But in a situation where other people can predict my future behavior, I can instead reason as if some earlier state causes both my behavior and their prediction.
This seems to get me all the same explanatory and predictive power in an entirely straightforward fashion. Making credible threats and promises seems entirely unproblematic when looked at that way.
I accept that some awfully smart people who have thought about this a lot have concluded that this sort of backward-causality reasoning really does buy them something, and I'm open to the possibility that it's something worth buying. But at the moment I don't see what it could possibly be.
You can explain and predict decisions as being implied by their antecedents, but you can't use the same reasoning in the act of making a decision, because it leads to contradictions. This post contains the best explanation I could find.
- This thread has run its course. You will find newer threads in the discussion section.
Another discussion thread - the fourth - has reached the (arbitrary?) 500 comments threshold, so it's time for a new thread for Eliezer Yudkowsky's widely-praised Harry Potter fanfic.
Most of the paratext and fan-made resources are listed on Mr. LessWrong's author page. There is also AdeleneDawner's collection of most of the previously-published Author's Notes.
Older threads: one, two, three, four. By tag.
Newer threads are in the Discussion section, starting from Part 6.
Spoiler policy as suggested by Unnamed and approved by Eliezer, me, and at least three other upmodders:
It would also be quite sensible and welcome to continue the practice of declaring at the top of your post which chapters you are about to discuss, especially for newly-published ones, so that people who haven't yet seen them can stop reading in time.