Caspar Oesterheld and Johannes Treutlein, who are researchers at the Foundational Research Institute working on decision theory from a Less-Wrong-ish perspective, looked at all the polls and surveys they could find indicating people’s preferred decision in the Newcomb problem.
They found, in line with conventional wisdom, that polls of professional philosophers, especially ones specializing in decision theory, tend to yield a substantial but not overwhelming majority in favour of two-boxing and that polls of other populations mostly yield results closer to 50:50 but tending to prefer one-boxing. … Well, except that it looks to me as if those polls in fact tend to give results about as much in favour of one-boxing as the philosophers are in favour of two-boxing.
The surveys with the largest populations sampled give the nearest-to-50:50 results.
Two of their polls were annual LW surveys. Those yielded a very large majority in favour of one-boxing. Some of the others did likewise; they look to me as if they sample quite LW-like populations, but I don’t have a strong opinion on whether it’s more likely that LW has influence on those populations’ ideas about Newcomb, or that LW-like people tend to prefer one-boxing in any case.
Summary:
Caspar Oesterheld and Johannes Treutlein, who are researchers at the Foundational Research Institute working on decision theory from a Less-Wrong-ish perspective, looked at all the polls and surveys they could find indicating people’s preferred decision in the Newcomb problem.
They found, in line with conventional wisdom, that polls of professional philosophers, especially ones specializing in decision theory, tend to yield a substantial but not overwhelming majority in favour of two-boxing and that polls of other populations mostly yield results closer to 50:50 but tending to prefer one-boxing. … Well, except that it looks to me as if those polls in fact tend to give results about as much in favour of one-boxing as the philosophers are in favour of two-boxing.
The surveys with the largest populations sampled give the nearest-to-50:50 results.
Two of their polls were annual LW surveys. Those yielded a very large majority in favour of one-boxing. Some of the others did likewise; they look to me as if they sample quite LW-like populations, but I don’t have a strong opinion on whether it’s more likely that LW has influence on those populations’ ideas about Newcomb, or that LW-like people tend to prefer one-boxing in any case.