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EDT with updating double counts — LessWrong

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Calculator bet: I am offered the opportunity to bet on a mathematical statement X to which I initially assign 50% probability (perhaps X = 139926 is a quadratic residue modulo 314159). I have access to a calculator that is 99% reliable, i.e. it corrupts the answer 1% of the time at random. The calculator says that X is true. With what probability should I be willing to wager? I think the answer is clearly “99%.” But a naive application of EDT can recommend betting with 99.99% probability. I think this is a mistake, and understanding the mistake helps clarify what it means to be “updateless” and why it’s essentially obligatory for EDT agents. My takeaway is that for an EDT agent, bayesian updating is a description of the expected utility calculation rather than something that EDT agent should do to form its beliefs before calculating expected utility. Thanks to Joe Carlsmith and Katja Grace for the conversation that prompted this post. I suspect this point is well-known in the philosoph

x EDT with updating double counts — LessWrong Decision theory World Modeling Frontpage 64 EDT with updating double counts by paulfchristiano 12th Oct 2021 Sideways View 8 min read 18 64 I recently got confused thinking about the following case: Calculator bet: I am offered the opportunity to bet on a mathematical statement X to which I initially assign 50% probability (perhaps X = 139926 is a quadratic residue modulo 314159). I have access to a calculator that is 99% reliable, i.e. it corrupts the answer 1% of the time at random. The calculator says that X is true. With what probability should

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