Interesting. I have a better grasp of what you're saying now (or maybe not what you're saying, but why someone might think that what you are saying is true). Rapid responses to information that needs digesting are unhelpful so I have nothing further to say for now (though I still think my original post goes some way to explaining the opinions of those on LW that haven't thought in detail about decision theory: a focus on algorithm rather than decisions means that people think one-boxing is rational even if they don't agree with your claims about focusing on logical rather than causal consequences [and for these people, the disagreement with CDT is only apparent]).
ETA: On the CDT bit, which I can comment on, I think you overstate how "increasingly contorted" the CDTers "redefinitions of winning" are. They focus on whether the decision has the best causal consequences. This is hardly contorted (it's fairly straightforward) and doesn't seem to be much of a redefinition: if you're focusing on "winning decisions" as the CDTer does (rather than "winning agents") it seems to me that the causal consequences are the most natural way of separating out the part of the agent's winning relates to the decision from the parts that relate to the agent more generally. As a definition of a winning decision, I think the definition used on LW is more revisionary than the CDTers definition (as a definition of winning algorithm or agent, the definition on LW seems natural but as a way of separating out the part of the agent's winning that relate to the decision, logical consequences seems far more revisionary). In other words, everyone agrees what winning means. What people disagree about is when we can attribute the winningness to the decision rather than to some other factor and I think the CDTer takes the natural line here (which isn't to say they're right but I think the accusations of "contorted" definitions are unreasonable).
If agents whose decision-type is always the decision with the best physical consequences ignoring logical consequences, don't end up rich, then it seems to me to require a good deal of contortion to redefine the "winning decision" as "the decision with the best physical consequences", and in particular you must suppose that Omega is unfairly punishing rationalists even though Omega has no care for your algorithm apart from the decision it outputs, etc. I think that to believe that the Prisoner's Dilemma against your clone or Parfit's H...
Follow-up to: Normative uncertainty in Newcomb's problem
Philosophers and atheists break for two-boxing; theists and Less Wrong break for one-boxing
Personally, I would one-box on Newcomb's Problem. Conditional on one-boxing for lawful reasons, one boxing earns $1,000,000, while two-boxing, conditional on two-boxing for lawful reasons, would deliver only a thousand. But this seems to be firmly a minority view in philosophy, and numerous heuristics about expert opinion suggest that I should re-examine the view.
In the PhilPapers survey, Philosophy undergraduates start off divided roughly evenly between one-boxing and two-boxing:
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?
But philosophy faculty, who have learned more (less likely to have no opinion), and been subject to further selection, break in favor of two-boxing:
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?
Specialists in decision theory (who are also more atheistic, more compatibilist about free will, and more physicalist than faculty in general) are even more convinced:
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?
Looking at the correlates of answers about Newcomb's problem, two-boxers are more likely to believe in physicalism about consciousness, atheism about religion, and other positions generally popular around here (which are also usually, but not always, in the direction of philosophical opinion). Zooming in one correlate, most theists with an opinion are one-boxers, while atheists break for two-boxing:
Less Wrong breaks overwhelmingly for one-boxing in survey answers for 2012:
NEWCOMB'S PROBLEM
One-box: 726, 61.4%
Two-box: 78, 6.6%
Not sure: 53, 4.5%
Don't understand: 86, 7.3%
No answer: 240, 20.3%
When I elicited LW confidence levels in a poll, a majority indicated 99%+ confidence in one-boxing, and 77% of respondents indicated 80%+ confidence.
What's going on?
I would like to understand what is driving this difference of opinion. My poll was a (weak) test of the hypothesis that Less Wrongers were more likely to account for uncertainty about decision theory: since on the standard Newcomb's problem one-boxers get $1,000,000, while two-boxers get $1,000, even a modest credence in the correct theory recommending one-boxing could justify the action of one-boxing.
If new graduate students read the computer science literature on program equilibrium, including some local contributions like Robust Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma and A Comparison of Decision Algorithms on Newcomblike Problems, I would guess they would tend to shift more towards one-boxing. Thinking about what sort of decision algorithms it is rational to program, or what decision algorithms would prosper over numerous one-shot Prisoner's Dilemmas with visible source code, could also shift intuitions. A number of philosophers I have spoken with have indicated that frameworks like the use of causal models with nodes for logical uncertainty are meaningful contributions to thinking about decision theory. However, I doubt that for those with opinions, the balance would swing from almost 3:1 for two-boxing to 9:1 for one-boxing, even concentrating on new decision theory graduate students.
On the other hand, there may be an effect of unbalanced presentation to non-experts. Less Wrong is on average less philosophically sophisticated than professional philosophers. Since philosophical training is associated with a shift towards two-boxing, some of the difference in opinion could reflect a difference in training. Then, postings on decision theory have almost all either argued for or assumed one-boxing as the correct response on Newcomb's problem. It might be that if academic decision theorists were making arguments for two-boxing here, or if there was a reduction in pro one-boxing social pressure, there would be a shift in Less Wrong opinion towards two-boxing.
Less Wrongers, what's going on here? What are the relative causal roles of these and other factors in this divergence?
ETA: The SEP article on Causal Decision Theory.