Title: Coins in Demascus
Abstract:
Death in Damascus is a classic decision problem originally introduced by Gibbard and Harper. It illustrates decision instability: whatever the decision maker chooses, she will regret her decision. Ahmed has argued that this leads to counterintuitive results for causal decision theory. A significant but overlooked aspect of this debate is the role of different types of uncertainty: the uncertainty the agent has about Death and about herself, but also the uncertainty Death has about the agent. In this paper, we develop a game-theoretic approach to explore how these kinds of uncertainty interact. Game theory offers a wide array of methods to study these and other problems, including equilibrium concepts and the theory of rational deliberation developed by Skyrms. We focus on Death in Damascus but also add a concise discussion of Newcomb's problem and argue that game theory provides a fresh perspective on prominent problems in decision theory.