I think of virtue ethics as reflecting a timeless decision theory. For example, if you use TDT to make decisions, you don’t just want to decide to one-box because you heard it was cool, you want to be the kind of person who one-boxes.
Would that mean that you want to actually precommit to making certain choices in certain situations, or that you merely want to be predicted to do so, or are those two indistinguishable?
EDIT: I know this is rude, but whoever’s downvoting, since this was my original blog post, would you mind explaining precisely how stupid or ignorant I’ve been? I’d really prefer higher-information signals that can point me towards where/how to learn things.
Actually precomitting corresponds to TDT/virtue ethics, and merely trying to be predicted to do so would correspond to something else (technically TDT is in this class, but it is a much larger class than just that).
Actually precomitting corresponds to TDT/virtue ethics, and merely trying to be predicted to do so would correspond to something else (technically TDT is in this class, but it is a much larger class than just that).
This is a really good point and might need to be repeated more often. This may be a source of some confusion about what TDT does.
Would that mean that you want to actually precommit to making certain choices in certain situations, or that you merely want to be predicted to do so, or are those two indistinguishable?
EDIT: I know this is rude, but whoever’s downvoting, since this was my original blog post, would you mind explaining precisely how stupid or ignorant I’ve been? I’d really prefer higher-information signals that can point me towards where/how to learn things.
Actually precomitting corresponds to TDT/virtue ethics, and merely trying to be predicted to do so would correspond to something else (technically TDT is in this class, but it is a much larger class than just that).
This is a really good point and might need to be repeated more often. This may be a source of some confusion about what TDT does.
I don’t think they can be distinguished in the version of the Newcomb Problem that has been presented on lw. Is that what you were asking?
Yes.