The devil is in the assumption that everyone else will do the same thing as you for presumably the same reasons. “Nay” is basically a better strategy in general, though it’s not always right. The 90% odds of tails are correctly calculated.
If you are highly confident that everyone else will say “yea”, it is indeed correct to say “yea”
If you’re highly confident that everyone will say the same thing but you’re not sure what it is (an unlikely but interesting case), then make a guess (if it’s 50-50 then “yea” is better—the cutoff in fact is just a bit above 45% chance of all-yea over all-nay)
If you don’t really know what the others will say, and they’re all acting independently, then odds are they’ve blown it by giving different answers whatever you do. In that case, 1-decider case dominates your decision, for essentially different reasons (so “nay” is better).
The most difficult case is the more “natural” assumption that the other people are basically idential copies of you. In this case, what you have is a stochastic version of Newcomb’s Paradox. Actually it’s more like Newcomb’s Mugging. Once you know you are a decider, saying “yea” will genuinely give you a better average payout. But, when you’re not a decider, you’ll see more money donated if you are the sort of person who would say “nay” when you are a decider. It’s obvious why that’s true if you make the “identical copies” assumption explicitly, because your identical copy will say “nay” and cause a larger donation. So, you expect to make more money saying “yea” once you know you’re a decider, but you make more money overall if you’re a “nay”-sayer. The trick is that most of the extra money is made in the cases where you’re not a decider.
So, nay is definately the better precommitment, and TDT would presumably tell you to say nay. But the argument that, as an individual, your expected returns are better saying “yea” once you know you are a decider is still perfectly valid.
The devil is in the assumption that everyone else will do the same thing as you for presumably the same reasons. “Nay” is basically a better strategy in general, though it’s not always right. The 90% odds of tails are correctly calculated.
If you are highly confident that everyone else will say “yea”, it is indeed correct to say “yea”
If you’re highly confident that everyone will say the same thing but you’re not sure what it is (an unlikely but interesting case), then make a guess (if it’s 50-50 then “yea” is better—the cutoff in fact is just a bit above 45% chance of all-yea over all-nay)
If you don’t really know what the others will say, and they’re all acting independently, then odds are they’ve blown it by giving different answers whatever you do. In that case, 1-decider case dominates your decision, for essentially different reasons (so “nay” is better).
The most difficult case is the more “natural” assumption that the other people are basically idential copies of you. In this case, what you have is a stochastic version of Newcomb’s Paradox. Actually it’s more like Newcomb’s Mugging. Once you know you are a decider, saying “yea” will genuinely give you a better average payout. But, when you’re not a decider, you’ll see more money donated if you are the sort of person who would say “nay” when you are a decider. It’s obvious why that’s true if you make the “identical copies” assumption explicitly, because your identical copy will say “nay” and cause a larger donation. So, you expect to make more money saying “yea” once you know you’re a decider, but you make more money overall if you’re a “nay”-sayer. The trick is that most of the extra money is made in the cases where you’re not a decider.
So, nay is definately the better precommitment, and TDT would presumably tell you to say nay. But the argument that, as an individual, your expected returns are better saying “yea” once you know you are a decider is still perfectly valid.