

Timeless Decision Theory Paper Released - Xelaz
http://singinst.org/blog/2010/11/12/timeless-decision-theory-paper-released/

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abecedarius
The linked paper, TDT-v01o.pdf, is bit-identical to a draft I downloaded in
November. Which is odd since I thought I remembered a few drafty features in
it like incomplete references to be filled in later, and it ends with "This
manuscript was cut off here" and a one-entry bibliography.

Did they link to the wrong version?

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Korsharat
You do realize that the linked article dates from November the 12th, do you?
It linked to the most recent version which was then available.

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abecedarius
I didn't notice -- thanks. I only skimmed the announcement and got the
impression of a polished version ready to submit to some fancy journal.

It's interesting as is, anyway, judging by the first half. I'll be getting
back to it.

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noahlt
The title of the paper is a bit misleading, and rhetorically clever if
intentional. When I read this headline the first time, I parsed it as
"Timeless (Decision Theory Paper) Released", so that "timeless" was an
adjective describing the (non-specific) "decision theory paper", which had
apparently just been released. :-)

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endtime
I don't think it's intentional - TDT is so named with good reason. I'm not
sure I can explain why at almost 5AM, but it has to do with sort of treating
one-shot games as iterated games, or something roughly similar in spirit to
that. One way to think about it is to imagine that you may be a simulation of
yourself being used to predict the real you's behavior, and therefore to adopt
the behavior that you would want the simulator/predictor to predict from you.
Now, if you're not a simulation of yourself, you still need to adopt that
decision theory so that when you are simulated, the simulations behave that
way. At least, that's how it solves Newcomb's Problem - that's quite possibly
not a good overall summary of TDT.

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cscheid
I know I'm not supposed to snark. But teach yourself LaTeX, Mr. Yudkowsky.
It'll be a gift to us all.

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eojif
Okay, I'll bite.

What do I need to read before reading this to get a grasp of what's going on?

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ewjordan
A good start is the LW Decision Theory sequence:
[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Decision_theory_%28sequence%2...](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Decision_theory_%28sequence%29#Sequence)

