Research Workshops

Participants of this workshop will study and discuss the cutting edge of research into logical decision theory.

Participants of this workshop will study and discuss the cutting edge of research into logical uncertainty.

Participants of this workshop will study and discuss the cutting edge of research into Vingean reflection.

Participants of this workshop will study and discuss the cutting edge of research into logical decision theory.

Participants of this workshop will study and discuss the cutting edge of research into logical uncertainty.

Participants of this workshop studied and discussed the cutting edge of research into logical decision theory.

Participants at this workshop — all of them veterans of past workshops — worked on a variety of problems related to Friendly AI. The first tech report from this workshop is available here.

Participants at this workshop focused on the Löbian obstacle, probabilistic logic, and the intersection of logic and probability more generally. The results of this workshop are described here. See photos from the workshop here.

Participants at this workshop investigated problems related to reflective agents, probabilistic logic, and priors over logical statements / the logical omniscience problem. Some results from this workshop were developed further at the December 2013 workshop and described here.

This workshop focused on a variety of open problems related to normative decision theory. Participants brainstormed “well-posed problems” in the area, built on LaVictoire et al.’s Löbian cooperation work, made some progress on formalizing updateless decision theory, and formulated additional toy problems such as the Ultimate Newcomb’s Problem.

These results are still being written up in various forms.

This workshop focused on a variety of issues related to the Löbian obstacle for self-modifying systems, and to Demski’s earlier work on logical prior probability. The primary result was a proof that attempting to create a probability distribution which performs scientific induction on Π₁ statements, converging to probability 1 for the true versions of such statements, can create zero limiting probabilities assigned to true Π₂ statements. This result is still being written up, but it has been discussed briefly in a blog post by Demski. Other bits of progress were developed at further workshops and described here.

This three-week workshop addressed multiple open research problems simultaneously. First, participants found an improved version of the reflection principle discovered in the previous workshop, though this progress is still being written up. Second, participants improved upon earlier work by LaVictoire, resulting in the paper “Robust Cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Program Equilibrium via Provability Logic.” Third, participants improved upon Benja Fallenstein’s parametric polymorphism approach to tackling the Löbian obstacle for self-modifying systems.

This workshop pursued one line of attack on the Löbian obstacle for self-modifying systems. The primary result of this workshop was a non-constructive “loophole” in Tarski’s undefinability of truth (via a fixed point theorem), which was later written up in draft form as “Definability of Truth in Probabilistic Logic” (see discussions here, here, and here).