Armok_GoB comments on You're in Newcomb's Box - Less Wrong
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Comments (172)
My initial reaction is "This is all correct... except that Azerthoth isn't smart enough to have invented counter factual trade!". Just imagine trying to counterfactually trade with your past self from before you knew about counter-factual trade. A similar case is coming up with a great product you'd like to buy, only to discover when you get to the market you were the first to come up with the idea and nobody is selling the product despite that it'd be good for both of you if they had.
For further clarity here's a scenario where you reasoning probably WOULD work:
You find yourself on a planet, and you know this planet is in a phase of development in which conditions remain almost perfectly unchanged for 3^^^3 years/generations (the laws of physics would need to be different in this universe for this to work I think). The environment is also completely reset every few generations and only the extremely durable spores for the next generation is able to survive so there's no way to relay messages to the future. No tech solutions like directly editing and putting messages in the genes because you can't develop tech in a single generation.
If i lived on that planet I'd pay very close attention to the reasoning of this post. In the world that's unly existed for a few billion years and is about to hit the singularity, and where I've grown up in conditions completely different from my ancestors... not so much.
Good post thou, upvoted.