I turned decision theory problems into memes about trolleys

the fun and/or clarity can be improved/worsened. a way to improve fun is to have less text and more puzzle, here's a more fun hitchhiker version

Isn't the counterfactual trolley problem setup backwards? It should be counterfactual Omega giving you the better setup (not tying people to the tracks) if it predicts you'll take the locally "worse" option in the actual case, not the other way around, right?

Because with the current setup you just don't pull and Omega doesn't tie people to tracks.

Wow, XOR-trolley really made me think

Can you make Trolley meme for Death in Damascus and Doomsday Argument? 

Can prove that you can express any decision theory problem as some Trolley problem?

A priori, why should we trust that Omega's statement even has a well-defined truth value in the XOR-trolley problem? We're already open to the idea that it could be false.

Great. Now the likelihood of me getting anything else done today other than evaluating counterfactual hypotheticals has dropped to zero. Arguably, this could be better than the worst case alternative scenario: fighting the Dodger's victory parade traffic through downtown Los Angeles, where I am metaphorically simultaneously tied to all trolley tracks by some Sierpinsky mechanism, and therefore am bound to run over myself, perhaps more than once.

I've been wondering: is there a standard counter-argument in decision theory to the idea that these Omega problems are all examples of an ordinary collective action problem, only between your past and future selves rather than separate people?

That is, when Omega is predicting your future, you rationally want to be the kind of person who one-boxes/pulls the lever, then later you rationally want to be the kind of person who two-boxes/doesn't- and just like with a multi-person collective action problem, everyone acting rationally according to their interests results in a worse outcome than the alternative, with the solution being to come up with some kind of enforcement mechanism to change the incentives, like a deontological commitment to one-box/lever-pull.

I mean, situations where the same utility function with the same information disagree about the same decision just because they exist at different times are pretty counter-intuitive.  But it does seem like examples of that sort of thing exist- if you value two things with different discount rates, for example, then as you get closer to a decision between them, which one you prefer may flip.  So, like, you wake up in the morning determined to get some work done rather than play a video game, but that preference later predictably flips, since the prospect of immediate fun is much more appealing than the earlier prospect of future fun.  That seems like a conflict that requires a strong commitment to act against your incentives to resolve.

Or take commitments in general. When you agree to a legal contract or internalize a moral standard, you're choosing to constrain the decisions of yourself in the future. Doesn't that suggest a conflict? And if so, couldn't these Omega scenarios represent another example of that?

Is there any reason we should trust Omega to be telling the truth in the XOR-trolley problem?