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MarkusRamikin comments on Conceptual Analysis and Moral Theory - Less Wrong
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Seems to me like you only transformed one side of the equation, so to speak. Reallife Newcomblike problems don't involve Omega, but they also don't (mainly) involve highly contrived thought-experiment-like choices regarding which we are not prepared to model each other.
That seems to me to expand the Newcomb's Problem greatly -- in particular, into the area where you know you'll meet Omega and can prepare by modifying your internal state. I don't want to argue definitions, but my understanding of the Newcomb's Problem is much narrower. To quote Wikipedia,
and that's clearly not the situation of Joe and Kate.
Perhaps, but it is my understanding that an agent who is programmed to avoid reflective inconsistency would find the two situations equivalent. Is there something I'm missing here?
I don't know what "an agent who is programmed to avoid reflective inconsistency" would do. I am not one and I think no human is.
Reflective inconsistency isn't that hard to grasp, though, even for a human. All it's really saying is that a normatively rational agent should consider the questions "What should I do in this situation?" and "What would I want to pre-commit to do in this situation?" equivalent. If that's the case, then there is no qualitative difference between Newcomb's Problem and the situation regarding Joe and Kate, at least to a perfectly rational agent. I do agree with you that humans are not perfectly rational. However, don't you agree that we should still try to be as rational as possible, given our hardware? If so, we should strive to fit our own behavior to the normative standard--and unless I'm misunderstanding something, that means avoiding reflective inconsistency.
I don't consider them equivalent.
Fair enough. I'm not exactly qualified to talk about this sort of thing, but I'd still be interested to hear why you think the answers to these two ought to be different. (There's no guarantee I'll reply, though!)