There's no reason an agent you interact with in a decision problem can't respond to how it judges you would react to different decision problems.
Suppose Andy and Sandy are bitter rivals, and each wants the other to be socially isolated. Andy declares that he will only cooperate in Prisoner's Dilemma type problems with people he predicts would cooperate with him, but not Sandy, while Sandy declares that she will only cooperate in Prisoner's Dilemma type problems with people she predicts would cooperate with her, but not Andy. Both are highly reliable predictors of other people's cooperation patterns.
If you end up in a Prisoner's Dilemma type problem with Andy, it benefits you to be the sort of person who would cooperate with Andy, but not Sandy, and vice versa if you end up in a Prisoner's Dilemma type problem with Sandy. If you might end up in a Prisoner's Dilemma type problem with either of them, you have higher expected utility if you pick one in advance to cooperate with, because both would defect against an opportunist willing to cooperate with whichever one they ended up in a Prisoner's Dilemma with first.
That isn't an 'inversion' but instead an entirely different problem in which agents are rewarded for things external to the problem.
If you want to call it that, you may, but I don't see that it makes a difference. If ending up in Transparent Newcomb's Problem is no more likely than ending up in an entirely different problem which punishes agents for one-boxing in Transparent Newcomb's Problem, then I don't see that it's advantageous to one-box in Transparent Newcomb's Problem. You can draw a line between problems determined by factors external to the problem, and problems determined only by factors internal to the problem, but I don't think this is a helpful distinction to apply here. What matters is which problems are more likely to occur and their utility payoffs.
In any case, I would honestly rather not continue this discussion with you, at least if TheOtherDave is still interested in continuing the discussion. I don't have very high expectations of productivity from a discussion with someone who has such low expectations of my own reasoning as to repeatedly and erroneously declare that I'm calling up a fully general counterargument which could just as well be used to argue against looking both ways at a crosswalk. If possible, I would much rather discuss this with someone who's prepared to operate under the presumption that I'm willing and able to be reasonable.
If possible, I would much rather discuss this with someone who's prepared to operate under the presumption that I'm willing and able to be reasonable.
Don't confuse an intuition aid that failed to help you with a personal insult. Apart from making you feel bad it'll ensure you miss the point. Hopefully Vladimir's explanation will be more successful.
If you've recently joined the Less Wrong community, please leave a comment here and introduce yourself. We'd love to know who you are, what you're doing, what you value, how you came to identify as a rationalist or how you found us. You can skip right to that if you like; the rest of this post consists of a few things you might find helpful. More can be found at the FAQ.
A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
If English is not your first language, don't let that make you afraid to post or comment. You can get English help on Discussion- or Main-level posts by sending a PM to one of the following users (use the "send message" link on the upper right of their user page). Either put the text of the post in the PM, or just say that you'd like English help and you'll get a response with an email address.
* Normal_Anomaly
* Randaly
* shokwave
* Barry Cotter
A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.
A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site.