EDT seems to mean something different every time someone writes an article to prop it up against the argument, made from its infancy, that it recommends trying to change the world by managing the news you receive of it.
When the decider neither acts on the world nor is acted on by it (save for having somehow acquired knowledge about the world), there is only maximisation of expected utility, and no distinction between causal, evidential, or any other decision theory. When the decider is embedded in the world, this is called “naturalized decision theory”, but no-one has a mature example of one.
In the special case where the decider can accurately read the world and act on it, but the world has neither read nor write access to the decision-making process, and no agency in what the decider can know, CDT is correct. In the special case where the decider does not decide at all, but is a passive process that can do nothing but observe its own actions, then EDT is correct. CDT two-boxes on Newcomb and smokes in the Smoking Lesion problem. EDT (as originally formulated) one-boxes and abstains. On LessWrong, I believe the general consensus, or at least, Eliezer’s belief, is to one-box and smoke, ruling out both theories.
But there is at least one author (see Eells (1981, 1982) discussed
here) arguing that EDT (or his formulation of it) two-boxes on Newcomb.
Recalling a Zen koan, a CDT agent is not subject to causation and an EDT agent is subject to causation, but a naturalized decision theory must be
one with causation.
EDT seems to mean something different every time someone writes an article to prop it up against the argument, made from its infancy, that it recommends trying to change the world by managing the news you receive of it.
When the decider neither acts on the world nor is acted on by it (save for having somehow acquired knowledge about the world), there is only maximisation of expected utility, and no distinction between causal, evidential, or any other decision theory. When the decider is embedded in the world, this is called “naturalized decision theory”, but no-one has a mature example of one.
In the special case where the decider can accurately read the world and act on it, but the world has neither read nor write access to the decision-making process, and no agency in what the decider can know, CDT is correct. In the special case where the decider does not decide at all, but is a passive process that can do nothing but observe its own actions, then EDT is correct. CDT two-boxes on Newcomb and smokes in the Smoking Lesion problem. EDT (as originally formulated) one-boxes and abstains. On LessWrong, I believe the general consensus, or at least, Eliezer’s belief, is to one-box and smoke, ruling out both theories.
But there is at least one author (see Eells (1981, 1982) discussed here) arguing that EDT (or his formulation of it) two-boxes on Newcomb.
Recalling a Zen koan, a CDT agent is not subject to causation and an EDT agent is subject to causation, but a naturalized decision theory must be one with causation.