If I’m understanding correctly, if we are thinking about the ECL problem with a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma, the main new wrinkles relative to other problems are that 1) each agent is unsure that the other will actually make the choice recommended by FDT/the great commitment, 2) observing one’s own choice may provide some new evidence about the probability the other agent will make a given choice (probably modeled as a Bayesian update, which some might think of as an ‘acausal influence’), and finally 3) the original FDT/great commitment recommendation has to take all this into account somehow.
It seems likely to me that one could analyze such a problem in an EDT framework with pre-commitments, where both agents have some probability of backing out of the pre-commitments, and don’t know for sure what those probabilities are so they have to estimate them in making their choice. But in such an analysis I wouldn’t think there’d be any need for consideration of the “metaphysical” issues you talk about in footnote 11 about considering the past long before entering this particular prisoner’s dilemma problem. So is your view that such considerations would be needed to deal with the issues 1), 2), 3) I listed above, or do you see separate issues in an ECL prisoner’s dilemma problem?
Hm, okay I think you’re right actually. Thank you for prodding at this. I mean, it’s not even clear what distinguishes ECL from the prisoner’s dilemma with a twin (modulo counterfactuals). So I think you’re right that updatelessness isn’t needed there, and you only need the correct counterfactuals (the EDT vs CDT dimension), as you said. So there’s no son-of-CDT issue at all for humans (which is actually great news for commitment theory!). I’ll rewrite that footnote.
If I’m understanding correctly, if we are thinking about the ECL problem with a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma, the main new wrinkles relative to other problems are that 1) each agent is unsure that the other will actually make the choice recommended by FDT/the great commitment, 2) observing one’s own choice may provide some new evidence about the probability the other agent will make a given choice (probably modeled as a Bayesian update, which some might think of as an ‘acausal influence’), and finally 3) the original FDT/great commitment recommendation has to take all this into account somehow.
It seems likely to me that one could analyze such a problem in an EDT framework with pre-commitments, where both agents have some probability of backing out of the pre-commitments, and don’t know for sure what those probabilities are so they have to estimate them in making their choice. But in such an analysis I wouldn’t think there’d be any need for consideration of the “metaphysical” issues you talk about in footnote 11 about considering the past long before entering this particular prisoner’s dilemma problem. So is your view that such considerations would be needed to deal with the issues 1), 2), 3) I listed above, or do you see separate issues in an ECL prisoner’s dilemma problem?
Hm, okay I think you’re right actually. Thank you for prodding at this. I mean, it’s not even clear what distinguishes ECL from the prisoner’s dilemma with a twin (modulo counterfactuals). So I think you’re right that updatelessness isn’t needed there, and you only need the correct counterfactuals (the EDT vs CDT dimension), as you said. So there’s no son-of-CDT issue at all for humans (which is actually great news for commitment theory!). I’ll rewrite that footnote.
Yeah, I also changed the ECL example screenshot. This is much better, thanks a lot.