Vladimir_Nesov comments on Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality - Less Wrong
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Mr Eliezer, I think you've missed a few points here. However, I've probably missed more. I apologise for errors in advance.
It's like with file compression. In bitmaps, there are frequently large areas with similar colour. With this fact we can design a system that writes that taking less space. However, if we then try to compress a random bitmap, it will take more space than before the compression. Same thing with human minds. They work simply and relatively efficiently, but there's a whole field dedicated to finding flaws in its method. If you use causal decision theory, you sacrifice your ability at games against superhuman creatures that can predict the future, in return for better decision making when that isn't the case. That seems like a reasonably fair trade-off to me. Any theory which gets this one right opens itself to either getting another one wrong, or being more complex and thus harder for a human to use correctly.
Some Christians believe that if you pray over someone with faith, they will be immediately healed. If that is true, rationalists are at a disadvantage, because they aren't as good at self delusion or doublethink as the untrained. They might never end up finding out that truth. I know that religion is the mind killer too, I'm just using the most common example of the supremely effective standard method being unable to deal with an idea. It's necessarily incomplete.
Incidentally, I would totally only take the $1000 box, and claim that Omega told me I had won immortality, to confuse all decision theorists involved.
See chapters 1-9 of this document for a more detailed treatment of the argument.
This link is 404ing. Anyone have a copy of this?
The current version is here. (It's Eliezer Yudkowsky (2010). Timeless Decision Theory.)