Suggestions for naming a class of decision theories

Not necessarily, a variant of TDT could work without logical specification of decisions ...

Would you give a concrete example of what you mean? Right now, I seem to be in the same place where Wei Dai was when he wrote

And you're still using it as a logical fact, i.e., deducing logical consequences from it, right?

I feel like you must be making a point that I'm not getting...

I'm also not seeing the relevance of your reply to him.

When you write:

... it only needs some way of referring to the decision as part of the environment, and tools for figuring out what other facts about the environment follow from the fact that is the decision ...

... in what sense do you understand the "other facts" to "follow from" the "fact that is the decision"? What does the agent work with to determine whether one "fact" "follows from" another?

I agree that the agent needn't be working with strings in some formal language. But, in the decision theories under consideration, the agent is working with some mathematical model of the world, which the agent uses to infer what follows logically from the premise that the agent decides to do X *. I agree also that the agent need not be using a first-order predicate logic to make this inference. Nonetheless, it still seems correct to me to say that what the agent is inferring is a relationship of logical implication.

By analogy, Euclid didn't use a formal first-order predicate logic, but he was still inferring relationships of logical implication.

* I am least familiar with TDT among the decision theories being considered, so, if this statement is wrong, it is most likely wrong about TDT.

After googling Reflexive the only problem I have with using "Reflexive decision theories" is that it may prevent someone using Reflexive Decision Theory for an actual instance of a well developed decision theory. The name is perfect. (And the name UDT is just STUPID! It only makes sense by redefining 'update'.)

Snap!

Most of the others just say "better" instead of saying what the desired sort of theory actually does.

(By the way, I worry that this phrase would sound cultish to anyone who wasn't familiar with Hofstadter's superrationality.)

While I'm not 100% sure this is the best possible name (not that I can think of anything better myself right now), at least it has precedent (Hofstadter's superrationality, which is the only ‘mainstream’ --i.e. notable enough for a Wikipedia article-- name for something similar -- unless you count the categorical imperative, but IMO the name categorical decision theory would be better for one specific theory than for a class.)

Rational decision theories

Yes, with this many options I think three-range voting is better than approval (0, 1) voting. We don't want to settle on one that 2/3 of people love and 1/3 of people hate, rather than one that 1/2 of people love and 1/2 of people are indifferent toward.

Well, you guys instead of using x for the choice and doing algebra to handle x on both sides of equations, start going meta and considering yourselves inside simulators, which, albeit intellectually stimulating, is unnecessary and makes it hard for you to think straight.

If I needed to calculate ideal orientation of a gun assuming that the enemy can predict orientation of a gun perfectly, i'd just use x for the orientation, and solve for both ballistics and enemy's evasive action.

Also, the newcomb's now sounds to me like simple case of alternative english to math conversions when processing the problem statement, not even a case of calculating anything differently. There's the prediction, but there's also the box contents being constant., you can't put both into math, you can in English but human languages are screwy and we all know it.

Still not quite it.

BTW, an observation: if i want to maximize the distance at which the thrown stone lands, assuming constant initial speed and zero height, I work out the algebra - I have unknown, x, the shoot angle, and I have laws of physics that express distance as function of x, and I find best x. In newcomb's, I have x=my choice, I have been given rules of the world, whereby the payoff formula includes the x itself, i calculate best x, which is one-box (not surprisingly). The smoking lesion also works fine. Once you stop invoking your built-in decision theory on confusing cases, things are plain and clear.

At this point, how well you perform depends to what sort of axiom system you are using to solve for x, and by Godel's theorem, there will be some problem that is going to get ya, i.e. cause failure.

Drescherian Decision Theories

(unfortunately you can't easily mix "Less Wrong" with his name)