Thanks for this. I am a bit surprised they haven’t cropped up more on Less Wrong, if they are indeed standard in the literature. I thought I’d come across pretty much every variant of chewing gum, smoking lesion, and Newcomb by now… but clearly not.
Incidentally, having very quickly glanced at “Psychopath button”, I wonder if the decider should first imagine a “safe psychopath button” which would kill every psychopath in the world apart from the presser. Consider whether you would push that button. If you are sure you would push it (and under the preferences described in the problem, the decider should be sure) then you get strong evidence that you are a psychopath yourself, so CDT says you shouldn’t push the original button. So I can’t see a very convincing counter-example to CDT here.
Thanks for this. I am a bit surprised they haven’t cropped up more on Less Wrong, if they are indeed standard in the literature. I thought I’d come across pretty much every variant of chewing gum, smoking lesion, and Newcomb by now… but clearly not.
Incidentally, having very quickly glanced at “Psychopath button”, I wonder if the decider should first imagine a “safe psychopath button” which would kill every psychopath in the world apart from the presser. Consider whether you would push that button. If you are sure you would push it (and under the preferences described in the problem, the decider should be sure) then you get strong evidence that you are a psychopath yourself, so CDT says you shouldn’t push the original button. So I can’t see a very convincing counter-example to CDT here.
Yes, you might be interested in http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jjoyce/papers/rscdt.pdf