strong argument for an alternate interpretation of Newcomb’s problem – in contrast to the game-theoretic picture drawn by Lewis, Brams argues that the problem ought to be understood as “decision-theoretic” (p. 599). The distinction between the two is subtle, but extremely influential. Rather than treating the predictor’s decision as set once one enters the room, the decision-theoretic approach argues that the true “state of nature” lies in the predictor’s accuracy. When you enter the room, Brams argues, the predictor’s choice is either correct or incorrect, and this understanding clearly defeats the traditional conclusion of the dominance principle, as neither choice (one- or two-boxing) dominates the other (Figure 4). The only hope for the application of the dominance principle to escape this claim is to criticize Brams’ reformulation, but as we will see, this new conceptualization is justified.
Figure 4. The (newly realized) payoffs of Newcomb’s game (Brams, 1975). As this illustration makes clear, neither decision dominates the other ($1,000,000 is bigger than $1000, but $0 is less than $1,001,000) rendering the dominance principle useless.
One potential justification of Bram’s reformulation is the claim
discussed extensively above – that there is a strong relationship between an individual’s actions and her potential payoff (Slezak, 2006) – but a far simpler observation is sufficient justification by itself: that the predictor’s accuracy is independent of an individual’s choice (Cargile, 1975). It seems reasonable, and surely more simple, to assume that this is the case. Indeed, the accuracy Excellence in Upper-Level Writing 2012
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