I claim EDT is irrepairably broken on far less exotic problems than Parfit’s hitchhiker. Problems like “should I give drugs to patients based on the results of this observational study?”
This seems to be a matter of screening off. Once we don’t prescribe drugs because of evidential reasoning we don’t learn anything new about the health of the patient.
I would only not prescripe the drug if a credible instance with forecasting power (for instance Omega) shows to me that generally healthy patients (who show suspicious symptoms) go to doctors who endorse evidential reasoning and unhealthy patients go to conventional causal doctors. This sounds counterintuitive, but structurally it is equal to Newcomb’s Problem: The patient corresponds to the box, we know it already “has” a specific value, but we don’t know it yet. Choosing only box B (or not to give the drug) would be the option that is only compatible with the more desirable past where Omega has put the million into the box (or where the patient has been healthy all along).
This seems to be a matter of screening off. Once we don’t prescribe drugs because of evidential reasoning we don’t learn anything new about the health of the patient. I would only not prescripe the drug if a credible instance with forecasting power (for instance Omega) shows to me that generally healthy patients (who show suspicious symptoms) go to doctors who endorse evidential reasoning and unhealthy patients go to conventional causal doctors. This sounds counterintuitive, but structurally it is equal to Newcomb’s Problem: The patient corresponds to the box, we know it already “has” a specific value, but we don’t know it yet. Choosing only box B (or not to give the drug) would be the option that is only compatible with the more desirable past where Omega has put the million into the box (or where the patient has been healthy all along).