One factor you may not have considered: the obvious rational metastrategy is causal decision theory, and causal decision theory picks the two-box strategy.
Key word is “obvious”. If you say, “how should you solve games?”, the historical answer is “using game theory”, and when you say, “what does game theory imply for Newcomb’s dilemma?”, the historical answer is “two-box”. It takes an additional insight to work out that a better metastrategy is possible, and things which take an additional insight are no longer obvious, true or no.
Edit: Alternatively: When I said “metastrategy”, I meant one level higher than “two-boxing”—in other words, the level of decision theory. (I’m not sure which of the two objections you were raising.)
I think what RobinZ means is that you want to choose a strategy such that having that strategy will causally yield nice things. Given that criterion, object-level CDT fails; but one uses a causal consideration to reject it.
One factor you may not have considered: the obvious rational metastrategy is causal decision theory, and causal decision theory picks the two-box strategy.
I don’t follow. Isn’t it precisely on the meta-strategy level that CDT becomes obviously irrational?
Key word is “obvious”. If you say, “how should you solve games?”, the historical answer is “using game theory”, and when you say, “what does game theory imply for Newcomb’s dilemma?”, the historical answer is “two-box”. It takes an additional insight to work out that a better metastrategy is possible, and things which take an additional insight are no longer obvious, true or no.
Edit: Alternatively: When I said “metastrategy”, I meant one level higher than “two-boxing”—in other words, the level of decision theory. (I’m not sure which of the two objections you were raising.)
This is basically what I was trying to point out. :)
I think what RobinZ means is that you want to choose a strategy such that having that strategy will causally yield nice things. Given that criterion, object-level CDT fails; but one uses a causal consideration to reject it.