There’s deeper reasons for this: there’s only a strict region of problems on which it really makes sense to talk about a “better” decision theory. Newcomb’s Revenge is actually completely symmetric to Newcomb’s Redemption which looks from the outside like Newcomb’s Problem but is actually a different decision theory setting. Revenge and Redemption cancel out under any sensible prior leaving just the vanilla Problem.
In general, if your decision theory problem is allowed to pull in responses to a different problem, without the version of the subject in that problem being aware of this effect of their choices, then this is the same as it being allowed to arbitrarily deceive its subject, which makes it unfair and invalid (for example, no decision theory can do well if Omega is allowed to trick you about what the payoffs for different actions are).
There’s deeper reasons for this: there’s only a strict region of problems on which it really makes sense to talk about a “better” decision theory. Newcomb’s Revenge is actually completely symmetric to Newcomb’s Redemption which looks from the outside like Newcomb’s Problem but is actually a different decision theory setting. Revenge and Redemption cancel out under any sensible prior leaving just the vanilla Problem.
In general, if your decision theory problem is allowed to pull in responses to a different problem, without the version of the subject in that problem being aware of this effect of their choices, then this is the same as it being allowed to arbitrarily deceive its subject, which makes it unfair and invalid (for example, no decision theory can do well if Omega is allowed to trick you about what the payoffs for different actions are).
I have written (somewhat poorly) about it here.