For the coin came up tails give me 1000 please case does it reduce to this?
“I can predict that if (the other agent predicts) I choose strategy X: for any gamble I’d want to enter if the consequences were not already determined, I will pay when i lose, then the other agent will implement strategy Y: letting me play, and my expected payoff is Z:999,000”,
“I just flipped a fair coin. I decided, before I flipped the coin, that if it came up heads, I would ask you for $1000. And if it came up tails, I would give you $1,000,000 if and only if I predicted that you would give me $1000 if the coin had come up heads. The coin came up heads—can I have $1000?”
Obviously, the only reflectively consistent answer in this case is “Yes—here’s the $1000″, because if you’re an agent who expects to encounter many problems like this in the future, you will self-modify to be the sort of agent who answers “Yes” to this sort of question—just like with Newcomb’s Problem or Parfit’s Hitchhiker.”
I think more generally if there’s any possibility that you’ll encounter anything like this in the future you should precommit to paying up. Precommiting to paying up acts as an entry cost for positive utility gambles.
And it would definetely have to be utility rather than, say, money because rich enemies could bankrupt you if you were willing to take 51;49 bets of all your stakes vs some of theirs. This might be trivial but for a second I wasn’t sure if this would make you more open to exploitation than if you would take that potential bankruptcy risk anyway.
Though I’m not sure provisioning for this kind of thing would be a good idea. Who’s going to do this kind of thing anyway instead of just setting forth the terms of the bet. When are you going to know, as is stipulated here that there was a decent chance of you getting anything and they haven’t just somehow tricked you. A simple solution might just be to refuse this kind of thing altogether, and then people who want to bet with you will have to ask in advance. I can’t think of any scenario where someone would have a legitimate reason to bet like this rather than normally.
For the coin came up tails give me 1000 please case does it reduce to this?
“I can predict that if (the other agent predicts) I choose strategy X: for any gamble I’d want to enter if the consequences were not already determined, I will pay when i lose, then the other agent will implement strategy Y: letting me play, and my expected payoff is Z:999,000”,
“I just flipped a fair coin. I decided, before I flipped the coin, that if it came up heads, I would ask you for $1000. And if it came up tails, I would give you $1,000,000 if and only if I predicted that you would give me $1000 if the coin had come up heads. The coin came up heads—can I have $1000?” Obviously, the only reflectively consistent answer in this case is “Yes—here’s the $1000″, because if you’re an agent who expects to encounter many problems like this in the future, you will self-modify to be the sort of agent who answers “Yes” to this sort of question—just like with Newcomb’s Problem or Parfit’s Hitchhiker.”
I think more generally if there’s any possibility that you’ll encounter anything like this in the future you should precommit to paying up. Precommiting to paying up acts as an entry cost for positive utility gambles.
And it would definetely have to be utility rather than, say, money because rich enemies could bankrupt you if you were willing to take 51;49 bets of all your stakes vs some of theirs. This might be trivial but for a second I wasn’t sure if this would make you more open to exploitation than if you would take that potential bankruptcy risk anyway.
Though I’m not sure provisioning for this kind of thing would be a good idea. Who’s going to do this kind of thing anyway instead of just setting forth the terms of the bet. When are you going to know, as is stipulated here that there was a decent chance of you getting anything and they haven’t just somehow tricked you. A simple solution might just be to refuse this kind of thing altogether, and then people who want to bet with you will have to ask in advance. I can’t think of any scenario where someone would have a legitimate reason to bet like this rather than normally.