Yeah, I was just kidding!
omnizoid
Karma: 72
About three quarters of academic decision theorists two box on Newcombe’s problem. So this standard seems nuts. Only 20% one box. https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/4886?aos=1399
My goal was to get people to defer to Eliezer. I explicitly say he’s an interesting thinker who is worth reading.
I dispute that . . .
I didn’t say Eliezer was a liar and a fraud. I said he was often overconfident and eggregiously wrong, and explicitly described him as an interesting thinker who was worth reading.
//It presents each disagreement as though Eliezer were going against an expert consensus, when in fact each position mentioned is one where he sided with a camp in an extant expert divide.//
Nope false. There are no academic decision theorists I know of who endorse FDT, no philosophers of mind who agree with Eliezer’s assessment that epiphenomenalism is the term for those who accept zombies, and no relevant experts about consciousness who think that animals aren’t conscious with Eliezer’s confidence—that I know of.
The examples just show that sometimes you lose by being rational.
Unrelated, but I really liked your recent post on Eliezer’s bizarre claim that character attacks last is an epistemic standard.
What’s your explanations of why virtually no published papers defend it and no published decision theorists defend it? You really think none of them have thought of it or anything in the vicinity?
I mean like, I can give you some names. My friend Ethan who’s getting a Ph.D was one person. Schwarz knows a lot about decision theory and finds the view crazy—MacAskill doesn’t like it either.
I wouldn’t call a view crazy for just being disbelieved by many people. But if a view is both rejected by all relevant experts and extremely implausible, then I think it’s worth being called crazy!
I didn’t call people crazy, instead I called the view crazy. I think it’s crazy for the reasons I’ve explained, at length, both in my original article and over the course of the debate. It’s not about my particular decision theory friends—it’s that the fact that virtually no relevant experts agree with an idea is relevant to an assessment of it.
I’m sure Soares is a smart guy! As are a lot of defenders of FDT. Lesswrong selects disproportionately for smart, curious, interesting people. But smart people can believe crazy things—I’m sure I have some crazy beliefs; crazy in the sense of being unreasonable such that pretty much all rational people would give them up upon sufficient ideal reflection and discussion with people who know what they’re talking about.
Good one!
Though is there a reason?
Yep
You can make it with Parfit’s hitchiker, but in that case there’s an action before hand and so a time when you have the ability to try to be rational.
There is a path from the decision theory to the predictor, because the predictor looks at your brain—with the decision theory it will make—and bases the decision on the outputs of that cognitive algorithm.
The Demon is omniscient.
FDTists can’t self-modify to be CDTists, by stipulation. This actually is, I think, pretty plausible—I couldn’t choose to start believing FDT.
Well here’s one indication—I don’t know if there’s a single published academic philosophy paper defending FDT. Maybe there’s one—certainly not many. Virtually no decision theorists defend it. I don’t know much about Soares, but I know he’s not an academic philosopher, and I think there are pretty unique skills involved in being an academic philosopher.
Yeah, I agree I have lots of views that LessWrongers find dumb. My claim is just that it’s bad when those views are hard to communicate on account of the way LW is set up.
The description is exactly as you describe in your article. I think my original was clear enough, but you describe your interpretation, and your interpretation is right. You proceed to bite the bullet.
How’d you feel about a verbal debate?
Philosophy is pretty much the only subject that I’m very informed about. So as a consequence, I can confidently say Eliezer is eggregiously wrong about most of the controversial views I can fact check him on. That’s . . . worrying.
If you look at philosophers with Ph.Ds who study decision theory for a living, and have a huge incentive to produce original work, none of them endorse FDT.