Maximin over outcomes would lead to the agent devoting all its efforts towards avoiding the worst outcomes, sacrificing overall utility, while maximin over expected value pushes towards policies that do acceptably on average in all of the environments that it may find itself in.
Regarding “why listen to past me”, I guess to answer this question I’d need to ask about your intuitions on Counterfactual mugging. What would you do if it’s one-shot? What would you do if it’s repeated? If you were told about the problem beforehand, would you pay money for a commitment mechanism to make future-you pay up the money if asked? (for +EV)
Maximin over outcomes would lead to the agent devoting all its efforts towards avoiding the worst outcomes, sacrificing overall utility, while maximin over expected value pushes towards policies that do acceptably on average in all of the environments that it may find itself in.
Regarding “why listen to past me”, I guess to answer this question I’d need to ask about your intuitions on Counterfactual mugging. What would you do if it’s one-shot? What would you do if it’s repeated? If you were told about the problem beforehand, would you pay money for a commitment mechanism to make future-you pay up the money if asked? (for +EV)