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FAWS comments on Newcomb's Problem: A problem for Causal Decision Theories - Less Wrong
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The stealth psychological experiments could have included an isomorphic problem, or she could be using a more sophisticated version of
Stealth psychological experiments you forgot about allowed her to determine necessary and/or sufficient conditions for you assuming that you might be in a simulation that you yourself are unaware of, and she set the whole thing up in a such a way that she can tell with high confidence whether you do.
The categorisation possibility is reasonable. Personally I would estimate the probability of 99% accuracy achieved through categorisation lower than the probability of 99% accuracy achieved through mental simulation, but it's certainly a competitive hypothesis.
Assuming she tells you that she predicted your actions through some unspecified mechanism other than imagining your thought process in sufficient detail for the imagined version to ask itself whether it just exists in her imagination, what do you do?
I question what reason I have to assume she's being honest, and is in fact correct.
Given her psychological genius she is likely correct about the methods she used, although not certainly (she may not be good at self-analysis).
If I conclude that: either A) she is being honest or B) the whole pay-off is a lie Then I will probably act on the second most plausible (to my mind) scenario. I've yet to work out what that is. Repeating the experiment often enough to get statistics that are precise enough for 99% accuracy would be extremely costly with the standard pay-out scheme; so while I jumped towards that as my secondary scenario it's actually very implausible.
Reduce both payoffs by a factor of 100.
The psychologist is hooked up to a revolutionary lie detector that is 99% reliable, there is the standing price of $ 1,000,000,000 for anyone who can after calibration deceive it on more than 10 out of 50 statements (with no further calibration during the trial). The psychologist is known to have tried the test three times and failed (with 1, 4, and 3 successful deceptions).
Well, the psychologist's track record of successful lying is within a plausible range of the 99% reliability.
With the payoffs decreased by a factor of 100, and the lie detector added in, my best guess would be that she's repeated the experiment often, and gathered up a statistical model of people to which she can compare me, and to which I will be added. In such a circumstance I think I would still tend to one-box, but the reason is slightly different.
I value the wellbeing of people who are like me. If I one-box, others like me will be more likely to receive the $10,000; rather than just the $10
Are you sure you are actually trying to make a valid defense of CDT and not just looking for excuses?
What would you do if that somehow were not a consideration? (What would you do if you were more selfish, what would an otherwise identical more selfish simulation of you do, what would you do if you could be reasonably sure that you won't affect the payoff for anyone else you would care about for some reason that doesn't change your estimation of the accuracy of the prediction and the way it came about [e. g. you are the last subject and everyone before you for whom it would matter was asked what they would have done if they had been the last subject]?)
Are you sure you're not just trying to destroy CDT rather than think rationally? If you think I am being irrationally defensive of CDT, check the OTHER thread off my first reply. You seem to be trying very hard indeed to tear down CDT.
CDT gives the correct result in the original posted scenario, for reasons which are not immediately obvious but are none-the-less present. You appear to have accepted that, what with your gradually moving further and further from the original scenario.
In your scenario, designed specifically to make CDT not work, it would still work for me, because of who I am.
If I was more selfish, I don't see CDT working in your scenario. If there is a reason why it should work, I haven't realised it. But then, it's a scenario contrived with the specific intention of CDT not working.
Your "everyone was the last subject" scenario breaks down somewhat; if everyone is told they are the last subject then I can't take being told that I'm the last subject seriously. If I AM the last subject, I will be extremely skeptical, given the sample-size I expect to be needed for the 99% accuracy, and thus I will tend to behave as though I am not the last subject due to not believing I am the last subject.
My original point was simply that the starting post, while claiming to show problems with CDT, failed. It used a scenario that didn't illustrate any problem with CDT. Do you still disagree with my original point?
EDIT: You seem to think that I'm doing my best to defend CDT. I'm really not, I have no major vested interest in defending CDT except when it was unfairly attacked. Adambell has posted two scenarios where CDT works fine, with claims that CDT doesn't work in those scenarios.
Almost everyone agrees that CDT two-boxes in the original scenario, both proponents and opponents of CDT. The only way to make CDT "work" are excuses that are completely irrelevant to the original point of the scenario and amount to deliberately understand the scenario as different than intended. This discussion thread has shown that the existence of such excuses is not implied by the structure of the problem, so any issues with a particular formulation are irrelevant. It's sort of like arguing that EDT is right in the smoke lesion problem because any evidence that smoking and cancer are caused by lesions rather than cancer by smoking would be dubious and avoiding smoking just to be sure would be prudent.
So because I disagree with your consensus, my rational objection must be wrong?
I didn't change the scenario. I looked at the scenario, and asked what someone applying CDT rationally, who understood that it's impossible to tell whether you're being simulated or not, would do. And, as it happened, I got the answer "they would one-box, because they're probably a simulation".
If I posted a scenario where an EDT person would choose to walk through a minefield, because they've never seen anyone walk through a minefield and thus don't consider walking through a minefield to be evidence that they won't live much longer, would you not think my scenario-crafting skills were a bit weak?