I’m curious as to why you chose to target this paper at academic philosophers. Decision theory isn’t my focus, but it seems that while the other groups of researchers in this area (mathematicians, computer scientists, economists, etc) talk to one another (at least a little), the philosophers are mostly isolated. The generation of philosophers trained while it was still the center of research in logic and fundamental mathematics is rapidly dying off and, with them, the remaining credibility of such work in philosophy.
Of course, philosophers are the only group that pay any attention to things like Newcomb’s problem so, if you were writing for another group, you’d probably have to devote one paper to justifying the importance of the problem. Also, given some of the discussions on here, perhaps the goal is precisely to write this in an area isolated from actual implementation to avoid the risk of misuse (can’t find the link, but I recall seeing several comment threads discussing the risks of publishing this at all).
while the other groups of researchers in this area (mathematicians, computer scientists, economists, etc) talk to one another (at least a little), the philosophers are mostly isolated.
A more relevant question is whether mathematicians, CS folks and economists would talk to one another about foundational issues in decision theory. It appears that this subtopic has mostly been classified under academic philosophy, which explains why other DT researchers would pay little attention to Newcomb’s problem. (It’s true that other DT researchers have considered the related problem of making credible precommitments, and this literature should probably be cited in any introduction to UDT/TDT.) A good review of the one journal paper would suffice to raise interest among folks dealing with the more applied kind of DT.
I’m curious as to why you chose to target this paper at academic philosophers. Decision theory isn’t my focus, but it seems that while the other groups of researchers in this area (mathematicians, computer scientists, economists, etc) talk to one another (at least a little), the philosophers are mostly isolated. The generation of philosophers trained while it was still the center of research in logic and fundamental mathematics is rapidly dying off and, with them, the remaining credibility of such work in philosophy.
Of course, philosophers are the only group that pay any attention to things like Newcomb’s problem so, if you were writing for another group, you’d probably have to devote one paper to justifying the importance of the problem. Also, given some of the discussions on here, perhaps the goal is precisely to write this in an area isolated from actual implementation to avoid the risk of misuse (can’t find the link, but I recall seeing several comment threads discussing the risks of publishing this at all).
A more relevant question is whether mathematicians, CS folks and economists would talk to one another about foundational issues in decision theory. It appears that this subtopic has mostly been classified under academic philosophy, which explains why other DT researchers would pay little attention to Newcomb’s problem. (It’s true that other DT researchers have considered the related problem of making credible precommitments, and this literature should probably be cited in any introduction to UDT/TDT.) A good review of the one journal paper would suffice to raise interest among folks dealing with the more applied kind of DT.