Precommitting changes my disposition, making me not find two-boxing irresistable.
Precommitting CAN'T change whether I get the lesion or not.
In Newcombs scenario, precommitting changes the outcome. In the smoking lesion, it doesn't.
Precommitting not to smoke also changes my disposition regarding smoking. I still might find it irresistable later. Likewise if I precommit to one box. That says nothing about how I will feel about it later, when the situation happens.
In fact, even in real life, I suspect many one-boxers would two box in the end when they are standing there and thinking, "Either the million is there or it isn't, and there's nothing I can do about it." In other words, they might very well find two-boxing irresistable, even if they had precommitted.
This is part of a sequence titled "An introduction to decision theory". The previous post was Newcomb's Problem: A problem for Causal Decision Theories
For various reasons I've decided to finish this sequence on a seperate blog. This is principally because there were a large number of people who seemed to feel that this sequence either wasn't up to the Less Wrong standard or felt that it was simply covering ground that had already been covered on Less Wrong.
The decision to post it on another blog rather than simply discontinuing it came down to the fact that other people seemed to feel that the sequence had value. Those people can continue reading it at "The Smoking Lesion: A problem for evidential decision theory".
Alternatively, there is a sequence index available: Less Wrong and decision theory: sequence index