TDT and FDT don’t state any propositions, they prescribe behaviours. So they could only “imply magic is real” in three ways that I can see.
They could require you to believe some proposition close to “magic is real”.
They could require you to do things that, if done by someone using a more “normal” decision theory, would be a clear indication that they think magic is real.
They could presuppose something close to “magic is real”.
I am not an expert on either TDT or FDT, and my understanding is that neither is actually well enough defined to be very sure about exactly what they require or presuppose, but I am fairly sure that neither 1 nor 3 is the case.
2 might be; e.g., allegedly TDT/FDT one-boxes on Newcomb, and you might say “one-boxing on Newcomb implies believing in causation that reaches backwards through time, and that would be magic”. (Maybe this is a bad example; to my mind, the thing in Newcomb that kinda-implies backward causation is the original setup, not any particular decision. Perhaps something involving “acausal trade” or basilisks is a better example, but I don’t understand those well enough to be sure.) But I don’t think this sort of thing justifies TDT/FDT practitioners if they say that magic is real, nor justifies other people if they say TDT/FDT practitioners think magic is real. If you follow FDT, and reckon it tells you to one-box on Newcomb, and then do so when actually confronted with a Newcomb-like situation, at no point does your thought process involve contemplating anything I would regard as “magic”.
TDT and FDT don’t state any propositions, they prescribe behaviours. So they could only “imply magic is real” in three ways that I can see.
They could require you to believe some proposition close to “magic is real”.
They could require you to do things that, if done by someone using a more “normal” decision theory, would be a clear indication that they think magic is real.
They could presuppose something close to “magic is real”.
I am not an expert on either TDT or FDT, and my understanding is that neither is actually well enough defined to be very sure about exactly what they require or presuppose, but I am fairly sure that neither 1 nor 3 is the case.
2 might be; e.g., allegedly TDT/FDT one-boxes on Newcomb, and you might say “one-boxing on Newcomb implies believing in causation that reaches backwards through time, and that would be magic”. (Maybe this is a bad example; to my mind, the thing in Newcomb that kinda-implies backward causation is the original setup, not any particular decision. Perhaps something involving “acausal trade” or basilisks is a better example, but I don’t understand those well enough to be sure.) But I don’t think this sort of thing justifies TDT/FDT practitioners if they say that magic is real, nor justifies other people if they say TDT/FDT practitioners think magic is real. If you follow FDT, and reckon it tells you to one-box on Newcomb, and then do so when actually confronted with a Newcomb-like situation, at no point does your thought process involve contemplating anything I would regard as “magic”.