I am off-put by the repeated implications that 1-boxing in Newcomb’s is correct. I understand that is popular here, but it seems unreasonably confident to react to seeing decision theorists 2-box with “why are the experts wrong” rather than “hmm, maybe they are right”. Especially when you go on to see that you generally agree with them on many other issues. Of course, as a 2-boxer myself I am biased, but without actually discussing Newcomb’s paradox I think that this data is some strong evidence that the view should be treated more seriously than this.
I’m pretty sure I understand that perspective, and I’d be happy to discuss any object-level arguments for two-boxing you’d like. :) If I’m wrong, I want to learn I’m wrong!
But I already knew that two-boxing was more popular than one-boxing (going back to the 2009 survey), so this survey isn’t a large update on that front. There are plenty of other Qs on the PhilPapers survey I feel super uncertain about; this just doesn’t happen to be one of them (at least, not to such a degree that the survey data alone can shift me toward two-boxing). If philosophers of religion agreed with me about MWI, mind uploading, and the B theory of time, I wouldn’t update toward theism, either; it’s just not a mysterious or unfamiliar enough topic to me, as someone who’s gone pretty deep both on the arguments for and against theism, and on the arguments for and against two-boxing.
It’s not that appeals to authority are invalid—it’s that I already understand the arguments that make these authorities endorse two-boxing, so (non-neglibly) updating based on the authorities and the arguments would be double-counting that evidence.
I am off-put by the repeated implications that 1-boxing in Newcomb’s is correct. I understand that is popular here, but it seems unreasonably confident to react to seeing decision theorists 2-box with “why are the experts wrong” rather than “hmm, maybe they are right”. Especially when you go on to see that you generally agree with them on many other issues. Of course, as a 2-boxer myself I am biased, but without actually discussing Newcomb’s paradox I think that this data is some strong evidence that the view should be treated more seriously than this.
The position that one-boxing is correct is not held so lightly on this site that one survey could shift this position much.
You can find numerous discussions of Newcomb’s Problem on Less Wrong here: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/newcomb-s-problem
I’m pretty sure I understand that perspective, and I’d be happy to discuss any object-level arguments for two-boxing you’d like. :) If I’m wrong, I want to learn I’m wrong!
But I already knew that two-boxing was more popular than one-boxing (going back to the 2009 survey), so this survey isn’t a large update on that front. There are plenty of other Qs on the PhilPapers survey I feel super uncertain about; this just doesn’t happen to be one of them (at least, not to such a degree that the survey data alone can shift me toward two-boxing). If philosophers of religion agreed with me about MWI, mind uploading, and the B theory of time, I wouldn’t update toward theism, either; it’s just not a mysterious or unfamiliar enough topic to me, as someone who’s gone pretty deep both on the arguments for and against theism, and on the arguments for and against two-boxing.
Another way of putting this is that argument screens off authority.
It’s not that appeals to authority are invalid—it’s that I already understand the arguments that make these authorities endorse two-boxing, so (non-neglibly) updating based on the authorities and the arguments would be double-counting that evidence.