Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality · HackerPapers discussions

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality — HN submission

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:43:50 GMT

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality (2018)

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality — mentioned by c1ccccc1

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 20:54:38 GMT

The situation described in The Egg replaces morality with a direct reason not to harm others, because you are the person who will suffer because of it. So if you're complaining that the story's premise kinda eliminates our usual ideas about morality, my response is: Yes. That's part of what makes it an interesting story. As for the meta-time thing, functional decision theory [1] solves this. The application is particularly clean because your memories are erased between lives. There's no factor of 2 free lunch from temporal ordering. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.05060

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality — mentioned by psyc

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 16:41:58 GMT

You keep hammering on with the same lazy slander. Yudkowsky was well known long before he wrote the popular Harry Potter fanfic, which incidentally is pedagogical / allegorical. Because his main roles are teacher and philosopher, and philosophers do that. Here's a sampling of his non-fiction writing: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences https://intelligence.org/files/EthicsofAI.pdf https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05060 https://intelligence.org/files/AlignmentMachineLearning.pdf https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5577 https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5577 https://intelligence.org/files/Corrigibility.pdf…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality — HN submission

Sun, 22 Oct 2017 17:49:58 GMT

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality

5 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality — HN submission

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 01:42:10 GMT

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality

4 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality — HN submission

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 01:07:15 GMT

Functional Decision Theory: A New Theory of Instrumental Rationality [MIRI]

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.