I am the main organizer of Effective Altruism Cambridge (UK), a group of people who are thinking hard about how to help others the most and address the world’s most pressing problems through their careers.
Previously, I worked in organizations such as EA France (community director), Existential Risk Alliance (research fellow), and the Center on Long-Term Risk (events and community associate).
I’ve conducted research on various longtermist topics (some of it posted on the EA Forum) and recently finished a Master’s in moral philosophy.
I’ve also written some stuff here on LessWrong.
You can give me anonymous feedback here. :)
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Thanks a lot for these comments, Oscar! :)
I forgot to copy-paste a footnote clarifying that “as made explicit in the Appendix, what “significant” exactly means depends on the payoffs of the game”! Fixed. I agree this is vague, still, although I guess it has to be since the payoffs are unspecified?
Also a copy-pasting mistake. Thanks for catching it! :)
This may be an unimportant detail, but—interestingly—I opted for this concept of “compatible DT” precisely because I wanted to imply that two CDT players may be decision-entangled! Say CDT-agent David plays a PD against a perfect copy of himself. Their decisions to defect are entangled, right? Whatever David does, his copy does the same (although David sort of “ignores” that when he makes his decision). David is very unlikely to be decision-entangled with any random CDT agent, however (in that case, the mutual defection is just a “coincidence” and is not due to some dependence between their respective reasoning/choices). I didn’t mean the concept of “decision-entanglement” to pre-assume superrationality. I want CDT-David to agree/admit that he is decision-entangled with his perfect copy. Nonetheless, since he doesn’t buy superrationality, I know that he won’t factor the decision-entanglement into his expected value optimization (he won’t “factor in the possibility that p=q”.) That’s why you need significant credence in both decision-entanglement and superrationality to get cooperation, here. :)
Agreed, but if you’re CDTer, you can’t be decision-entangled with an EDTer, right? Say you’re both told you’re decision-entangled. What happens? Well, you don’t care so you still defect while EDTer cooperates. Different decisions. So… you two weren’t entangled after all. The person who told you you were was mistaken.
So yes, decision-entanglement can’t depend on your DT per se, but doesn’t it have to depend on its “compatibility” with the other’s for there to be any dependence between your algos/choices? How could a CDTer and an EDTer be decision-entangled in a PD?
Not very confident about my answers. Feel free to object. :) And thanks for making me rethink my assumptions/definitions!