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Notes -
Newcomb's problem is a thought experiment where a mysterious entity, who's known to be very good at predicting people's behavior, presents to you two boxes: one is transparent and contains a 1000$ and the other is opaque and might contain either nothing or one million dollars. You're given the choice of either taking only the opaque box (which is what I call one-boxing) or of taking both boxes. The entity tells you that it decided whether to put the money in the opaque box by predicting which option you will choose. If it predicted that you'll take both boxes, the opaque box is empty. If it predicted that you'll only take the opaque box, it put the million inside. What do?
If that was too muddled of an explanation, then have a Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox
Or alternatively, have a link to the explanation by everybody's favorite bombastic rationality guru: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ddcsdA2c2XpNpE5x/newcomb-s-problem-and-regret-of-rationality
That sounds about right. But I don’t see why you would ever take both boxes. The wikipedia page seems to suggest that it’s because you don’t trust the entity to predict correctly. I suppose it you really need $1000 that’s sensible but otherwise it looks like being a case of ‘so sharp you’ll cut yourself’.
Causal decision theory implies you should—after all, the money's either in the box or not, so there's no harm in taking it at this point; it's not like the money is somehow going to disappear.
I think it's wrong in this unusual case, but it is a thing it would advocate.
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