped by, say, assumptions about the metaphysics of the world (think, allow yourself to go up a Tegmark level). So that aside I now wonder what you had in mind when I said this, since whatever i was thinking was not relevant.
Well, maybe it’s all unfounded if I’m confused about what makes these theories “timeless” or “updateless”, but I was under the impression that the goal was to have a decision theory where an agent couldn’t fall into the types of traps that happen if you allow agents to update on how they decide based on the outcomes of iterated games (though how they decide in the timeless case might include conditioning on memory) or condition on whether they are prior to or post seeing the outcome of a decision.
Regardless of the decision theory used, your previous calculations can become outdated due to new information. In Bayesian calculations, we normally have the agent update their model of the world based on evidence. In UDT (edited from TDT), the world model remains the same, but the selected agents change. So it isn’t obvious that one is worse than another in this regard.
Oh, so this sounds to me like (I also did a little additional refreshing on TDT), to translate this to philosophy terms I’m more comfortable with, timelessness is about having the agent not identify with its ontology, i.e. it can tell it’s using a map of the territory rather than confusing the two and so can change its map if needed (become a different agent). Although this makes me think maybe that’s not right because it’s not clear to me how you’d come to call the property timelessness unless it has something to do with how CDT relates the world and time.
Oh, I messed up, I mean UDT rather than TDT in the last comment. And in UDT it’s more a set of possible worlds that remains the same, rather than the model of a single world.
Anyway, timeless decision theories are called that because they calculate what a theoretical agent at the start of time would pre-commit to doing in the current situation.
“My concern hinges on the way real agents need to make decisions, which is generally not timeless due to computational constraints”—that’s not what the timeless in timeless decision theory refers to.
“I realize this might make timeless decision theories idealized theories of decision making that can then be approximated by computational constrained agents”—well that’s exactly the idea
“But I have this nagging sense that even in that case the approximations may not do everything we want because they are trying to optimize on features that are unachievable for real agents”—This seems to be the central plank of your case. I don’t suppose you could spec it out some more? I have some idea of what you might be thinking, but I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
Well since I was confused my reasons for concern have dissolved and timelessness now feels like aiming in the direction of what you want, although it would probably make sense to consider stepping back further such that you are not trapped by, say, assumptions about the metaphysics of the world (think, allow yourself to go up a Tegmark level). So that aside I now wonder what you had in mind when I said this, since whatever i was thinking was not relevant.
Well, maybe it’s all unfounded if I’m confused about what makes these theories “timeless” or “updateless”, but I was under the impression that the goal was to have a decision theory where an agent couldn’t fall into the types of traps that happen if you allow agents to update on how they decide based on the outcomes of iterated games (though how they decide in the timeless case might include conditioning on memory) or condition on whether they are prior to or post seeing the outcome of a decision.
Regardless of the decision theory used, your previous calculations can become outdated due to new information. In Bayesian calculations, we normally have the agent update their model of the world based on evidence. In UDT (edited from TDT), the world model remains the same, but the selected agents change. So it isn’t obvious that one is worse than another in this regard.
Oh, so this sounds to me like (I also did a little additional refreshing on TDT), to translate this to philosophy terms I’m more comfortable with, timelessness is about having the agent not identify with its ontology, i.e. it can tell it’s using a map of the territory rather than confusing the two and so can change its map if needed (become a different agent). Although this makes me think maybe that’s not right because it’s not clear to me how you’d come to call the property timelessness unless it has something to do with how CDT relates the world and time.
Oh, I messed up, I mean UDT rather than TDT in the last comment. And in UDT it’s more a set of possible worlds that remains the same, rather than the model of a single world.
Anyway, timeless decision theories are called that because they calculate what a theoretical agent at the start of time would pre-commit to doing in the current situation.