That’s a very interesting and insightful dissection of the problem. Do you think there might be a problem in the post that I copied the thought experiment from (which said that CDT presses, and EDT doesn’t), or did I make a mistake of taking it out of context?
There, it’s related to Smoking Lesion, which has a tradition of interpreting it that suggests how to go about interpreting “only a psychopath would press such a button” as well. But that tradition is also convoluted (see “tickle defense”; it might be possible to contort this into an argument that EDT recommends pressing the button in Psychopath Button, not sure).
That’s a very interesting and insightful dissection of the problem. Do you think there might be a problem in the post that I copied the thought experiment from (which said that CDT presses, and EDT doesn’t), or did I make a mistake of taking it out of context?
The context seems to be
A Egan (2007) Some Counterexamples to Causal Decision Theory
There, it’s related to Smoking Lesion, which has a tradition of interpreting it that suggests how to go about interpreting “only a psychopath would press such a button” as well. But that tradition is also convoluted (see “tickle defense”; it might be possible to contort this into an argument that EDT recommends pressing the button in Psychopath Button, not sure).