The conflict arises when the self at the perspective center is making the decision but is also being analyzed. With CDT it leads to a self-referential-like paradox: I’m making the decision (which according to CDT is based on agency and unpredictable) yet there really is no decision but merely generating an output.
Precommitments sidestep this by saying there is no decision at the point being analyzed. It essentially moves the decision to a different observer-moment. Thus allowing the analysis to be taken into account in the decision analysis. In Newcomb, this is like instead of asking what should I do when facing the two boxes, asking what kind of machine/brain should I design so it would perform well in the Newcomb experiments.
I think that’s maybe the point people can agree on: To build a machine that performs well. That goes beyond building a decision procedure that performs well in many specific situations (that would each correspond to observer moments) but not in a succession of them, or in situations that would require its own analyzability. Building such a machine requires specifying what it optimizes over, which will be potentially very many observer moments.
The conflict arises when the self at the perspective center is making the decision but is also being analyzed. With CDT it leads to a self-referential-like paradox: I’m making the decision (which according to CDT is based on agency and unpredictable) yet there really is no decision but merely generating an output.
Precommitments sidestep this by saying there is no decision at the point being analyzed. It essentially moves the decision to a different observer-moment. Thus allowing the analysis to be taken into account in the decision analysis. In Newcomb, this is like instead of asking what should I do when facing the two boxes, asking what kind of machine/brain should I design so it would perform well in the Newcomb experiments.
I think that’s maybe the point people can agree on: To build a machine that performs well. That goes beyond building a decision procedure that performs well in many specific situations (that would each correspond to observer moments) but not in a succession of them, or in situations that would require its own analyzability. Building such a machine requires specifying what it optimizes over, which will be potentially very many observer moments.