If Joe believes that his precommitment is inviolable, or even that it affects the probability of him breaking up later, then it appears to him that he is confronted with a causal loop. His decision-making program, at that moment, addresses Newcomb's problem, even if it's wrong in believing in the causal loop.

But I think this only proves that flawed reasoners may face Newcomb's problem. (It might even turn out that finding yourself facing Newcomb's problem proves your reasoning is flawed.)

It's still interesting enough to up-vote.

None of these is remotely Newcombish. You only get Newcomb paradox when you assume causal loop, and try to solve the problem using tools devised for situations without causal loops.

It is the Newcomb Problem. It may be tricky and counter-intuitive but it isn't a paradox. More importantly The Newcomb Problem does not rely on a causal loop. Some form of reliable prediction is necessary but that does not imply a causal loop.

My pre-sponse to this is in footnote 2:

If you care about "causal reasoning", the other half of what's supposed to make Newcomb confusing, then Joe's problem is more like Kavka's (so this post accidentally shows how Kavka and Newcomb are similar). But the distinction is instrumentally irrelevant: the point is that he can benefit from decision mechanisms that are evidential and time-invariant, and you don't need "unreasonable certainties" or "paradoxes of causality" for this to come up.