“There are three main branches of decision theory: descriptive decision theory (how real agents make decisions), prescriptive decision theory (how real agents should make decisions), and normative decision theory (how ideal agents should make outcomes).”
This doesn’t seem right to me, I would say: an interesting way you can divide up decision theory is between descriptive decision theory (how people make decisions) and normative decision theory (how we should make decisions).
The last line of your description, “how ideal agents should make outcomes” seems especially troubling. I’m not quite sure what you are trying to say.
I think there are good parts of this post, for example, you’re hitting some interesting thought experiments. But several aspects are slightly confusing as written. For example, Newcomb’s problem isn’t (I believe) a counterexample to EDT, but that isn’t clear from your post.
“There are three main branches of decision theory: descriptive decision theory (how real agents make decisions), prescriptive decision theory (how real agents should make decisions), and normative decision theory (how ideal agents should make outcomes).”
This doesn’t seem right to me, I would say: an interesting way you can divide up decision theory is between descriptive decision theory (how people make decisions) and normative decision theory (how we should make decisions).
The last line of your description, “how ideal agents should make outcomes” seems especially troubling. I’m not quite sure what you are trying to say.
I think there are good parts of this post, for example, you’re hitting some interesting thought experiments. But several aspects are slightly confusing as written. For example, Newcomb’s problem isn’t (I believe) a counterexample to EDT, but that isn’t clear from your post.
I actually think this is a pretty reasonable division now, removed the automatic upvote on my comment.