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RobinZ comments on Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality - Less Wrong
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You know, I honestly don't even understand why this is a point of debate. One boxing and taking box B (and being the kind of person who will predictably do that) seem so obviously like the rational strategy that it shouldn't even require explanation.
And not obvious in the same way most people think the monty hill problem (game show, three doors, goats behind two, sports-car behind one, ya know?) seems 'obvious' at first.
In the case of the monty hill problem, you play with it, and the cracks start to show up, and you dig down to the surprising truth.
In this case, I don't see how anyone could see and cracks in the first place.
Am I missing something here?
One factor you may not have considered: the obvious rational metastrategy is causal decision theory, and causal decision theory picks the two-box strategy.
I don't follow. Isn't it precisely on the meta-strategy level that CDT becomes obviously irrational?
I think what RobinZ means is that you want to choose a strategy such that having that strategy will causally yield nice things. Given that criterion, object-level CDT fails; but one uses a causal consideration to reject it.
Key word is "obvious". If you say, "how should you solve games?", the historical answer is "using game theory", and when you say, "what does game theory imply for Newcomb's dilemma?", the historical answer is "two-box". It takes an additional insight to work out that a better metastrategy is possible, and things which take an additional insight are no longer obvious, true or no.
Edit: Alternatively: When I said "metastrategy", I meant one level higher than "two-boxing" - in other words, the level of decision theory. (I'm not sure which of the two objections you were raising.)
This is basically what I was trying to point out. :)