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A survey of polls on Newcomb’s problem – The Universe from an Intentional Stance

casparoesterheld.com · 346 words · saved by 1 readers

One classic story about Newcomb’s problem is that, at least initially, people one-box and two-box in roughly equal numbers (and that everyone is confident in their position). To find out whether this is true or what exact percentage of people would one-box I conducted a meta-survey of existing polls of people’s opinion on Newcomb’s problem. The surveys I found are listed in the following table: I deliberately included even surveys with tiny sample sizes to test whether the results from the larger sample size surveys are robust or whether they depend on the specifics of how they obtained the data. For example, the description of Newcomb’s problem in the Guardian survey contained a paragraph on why one should one-box (written by Arif Ahmed, author of Evidence, Decision and Causality) and a paragraph on why one should two-box (by David Edmonds). Perhaps the persuasiveness of these arguments influenced the result of the survey? Looking at all the polls together, it seems that the picture i

One classic story about Newcomb’s problem is that, at least initially, people one-box and two-box in roughly equal numbers (and that everyone is confident in their position). To find out whether this is true or what exact percentage of people would one-box I conducted a meta-survey of existing polls of people’s opinion on Newcomb’s problem. The surveys I found are listed in the following table: I deliberately included even surveys with tiny sample sizes to test whether the results from the larger sample size surveys are robust or whether they depend on the specifics of how th

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