That is the math for the notion “Calculate the expected utility of a counterfactual decision”. That happens to be the part of the decision theory that is most trivial to formalize as an equation. That doesn’t mean you can fundamentally replace all the other parts of the theory—change the actual meaning represented by those letters—and still be talking about the same decision theory.
The possible counterfactual outcomes being multiplied and summed within CDT are just not the same thing that you advocate using.
but it seems to me giving a special new name to not making mistakes is the wrong way to go about this problem.
Using the name for a thing that is extensively studied and taught to entire populations of students to mean doing a different thing than what all those experts and their students say it means is just silly. It may be a mistake to do what they do but they do know what it is they are doing and they get to name it because they were there first.
Spohn changed his mind in 2003, and his 2012 paper is his best endorsement of one-boxing on Newcomb using CDT. Irritatingly, his explanation doesn’t rely on the mathematics as heavily as it could- his NP1 obviously doesn’t describe the situation because a necessary condition of NP1 is that, conditioned on the reward, your action and Omega’s prediction are independent, which is false. (Hat tip to lukeprog.)
That CDTers were wrong does not mean they always will be wrong, or even that they are wrong now!
That is the math for the notion “Calculate the expected utility of a counterfactual decision”. That happens to be the part of the decision theory that is most trivial to formalize as an equation. That doesn’t mean you can fundamentally replace all the other parts of the theory—change the actual meaning represented by those letters—and still be talking about the same decision theory.
The possible counterfactual outcomes being multiplied and summed within CDT are just not the same thing that you advocate using.
Using the name for a thing that is extensively studied and taught to entire populations of students to mean doing a different thing than what all those experts and their students say it means is just silly. It may be a mistake to do what they do but they do know what it is they are doing and they get to name it because they were there first.
Spohn changed his mind in 2003, and his 2012 paper is his best endorsement of one-boxing on Newcomb using CDT. Irritatingly, his explanation doesn’t rely on the mathematics as heavily as it could- his NP1 obviously doesn’t describe the situation because a necessary condition of NP1 is that, conditioned on the reward, your action and Omega’s prediction are independent, which is false. (Hat tip to lukeprog.)
That CDTers were wrong does not mean they always will be wrong, or even that they are wrong now!