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Khoth comments on The Smoking Lesion: A problem for evidential decision theory - Less Wrong
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You can say the same thing about Newcomb's problem. It doesn't mean you can choose whether or not there will be a million in one of the boxes. It means that if there is a million in one of the boxes, then "some combination of logic, rationalisation or impulse will make you decide" to choose only one of the boxes (and if there's no million, then similarly you'll end up taking both boxes.) "You can then tell from your decision whether" you'll get the million or not, "but you couldn't have made the other decision, no matter what."
Either that, or you can be the first to outguess Omega and get the million as well as the thousand...
Nope, this reasoning doesn't work with Newcomb, and it doesn't work with the Smoking Lesion. If you want to win, you one-box, and you don't smoke.
I think the difference is that your disposition to one-box or two-box is something you can decide to change. Whether you were born with a lesion is not.
When you are standing there, and there is either a million in the box or there isn't, can you change whether or not there is a million in the box?
No, no more than whether you were born with a lesion or not. The argument, "I should smoke, because if I have the lesion I have it whether or not I smoke" is exactly the same as the argument "I should take two boxes, because if the million is there, it is there whether or not I take two boxes."
I agree, insofar as I think "I should not smoke" is true as long as I'm also allowed to say "I should not have the lesion".
The problem is I think running into the proper use of 'should'. We'd need to draw very sharp lines around the things we pretend that we can or cannot control for purposes of that word.
Basically, you end up with a black-box concept containing some but not all of the machinery that led up to your decision such that words like 'should' and 'control' apply to the workings of the black box and not to anything else. And then we can decide whether it's sensible to ask 'should I smoke' in Smoking Lesion and 'should I one-box' in Newcomb.
Right now I don't have a good enough handle on this model to draw those lines, and so don't have an answer to this puzzle.