Figuring out what your options are is a hard problem for any decision theory, because it goes to the heart of what we mean by "could". In toy problems like this, agents just have their options spoon-fed to them. I was trying to show that EDT makes the sensible decision, if it has the right options spoon-fed to it. This opens up at least the possibility that a general EDT agent (that figures out what its options are for itself) would work, because there's no reason, in principle, why it can't consider whether the statement "I decided to not smoke, for the purpose of avoiding cancer" would be good news or bad news.

Recognizing this as an option in the first place is a much more complicated issue. But recognizing "smoke" as an option isn't trivial either. After all, you can't smoke if there are no cigarettes available. So it seems to me that, if you're a smoker who just found out about the statistics on smoking and cancer, then the relevant choice you have to make is whether to "decide to quit smoking based on this information about smoking and cancer."

(edited for clarity)