But whether he does or doesn’t donate does not affect how such offers are responded to in the future, since he is free to lie without fear of exposure. Given such, it seems that he should always maximize utility by donating.
Are you familiar with UDT? There’s a lot about it written on this site. It’s complex and non-intuitive, but fascinating and a real conceptual advance. You can start by reading about http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Counterfactual_mugging . In general, decision theory is weird, much weirder than you’d expect.
But whether he does or doesn’t donate does not affect how such offers are responded to in the future, since he is free to lie without fear of exposure. Given such, it seems that he should always maximize utility by donating.
Future offers do not matter. His precommitment not to donate if others do not acausally effects how this offer is responded to.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Would you mind explaining?
Are you familiar with UDT? There’s a lot about it written on this site. It’s complex and non-intuitive, but fascinating and a real conceptual advance. You can start by reading about http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Counterfactual_mugging . In general, decision theory is weird, much weirder than you’d expect.
I’ve read some of the posts on Newcomblike problems, but am not very familiar with UDT. I’ll take a look—thanks for the link.