Unless something happens out of the blue to force my decision - in which case it's not my decision - then this situation doesn't happen. There might be people for whom Omega can predict with 100% certainty that they're going to one-box even after Omega has told them his prediction, but I'm not one of them.
(I'm assuming here that people get offered the game regardless of their decision algorithm. If Omega only makes the offer to people whom he can predict certainly, we're closer to a counterfactual mugging. At any rate, it changes the game significantly.)
I agree that in reality it is often impossible to predict someone's actions, if you are going to tell them your prediction. That is why it is perfectly possible that the situation where you know the gene is impossible. But in any case this is all hypothetical because the situation posed assumes you cannot know which gene you have until you choose one or both boxes, at which point you immediately know.
EDIT: You're really not getting the point, which is that the genetic Newcomb is identical to the original Newcomb in decision theoretic terms. Here you're arg...
I am currently learning about the basics of decision theory, most of which is common knowledge on LW. I have a question, related to why EDT is said not to work.
Consider the following Newcomblike problem: A study shows that most people who two-box in Newcomblike problems as the following have a certain gene (and one-boxers don't have the gene). Now, Omega could put you into something like Newcomb's original problem, but instead of having run a simulation of you, Omega has only looked at your DNA: If you don't have the "two-boxing gene", Omega puts $1M into box B, otherwise box B is empty. And there is $1K in box A, as usual. Would you one-box (take only box B) or two-box (take box A and B)? Here's a causal diagram for the problem:
Since Omega does not do much other than translating your genes into money under a box, it does not seem to hurt to leave it out:
I presume that most LWers would one-box. (And as I understand it, not only CDT but also TDT would two-box, am I wrong?)
Now, how does this problem differ from the smoking lesion or Yudkowsky's (2010, p.67) chewing gum problem? Chewing Gum (or smoking) seems to be like taking box A to get at least/additional $1K, the two-boxing gene is like the CGTA gene, the illness itself (the abscess or lung cancer) is like not having $1M in box B. Here's another causal diagram, this time for the chewing gum problem:
As far as I can tell, the difference between the two problems is some additional, unstated intuition in the classic medical Newcomb problems. Maybe, the additional assumption is that the actual evidence lies in the "tickle", or that knowing and thinking about the study results causes some complications. In EDT terms: The intuition is that neither smoking nor chewing gum gives the agent additional information.