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ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, Apr. 20 - Apr. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong
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How about doctor's "If you don't go to a hospital and have a surgery, then you will die" -- is this a threat?
If the doctor would say: "I'm the only doctor who can help you with your problem and if you go to another doctor and ask him to operate you, you will die" he's likely outside of medical ethics.
But let's see we don't have a doctor but have a person who claims to be a witch. She goes around and diagnoses that people have a "dark curse" and unless the person pays them money to remove the curse the person will die. If that's someone's business model I don't think our courts would like kindly on that person.
Or the only doctor with access to the right experimental procedure.
The OP's description doesn't seem to imply that refusal to pay causes the death. The oracle is simply saying that there are two possible futures: in one, the victim pays the money and survives; in the other one, the victim doesn't pay and doesn't survive.
I guess the difference in our interpretations is what we take the "and" to mean; you seem to see it as denoting causation, whereas I'd say it's merely denoting temporal consecution.
I think you mean "that there are only two possible futures."
Which leaves me puzzled as to your point.
If I am confident that there are only two possible futures, one where I pay and live, and one where I don't pay and die, how is that different from being confident that paying causes me to live, or from being confident that not-paying causes me to die? Those just seem like three different ways of describing the same situation to me.
I'm rephrasing Lumifers example to a person who doesn't work within the traditionally accepted medical field.
It makes no statement about how the causation works. That means a person who doesn't know how the causation works can not sure that the oracle doesn't cause it in some way.