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Unknowns comments on Two-boxing, smoking and chewing gum in Medical Newcomb problems - Less Wrong
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Hm, this is a really interesting idea.
The trouble is that it's tricky to apply a single decision theory to this problem, because by hypothesis, this gene actually changes which decision theory you use! If I'm a TDT agent, then this is good evidence I have the "TDT-agent gene," but in this problem I don't actually know whether the TDT-gene is the one-box gene or the two-box gene. If TDT leads to one-boxing, then it recommends two-boxing - but if it provably two-boxes it is the "two-box gene" and gets the bad outcome. This is to some extent an "evil decision problem." Currently I'd one-box, based on some notion of resolving these sorts of problems through more UDT-ish proof-based reasoning (though it has some problems). Or in TDT-language, I'd be 'controlling' whether the TDT-gene was the two-box gene by picking the output of TDT.
However, this problem becomes a lot easier if most people are not actually using any formal reasoning, but are just doing whatever seems like a good idea at the time. Like, the sort of reasoning that leads to people actually smoking. If I'm dropped into this genetic Newcomb's problem, or into the smoking lesion problem, and I learn that almost all people in the data set I've seen were either bad at decision theory or didn't know the results of the data, then those people no longer have quite the same evidential impact about my current situation, and I can just smoke / two-box. It's only when those people and myself are in symmetrical situations (similar information, use similar decision-making processes) that I have to "listen" to them.
Yes, all of this is basically correct. However, it is also basically the same in the original Newcomb although somewhat more intuitive. In the original problem Omega decides to put the one million or not depending on its estimate of what you will do, which likely depends on "what kind of person" you are, in some sense. And being this sort of person is also going to determine what kind of decision theory you use, just as the gene does in the genetic version. The original Newcomb is more intuitive, though, because we can more easily accept that "being such and such a kind of person" could make us use a certain decision theory, than that a gene could do the same thing.
Even the point about other people knowing the results or using certain reasoning is the same. If you find an Omega in real life, but find out that all the people being tested so far are not using any decision theory, but just choosing impulsively, and Omega is just judging how they would choose impulsively, then you should take both boxes. It is only if you know that Omega tends to be right no matter what decision theory people are using, that you should choose the one box.