Re: Decision theory

From: Wei Dai <weidai.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1998 16:18:56 +875200

On Wed, Dec 30, 1998 at 04:41:47PM -0500, Jacques M Mallah wrote:
> Certainly any theory with no free parameters will predict many
> cases in which a being like you will be faced with that decision, and in
> some of them he will make one decision, in the rest he will make the
> other. You can find out which of those cases you are in by making the
> decision, and you can make the decision because the theory predicts the
> results for both cases. Of course there must then be a small chance that
> a 'random factor' might cause you to make the 'wrong' decision; QM
> certainly predicts that there is such a chance, ditto a theory with 'all
> possible structures'.

I think you're suggesting that we think of decisions as selecting which of
the you-like beings is really you, instead of as changing the universe
somehow. This seems like a promising approach, and I've tried it too, but
I haven't figured out how it can be formalized. It may require a
different formal framework from "classical" decison theory.
Received on Thu Dec 31 1998 - 16:20:44 PST