I agree that infra-bayesianism isn’t just thinking about sampling properties, and maybe ‘statistics’ is a bad word for that. But the failure on transparent Newcomb without kind of hacky changes to me suggests a focus on “what actions look good thru-out the probability distribution” rather than on “what logically-causes this program to succeed”.
There is some truth in that, in the sense that, your beliefs must take a form that is learnable rather than just a god-given system of logical relationships.
There’s actually an upcoming post going into more detail on what the deal is with pseudocausal and acausal belief functions, among several other things, I can send you a draft if you want. “Belief Functions and Decision Theory” is a post that hasn’t held up nearly as well to time as “Basic Inframeasure Theory”.
I agree that infra-bayesianism isn’t just thinking about sampling properties, and maybe ‘statistics’ is a bad word for that. But the failure on transparent Newcomb without kind of hacky changes to me suggests a focus on “what actions look good thru-out the probability distribution” rather than on “what logically-causes this program to succeed”.
There is some truth in that, in the sense that, your beliefs must take a form that is learnable rather than just a god-given system of logical relationships.
There’s actually an upcoming post going into more detail on what the deal is with pseudocausal and acausal belief functions, among several other things, I can send you a draft if you want. “Belief Functions and Decision Theory” is a post that hasn’t held up nearly as well to time as “Basic Inframeasure Theory”.
Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think I have room for that right now.