For a long time I also didn’t think that Newcomb’s Problem was worth thinking about. Then I read something by Eliezer that pointed out the connection to Prisoner’s Dilemma. (According to Prisoners’ Dilemma is a Newcomb Problem, others saw the connection as early as 1969.) See also my
Newcomb’s Problem vs. One-Shot Prisoner’s Dilemma where I explored how they are different as well.
I’m curious what you now think about my perspective on the Absent Minded Driver, on both the object level and meta level (assuming I convinced you that it wasn’t meant to be a snark). You’re the only person who has indicated actually having read Aumann et al.’s paper.
The possible connection between Newcomb and PD is seen by anyone who considers Jeffrey’s version of decision theory (EDT). So I have seen it mentioned by philosophers long before I had heard of EY. Game theorists, of course, reject this, unless they are analysing games with “free precommitment”. I instinctively reject it too, for what that is worth, though I am beginning to realize that publishing your unchangeable source code is pretty-much equivalent to free precommitment.
My analysis of your analysis of AMD is in my response to your comment below.
A couple more comments:
For a long time I also didn’t think that Newcomb’s Problem was worth thinking about. Then I read something by Eliezer that pointed out the connection to Prisoner’s Dilemma. (According to Prisoners’ Dilemma is a Newcomb Problem, others saw the connection as early as 1969.) See also my Newcomb’s Problem vs. One-Shot Prisoner’s Dilemma where I explored how they are different as well.
I’m curious what you now think about my perspective on the Absent Minded Driver, on both the object level and meta level (assuming I convinced you that it wasn’t meant to be a snark). You’re the only person who has indicated actually having read Aumann et al.’s paper.
The possible connection between Newcomb and PD is seen by anyone who considers Jeffrey’s version of decision theory (EDT). So I have seen it mentioned by philosophers long before I had heard of EY. Game theorists, of course, reject this, unless they are analysing games with “free precommitment”. I instinctively reject it too, for what that is worth, though I am beginning to realize that publishing your unchangeable source code is pretty-much equivalent to free precommitment.
My analysis of your analysis of AMD is in my response to your comment below.