I don’t think I understand TDT better than Eliezer. I think that any sensible decision theory will give corresponding answers to Newcomb and the Smoking Lesion, and I am assuming that TDT is sensible.
Since Eliezer is on record as saying that TDT advocates non-corresponding answers to Newcomb and the Smoking Lesion, it seems to me that you should at the very least be extremely uncertain about at least one of (1) whether TDT is actually sensible, (2) whether Eliezer actually understands his own theory, and (3) whether you are correct about sensible theories giving corresponding answers in those cases.
Because if sensible ⇒ corresponding answers and TDT is sensible, then it gives corresponding answers; and if Eliezer understands his own theory then it doesn’t give corresponding answers.
I looked back at some of Eliezer’s early posts on this and they certainly didn’t claim to be fully worked out; he said things like “this part is still magic,” and so on. However, I have significantly increased my estimate of the possibility that TDT might be incoherent, or at any rate arbitrary; he did seem to want to say that you would consider yourself the cause of the million being in the box, and I don’t think it is true in any non-arbitrary way that you should consider yourself the cause of the million, and not of whether you have the lesion. As an example (which is certainly very different from Eliezer saying it), bogus seemed to assert that it was just the presentation of the problem, namely whether you count yourself as being able to affect something or not.
Since Eliezer is on record as saying that TDT advocates non-corresponding answers to Newcomb and the Smoking Lesion, it seems to me that you should at the very least be extremely uncertain about at least one of (1) whether TDT is actually sensible, (2) whether Eliezer actually understands his own theory, and (3) whether you are correct about sensible theories giving corresponding answers in those cases.
Because if sensible ⇒ corresponding answers and TDT is sensible, then it gives corresponding answers; and if Eliezer understands his own theory then it doesn’t give corresponding answers.
I looked back at some of Eliezer’s early posts on this and they certainly didn’t claim to be fully worked out; he said things like “this part is still magic,” and so on. However, I have significantly increased my estimate of the possibility that TDT might be incoherent, or at any rate arbitrary; he did seem to want to say that you would consider yourself the cause of the million being in the box, and I don’t think it is true in any non-arbitrary way that you should consider yourself the cause of the million, and not of whether you have the lesion. As an example (which is certainly very different from Eliezer saying it), bogus seemed to assert that it was just the presentation of the problem, namely whether you count yourself as being able to affect something or not.