At the time he wrote it, the correct choice would have been to defect, because as Hofstadter noted, none of his friends (as brilliant as they were) took anything like that reflexive line of thought. If it were done now, among a group of Less Wrong veterans, I might be convinced to cooperate.
I would advocate the opposite: Imagine you have never thought about Newcomb-like scenarios before. Therefore, you also don’t know how others would act in such problems. Now, you come up with this interesting line of thought about determining the others’ choices or correlating with them. Because you are the only data point, your decision should give you a lot of evidence about what others might do, i.e. about whether they will come up with the idea at all and behave in abidance with it.
Now, contrast this with playing the game today. You may have already read studies showing that most philosophers use CDT, that most people one-box in Newcomb’s problem, that LWers tend to cooperate. If anything, your decision now gives you less information about what the others will do.
I would advocate the opposite: Imagine you have never thought about Newcomb-like scenarios before. Therefore, you also don’t know how others would act in such problems. Now, you come up with this interesting line of thought about determining the others’ choices or correlating with them. Because you are the only data point, your decision should give you a lot of evidence about what others might do, i.e. about whether they will come up with the idea at all and behave in abidance with it.
Now, contrast this with playing the game today. You may have already read studies showing that most philosophers use CDT, that most people one-box in Newcomb’s problem, that LWers tend to cooperate. If anything, your decision now gives you less information about what the others will do.