I see a difference between the two cases as follows:
The Smoking Lesion, as I interpret it when I say it seems to be self-evidently a correct counterexample to EDT, only affects your craving to smoke. Your probability of getting lung cancer is therefore affected only by your craving to smoke. Once you note whether or not you have a strong craving for cigarettes, your choice whether or not to smoke provides no further evidence for your possession of the lesion than the craving alone did.
As I interpret Calvinism, your status as elect or reprobate doesn’t just cause a craving to live virtuously. It actually causes the entire decision. Unlike in the smoking lesion, my internal argument about which decision theory I use to decide the Calvinism problem is itself part of the evidence for whether I am among the elect or not. This gives trying to work out a decision theory about Calvinism a self-referential element that the smoking lesion completely lacks.
As I said to Eliezer, I would be much more confident that living a virtuous life is the correct decision if I noted that many Calvinists before me had engaged in this exact argument about decision theories, and every single one who eventually came to hold my opinion went to Heaven and every single one who rejected it went to Hell.
If we used the same constraint as in the Augustine’s Paradox thread—that God is interested in your decision-making algorithm and rejects anyone who lives a virtuous life for reasons other than their native disposition, then I agree with you and I would live a life of sin.
I see a difference between the two cases as follows:
The Smoking Lesion, as I interpret it when I say it seems to be self-evidently a correct counterexample to EDT, only affects your craving to smoke. Your probability of getting lung cancer is therefore affected only by your craving to smoke. Once you note whether or not you have a strong craving for cigarettes, your choice whether or not to smoke provides no further evidence for your possession of the lesion than the craving alone did.
As I interpret Calvinism, your status as elect or reprobate doesn’t just cause a craving to live virtuously. It actually causes the entire decision. Unlike in the smoking lesion, my internal argument about which decision theory I use to decide the Calvinism problem is itself part of the evidence for whether I am among the elect or not. This gives trying to work out a decision theory about Calvinism a self-referential element that the smoking lesion completely lacks.
As I said to Eliezer, I would be much more confident that living a virtuous life is the correct decision if I noted that many Calvinists before me had engaged in this exact argument about decision theories, and every single one who eventually came to hold my opinion went to Heaven and every single one who rejected it went to Hell.
If we used the same constraint as in the Augustine’s Paradox thread—that God is interested in your decision-making algorithm and rejects anyone who lives a virtuous life for reasons other than their native disposition, then I agree with you and I would live a life of sin.