OK, here's my model of Agent Simulates Predictor:
http://www.gliffy.com/go/publish/6149724
The agent has two information sets, joined by the dotted lines: Action if P-ONE (predictor predicts O), and Action if P-TWO (predictor predicts T).
It's unclear what the predictor will predict if the agent one-boxes vs P-ONE and two-boxes vs P-TWO, so I've assigned the variable "x" to the probability of P-ONE in that case. Similarly, it's unclear what the predictor will predict if the agent two-boxes vs P-ONE and one-boxes vs P-TWO (i.e. always does the opposite of what the predictor predicted), so I've the variable assigned "y" to the probability of P-ONE in that case.
I'm guessing the default interpretation of ASP would be x=y=0.
However, it's probably not a good representation in the case of randomized strategies, as the predictor might have some specific way to respond to those. If we assume the agent only picks pure strategies, this much simpler game is an equivalent one:
http://www.gliffy.com/go/publish/6149719
It is quite clear that it is optimal to ONEBOX regardless of P-ONE or P-TWO (except if y > 1000/1001, in which case you should TWOBOX vs P-ONE and ONEBOX vs P-TWO).
The agent's ability to simulate the predictor is no different to both boxes being transparent in Newcomb's problem.
I still feel that logical uncertainty has to be tackled head on, rather than kept unspecified behind diagrams. But you bring up an interesting point. In the transparent Newcomb's problem as originally formulated by Gary, the simulated agent sees both boxes as filled. That way both the agent and the predictor can be deterministic, and the agent can't cause a paradox by doing the opposite of what was predicted. Maybe we should reformulate ASP in the same way.
This post was inspired by Benja's SUDT post. I'm going to describe another simplified model of UDT which is equivalent to Benja's proposal, and is based on standard game theory concepts as described in this Wikipedia article.
First let's define what is a "single player extensive-form game with chance moves and imperfect information":
Now let's try using that to solve some UDT problems:
Absent-Minded Driver is the simplest case, since it's already discussed in the literature as a game of the above form. It's strange that not everyone agrees that the best strategy is indeed the best, but let's skip that and move on.
Psy-Kosh's non-anthropic problem is more tricky, because it has multiple players. We will model it as a single-player game anyway, putting the decision nodes of the different players in sequence and grouping them together into information sets in the natural way. The resulting game tree is complicated, but the solution is the same as UDT's. As a bonus, we see that our model does not need any kind of anthropic probabilities, because it doesn't specify or use the probabilities of individual nodes within an information set.
Wei Dai's coordination problem is similar to the previous one, but with multiple players choosing different actions based on different information. If we use the same trick of folding all players into one, and group the decision nodes into information sets in the natural way, we get the right solution again. It's nice to see that our model automatically solves problems that require Wei's "explicit optimization of global strategy".
Counterfactual Mugging is even more tricky, because writing it as an extensive-form game must include a decision node for Omega's simulation of the player. Some people are okay with that, and our model gives the right solution. But others feel that it leads to confusing questions about the nature of observation. For example, what if Omega used a logical coin, and the player could actually check which way the coin came up by doing a long calculation? Paying up is probably the right decision, but our model here doesn't have enough detail.
Finally, Agent Simulates Predictor is the kind of problem that cannot be captured by our model at all, because logical uncertainty is the whole point of ASP.
It's instructive to see the difference between the kind of UDT problems that fit our model and those that require something more. Also it would be easy to implement the model as a computer program, and solve some UDT problems automatically. (Though the exercise wouldn't have much scientific value, because extensive-form games are a well known idea.) In this way it's a little similar to Patrick's work on modal agents, which made certain problems solvable on the computer by using modal logic instead of enumerating proofs. Now I wonder if other problems that involve logical uncertainty could also be solved by some simplified model?