This defense of evidential decision theory is called the tickle defense because it assumes that an introspected condition screens off the correlation between choice and prediction.
Given a typical causal model for Newcomb's problem, knowledge of the common cause of a decision and a prediction screens off the correlation between the decision and the prediction.
For, as we have seen, this would trivialize such principles in deterministic worlds, and would hide from view the remarkable fact that when one has a correlation among fairly natural localized quantities that are not related as cause and effect, almost always one can find a fairly natural, localized prior common cause that screens off the correlation.
Some, notably Cartwright (1989) and Chang and Cartwright (1993), challenge the assumption that common causes always screen off the correlation between their effects, and accordingly they question the idea that non-factorizability implies non-locality.
Thus the conjunction of C and D will screen off the correlation between A and B. Again, such a conjunction is not anything one would naturally call a common cause of the later correlated events, and therefore is not the kind of event that Reichenbach was intent on capturing with his common cause principle.
The two sliding bars at the bottom of the screen determine the correlation coefficient value used to filter the data displayed.
In particular, they claim that Reichenbach's common cause principle merely demands that for any given pair of directions I, J there exists a quantity Qij which screens off the correlations between the results of measurements directions I and J, rather than that there is a single quantity (the prior state λ) which screens off all correlations between all pairs of directions.
An attempt has been made to screen the available correlations, to select a correlation which can be applied with a large degree of confidence.
Thus, other than virtually the complete microscopic state of the material and its environment there is no prior screener off of the correlation between the spin alignments.
Then, the molecule being in the consumed half of the wine glass will be a prior screener off of the correlation between left hand reddening and right hand reddening.
