Bit of a rant but I genuinely hate decision theory. At first it seemed like a useful tool to make the best long term decisions for economics and such then LessWrong, EA, GPI, FHI, MIRI and co needed to take what was essentially a tool and turn it into the biggest philosophical disaster since Rand. I’m thinking about moral uncertainty, wagers, hedging, AGI, priors, bayesianism and all the shit that’s grown out of this cesspit of rationalism.
What’s funny about all this is that there’s no actual way to argue against these people unless you have already been indoctrinated into the cult of Bayes, and even if you manage to get through one of their arguments they’ll just pull out some other bullshit principle that they either made up or saw somewhere in a massively obscure book to essentially say ‘nuh uh’.
What’s more frustrating is that there’s now evidence that people make moral judgements using a broadly bayesian approach, which I hope just stays in the descriptive realm.
But yeah, I hate decision theory, that is all.
I’m with you. MY LIFE HAS BEEN PROFOUNDLY WORSE since I learned about the prisoner’s dilemma. Specifically, any time some PD variant team-based exercise popped up, I just knew some MF on another team would think they were so clever and bring up the prisoner’s dilemma. Oh, we should defect every time, they’d say. Hey, buddy, we all know about the fucking PD! Just fucking cooperate! If you applied decision theory, you wouldn’t make everyone feel like shit, and you’d cooperate! Totally the same vibe, right?