Because it’s clear what the intended clarification of these experiments is, but less so for time travel. When the thought experiments are posed, the goal is not to find the answer to some question, but to understand the described situation, which might as well involve additionally specifying it.
I can’t imagine what you would want to know more about before giving an answer to Newcomb. Do you think Omega would have no choice but to use time travel?
No, but the mechanism Omega uses to predict my answer may be relevant to solving the problem. I have an old post about that. Also see the comment by Toby Ord there.
Why is something like this an acceptable answer here, but not in Newcomb’s Problem or Counterfactual Mugging?
Because it’s clear what the intended clarification of these experiments is, but less so for time travel. When the thought experiments are posed, the goal is not to find the answer to some question, but to understand the described situation, which might as well involve additionally specifying it.
I can’t imagine what you would want to know more about before giving an answer to Newcomb. Do you think Omega would have no choice but to use time travel?
No, but the mechanism Omega uses to predict my answer may be relevant to solving the problem. I have an old post about that. Also see the comment by Toby Ord there.
Because these don’t involve time travel, but normal physics?
He did say “something like this”, not “this”.