Are there real humans still arguing against this? It seems so obvious that, once you accept that decisions have causes and are not independent things, CDT dies on the vine, and Newcomb has a simple model that the causes of your decision are the same as the causes of Omega’s box-filling.
The only arguments against this I’ve seen in the last N years are that maybe decisions are NOT completely determined by state that’s accessible to any possible Omega (quantum uncertainty woo is the most common of such arguments). But that’s not an argument against anything in the Newcomb problem, that’s just denying the setup itself).
Fair enough. I do like the idea that counterfactuals are just as reasonable (and useful) for the past as for the future—it shouldn’t matter whether it didn’t happen or it won’t happen.
Are there real humans still arguing against this? It seems so obvious that, once you accept that decisions have causes and are not independent things, CDT dies on the vine, and Newcomb has a simple model that the causes of your decision are the same as the causes of Omega’s box-filling.
The only arguments against this I’ve seen in the last N years are that maybe decisions are NOT completely determined by state that’s accessible to any possible Omega (quantum uncertainty woo is the most common of such arguments). But that’s not an argument against anything in the Newcomb problem, that’s just denying the setup itself).
It’s not so much people arguing against this as being confused about how to explain backwards causation. So like tying up loose ends.
Fair enough. I do like the idea that counterfactuals are just as reasonable (and useful) for the past as for the future—it shouldn’t matter whether it didn’t happen or it won’t happen.
Well I’ve got another post arguing backwards causation isn’t necessarily absurd. But we don’t need to depend on it.