No one has metaphysics problem when we talk about classical game theory of zero-sum games, and this is not because classical game theory doesn’t have weird situations warranting metaphysics problem. For example, in poker you can have position where Nash equilibrium strategy is to fold with some probability, even if raise has better expected value from the purely causal perspective, because if you would predictably consider “always raise” the best strategy in this position, your counterparty would adjust their play in a way that would leave you with less utility. Imagine that you roll the dice and it tells you to fold. I don’t see actual difference between this situation and not paying in blackmail. You can say something like “I fold to help my counterfactual versions” but this is interpretation, not actual meaning of your move, which is “this move is a part of Nash equilibrium strategy for this game”. See also counterfactual mugging poker.
I think that people just have better intuitions about zero-sum games? It is intuitive that you should sacrifice some of your utility at war where you won’t get to see final benefits, while it’s less intuitive that you should burn some of your utility to disincentivize blackmail? I think the second is also first-order intuitive for ordinary person, but it is kind of “emotionally intuitive”, while standard game theory has “cold calculating” vibes and this creates dissonance between solutions.
No, all the examples you list are ones where you can (with causal reasoning) self-modify yourself / precommit to the strategy and/or can expect to have causal benefits if you get known as someone who follows it. This is exactly what I meant when I referred to “confusion that FDT is necessary for everyday psychological precommitments[6], confusion that everyday psychological precommitments are sufficient to become an FDT agent[7]”. This is all doable with normal decision theory. You need something like the instant blackmail scenario I describe to tease apart FDT and normal decision theory, and I completely disagree that that’s intuitively the same situation.
The whole causal line of reasoning explodes in the scenario “one shot game against alien which flies away at lightspeed after game, you are forbidden to tell anyone about how game went in details and can only take your winnings”. For alien to think that you would precommit they need to do FDT over decision algorithms which consider precommitment.
I’m saying that if you were to play one shot poker with no reputation consequences against alien who never met humans before and will never meet them after and you asked classical game theorist how to play it, they would answer “just play Nash equilibrium strategy for poker”. If after that you asked “what to do if I rolled the dice to randomize and dice came up ‘fold’ in situation where folding means foregoing all expected winnings which would happen if dice came up ‘raise’” they would answer “just fold in this case”. These recommendations would be considered pretty much non-controversial and not requiring weird metaphysics by academic decision theorists, because classical game theory of zero-sum games is pretty much non-controversial, even if they are one shot and include aliens. Do you disagree?
I have no idea what academics would say, but insofar as academics would say that, they would just be wrong—overindexing on the “game theory vibe” of the situation, without realizing that this context is different.
No one has metaphysics problem when we talk about classical game theory of zero-sum games, and this is not because classical game theory doesn’t have weird situations warranting metaphysics problem. For example, in poker you can have position where Nash equilibrium strategy is to fold with some probability, even if raise has better expected value from the purely causal perspective, because if you would predictably consider “always raise” the best strategy in this position, your counterparty would adjust their play in a way that would leave you with less utility. Imagine that you roll the dice and it tells you to fold. I don’t see actual difference between this situation and not paying in blackmail. You can say something like “I fold to help my counterfactual versions” but this is interpretation, not actual meaning of your move, which is “this move is a part of Nash equilibrium strategy for this game”. See also counterfactual mugging poker.
I think that people just have better intuitions about zero-sum games? It is intuitive that you should sacrifice some of your utility at war where you won’t get to see final benefits, while it’s less intuitive that you should burn some of your utility to disincentivize blackmail? I think the second is also first-order intuitive for ordinary person, but it is kind of “emotionally intuitive”, while standard game theory has “cold calculating” vibes and this creates dissonance between solutions.
No, all the examples you list are ones where you can (with causal reasoning) self-modify yourself / precommit to the strategy and/or can expect to have causal benefits if you get known as someone who follows it. This is exactly what I meant when I referred to “confusion that FDT is necessary for everyday psychological precommitments[6], confusion that everyday psychological precommitments are sufficient to become an FDT agent[7]”. This is all doable with normal decision theory. You need something like the instant blackmail scenario I describe to tease apart FDT and normal decision theory, and I completely disagree that that’s intuitively the same situation.
The whole causal line of reasoning explodes in the scenario “one shot game against alien which flies away at lightspeed after game, you are forbidden to tell anyone about how game went in details and can only take your winnings”. For alien to think that you would precommit they need to do FDT over decision algorithms which consider precommitment.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. But your poker example and your war example are not like that, so why talk about them?
I’m saying that if you were to play one shot poker with no reputation consequences against alien who never met humans before and will never meet them after and you asked classical game theorist how to play it, they would answer “just play Nash equilibrium strategy for poker”. If after that you asked “what to do if I rolled the dice to randomize and dice came up ‘fold’ in situation where folding means foregoing all expected winnings which would happen if dice came up ‘raise’” they would answer “just fold in this case”. These recommendations would be considered pretty much non-controversial and not requiring weird metaphysics by academic decision theorists, because classical game theory of zero-sum games is pretty much non-controversial, even if they are one shot and include aliens. Do you disagree?
I have no idea what academics would say, but insofar as academics would say that, they would just be wrong—overindexing on the “game theory vibe” of the situation, without realizing that this context is different.