All of kongus_bongus's Comments + Replies

Thank you so much, this is exactly what I was looking for. It's reassuring to know I'm not crazy and other people have thought of this before.

I think you're misunderstanding something, but I can't quite pin down what it is. For clarity, here is my analysis of the events in the thought experiment in chronological order:
1. Omega decides to host a Newcomb's problem, and chooses an agent (Agent A) to participate in it.
2. Omega scans Agent A and simulates their consciousness (call the simulation Agent B), placing it in a "fake" Newcomb's problem situation (e.g. Omega has made no prediction about Agent B, but says that it has in the simulation in order to get a result)
3. Agent B makes its decision, an... (read more)

2Dagon
This is quite likely.  I suspect that my understanding of CDT, from a technical perspective, remains incorrect, even after a fair bit of reading and discussion.  From what I understand, CDT does not include the possibility that it can be simulated well enough that Omega's prediction is binding.  That is the backward-causality (the REAL, CURRENT decision is entangled with a PREVIOUS observation) which breaks it.

Yes, perhaps that sentence wasn't the best way to convey my point. This version of CDT does not in any way acknowledge backward-causality or subjunctive dependence; the idea is that since the predictor runs a simulation of the agent before deciding on its prediction, there is a forward causal influence on the predictor's action in the case that the agent is a simulation.

4Dagon
Simulation of decision is just one way of having backward-causality.  Omega is acting on the decision BEFORE the agent makes the decision.  The whole problem with CDT is that it does not accept that a choice can affect previous choices.