I was going to do the Smoking Lesion problem, but EDT doesn't seem to be well-defined under that. You know that you're using EDT, which affects things weird. If this means that you'll definitely not smoke, definitely not smoking would be optimal, since you'd be tied with every other strategy in which it's known it would result in never smoking, but the same goes for definitely smoking.
In TDT you act as though you were controlling the abstract computation that governs your action and take all other instances of that computation into account. In UDT you pretend to be the abstract computation.
So, what do they do different?
I was going to do the Smoking Lesion problem, but EDT doesn't seem to be well-defined under that. You know that you're using EDT, which affects things weird. If this means that you'll definitely not smoke, definitely not smoking would be optimal, since you'd be tied with every other strategy in which it's known it would result in never smoking, but the same goes for definitely smoking.
Huh? If you mean that knowledge of yourself being an EDT screens off your decision being evidence for subsequent cancer, what distinguishes this case from cases where that knowledge doesn't screen off? Remember, you are not allowed to look at causal arrows, because that would make you a CDT actor.
I couldn't find any concise explanation of what the decision theories are. Here's mine:
A Causal Decision Theorist wins, given what's happened so far.
An Evidential Decision Theorist wins, given what they know.
A Timeless Decision Theorist wins a priori.
To explain what I mean, here are two interesting problems. In each of them, two of the decision theories give one choice, and the third gives the other.
In Newcomb's problem and you separate people into groups based on what happened before the experiment, i.e. whether or not Box A has money, CDT will be at least as successful in each group as any other strategy, and notably more successful than EDT and TDT. If you separate it into what's known, there's only one group, since everybody has the same information. EDT is at least as successful as any other strategy, and notably more successful than CDT. If you don't separate it at all, TDT will be at least as successful as any other strategy, and notably more successful than EDT.
In Parfit's hitchhiker, when it comes time to pay the driver, if you split into groups based on what happened before the experiment, i.e. whether or not one has been picked up, CDT will be at least as successful in each group as any other strategy, and notably more successful than TDT. If you split based on what's given, which is again whether or not one has been picked up, EDT will be at least as successful in each group as any other strategy, and notably more successful than TDT. If you don't separate at all, TDT will be at least as successful as any other strategy, and notably more successful than CDT and EDT.
There's one thing I'm not sure about. How does Updateless Decision Theory compare?