I don't understand why the Smoking Lesion is a problem for evidential decision theory. I would simply accept that in the scenario given, you shouldn't smoke. And I don't see why you assert that this doesn't lessen your chances of getting cancer, except in the same sense that two-boxing doesn't lessen your chances of getting the million.
I would just say: in the scenario give, you should not smoke, and this will improve your chances of not getting cancer.
If you doubt this, consider if the correlation were known to be 100%; every person who ever smoked up til...
I see you've moved this discussion off-site. FWIW, I commend you for trying to organize the various decision theory issues into a more accessible and organized sequence. I'd like to suggest that you take some of this and use it to improve the (almost comically sparse) decision theory articles on the LW Wiki. If that's really going to be the go-to place for LW knowledge, your efforts to summarize and present this info could really be useful there, and any redundancy with existing blog posts would be a non-issue.
I'm confused as to why you said you weren't continuing this on Less Wrong, then posted it on Less Wrong.
I've read the smoking lesion thing before, and what occurred to be is that even under EDT, the reasoning in there is wrong. What I mean was that one shouldn't simply reason it out by comparing to the average stats, but take into account the fact that they're using EDT itself. ie, they should say "given that a person is using EDT, then what's the correlation between etc etc..."
Worth referencing:
The Smoking Lesion on the wiki.
Timeless Decision Theory and Meta-Circular Decision Theory, where Eliezer discusses this problem (among others)
(By the way, your blog has some interesting posts!)
If you can point to a specific part of my brain that has no purpose other than to make me have bacon for breakfast on tuesday 24th of august, 2010? And that can't be over-ruled by any other parts of my brain?
I can't, however it doesn't imply that the decision about the breakfast is spread across the whole brain. Moreover, why it is so important to have it localised? What if the lesion is in fact only a slightly different concentration of chemicals spread across the whole brain, which I) leads to cancer, II) causes desire for smoking, which is nevertheless substantiated as a global coordinated action of neurons in different parts of the brain?
Instead of the happy feeling, you get a feeling of "I decided to do this" when the light blinks red.
It is indeed a better example.
I can't, however it doesn't imply that the decision about the breakfast is spread across the whole brain. Moreover, why it is so important to have it localised?
It's not particularly. Replace "part" with "aspect"; I hadn't actually thought about the option you propose.
...What if the lesion is in fact only a slightly different concentration of chemicals spread across the whole brain, which I) leads to cancer, II) causes desire for smoking, which is nevertheless substantiated as a global coordinated action of neurons in different parts
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