But I wouldn’t rule out someone who’s thought a lot about DT being pretty confident. I don’t think you need to need “solve” DT to be v confident that acausal trade is a thing anymore than you need to solve ethics to know that murder is wrong.
I could imagine that some of the acausal trade crowd have thought long enough about the space of decision theories and their implications to conclude that acausal trade is a consequence of many plausible DTs and is very likely happening.
My understanding is that even with CDT you can get sim-based trade (which i’d consider a form of acausal trade), and that on a first pass EDT and UDT both imply that acausal trade makes sense. So we only need some powerful agents to do one of these decision theories for acausal trade to go ahead.
I guess I can imagine a countercase like “bc of threats very few civs do acausal trade”, though it’s hard to see it go down to zero. I’d be curious if you have other counter-cases in mind.
(In general i’d defer to someone who thinks about this more on how likely acausal trade is to happen overall!)
I could imagine that some of the acausal trade crowd have thought long enough about the space of decision theories and their implications to conclude that acausal trade is a consequence of many plausible DTs and is very likely happening.
I’m not aware of anyone who has claimed this, and wouldn’t trust such claims anyway, since humans just aren’t that good at fully delineating the space of plausible solutions to some philosophical question. E.g. for the first half century of decision theory as a field, nobody thought that updatelessness might be worth investigating.
(In general i’d defer to someone who thinks about this more on how likely acausal trade is to happen overall!)
I wouldn’t defer a lot, because humans are also bad at finding flaws in their favorite philosophical ideas. Think of, e.g., theorists/proponents of Objectivism or Communism.
I’d be curious if you have other counter-cases in mind.
There are too many civilizations in the multiverse to simulate all of them. We can only do a sampling and then decide how to trade based on the statistical properties, but this gives an incentive to free-ride (i.e. getting the benefits of trade from other civilizations that did not specifically simulate us, without paying the costs), which may cause an overall breakdown in trade.
There are too many civilizations in the multiverse to simulate all of them. We can only do a sampling and then decide how to trade based on the statistical properties, but this gives an incentive to free-ride (i.e. getting the benefits of trade from other civilizations that did not specifically simulate us, without paying the costs), which may cause an overall breakdown in trade.
Hmm, but if each civ simulates 1 million others, every civ should be simulated 1 million times? I.e. the more civs in the universe, the more civs to do the simulating. And then i think there’s a stable equ where you only give nice things to the civs you simulate if you see them giving nice things to the ones they simulate. I suppose there’s a q of whether we’re able to achieve that equ?
Also, you can do the thing where when your sims run their own sims, you insert your universe into their sim, guaranteeing 2-way trade?
Thanks, i’m not personally “very sure” either
But I wouldn’t rule out someone who’s thought a lot about DT being pretty confident. I don’t think you need to need “solve” DT to be v confident that acausal trade is a thing anymore than you need to solve ethics to know that murder is wrong.
I could imagine that some of the acausal trade crowd have thought long enough about the space of decision theories and their implications to conclude that acausal trade is a consequence of many plausible DTs and is very likely happening.
My understanding is that even with CDT you can get sim-based trade (which i’d consider a form of acausal trade), and that on a first pass EDT and UDT both imply that acausal trade makes sense. So we only need some powerful agents to do one of these decision theories for acausal trade to go ahead.
I guess I can imagine a countercase like “bc of threats very few civs do acausal trade”, though it’s hard to see it go down to zero. I’d be curious if you have other counter-cases in mind.
(In general i’d defer to someone who thinks about this more on how likely acausal trade is to happen overall!)
I’m not aware of anyone who has claimed this, and wouldn’t trust such claims anyway, since humans just aren’t that good at fully delineating the space of plausible solutions to some philosophical question. E.g. for the first half century of decision theory as a field, nobody thought that updatelessness might be worth investigating.
I wouldn’t defer a lot, because humans are also bad at finding flaws in their favorite philosophical ideas. Think of, e.g., theorists/proponents of Objectivism or Communism.
There are too many civilizations in the multiverse to simulate all of them. We can only do a sampling and then decide how to trade based on the statistical properties, but this gives an incentive to free-ride (i.e. getting the benefits of trade from other civilizations that did not specifically simulate us, without paying the costs), which may cause an overall breakdown in trade.
Hmm, but if each civ simulates 1 million others, every civ should be simulated 1 million times? I.e. the more civs in the universe, the more civs to do the simulating. And then i think there’s a stable equ where you only give nice things to the civs you simulate if you see them giving nice things to the ones they simulate. I suppose there’s a q of whether we’re able to achieve that equ?
Also, you can do the thing where when your sims run their own sims, you insert your universe into their sim, guaranteeing 2-way trade?