31–40 of 70 posts
For the risk-averse: Make a bet with someone for $500,000.00 that you can prove The Predictor is fallible. Take only box B. If box B contains $1,000,000.00, then you have lost the bet and you are left with only $500,000.00. If box B contains no money, you have wone the bet and are left with $500,000.00.
Who would take the other side of that bet?
Via Turing, we know that the Predictor would be able to decide programs, and since it can't, it can't be a Predictor. The isomorphism between the program which defeats decidability and the two-box Newcomb problem is left as an exercise.
Via Turing, we know that the Predictor would be able to decide programs, and since it can't, it can't be a Predictor. The isomorphism between the program which defeats decidability and the two-box Newcomb problem is left as an exercise.
You assume that a human cannot be described with something less powerful than a Turing machine. There is no reason to believe that knowing what a human will do in this instance is equal to decidability of computer programs.
Not sure why it is a paradox - assuming the predictor is superintelligent, you don't try to fool it. By definition its intelligence can predict what you will do in the very last moment, so the fact that it doesn't get to change anything once prediction is made, is immaterial.
Let's reverse the numbers and make both boxes transparent. If The Predictor suspects you will choose just box A, it'll put 1 million in box B and 1 thousand in box A, if it suspects you will take both A and B, it will put nothing anything in box B and 1 thousand in box A. So now you standing in front of the two transparent boxes. You see that there is $1 million in box B, yet you still take just box A?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can be more interesting reframed as such: The player is the AI, and the predictor is the AI programmer. The AI programmer can look into the innards of the AI ie. the source code and can thus predict with high accuracy what the AI will do. What is a winning strategy for the AI? Or taken another way, you can have AI's that have access to each other's source code and are competing for some scarce resource, how do you…
Sure you can. The AIs behaviour could be as simple as "Always pick box B". The difficult bit would be designing an AI which, given perfect knowledge of its logic, would pick both boxes despite appearing to be more likely to pick only B. In that case, you could simply have an AI with a 0.499999 chance of picking both and a 0.5000001 chance of picking B. The expected winnings would be $1,000,500. But then, once it come…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that doesn't matter in the slightest. The money is either there or it is not there. It's not put in the boxes after you've made the choice. It's put into the boxes before you even know there's a game. Whether or not there is free will or determinism, picking both boxes always nets the most money of what's on the table.
You're using a mathematical model that doesn't apply. The ahead-of-time simulations invalidate the idea that your decision can't affect the outcome, despite the final decision ultimately occurring afterwards. An analogy would be asserting that you can't possibly shoot yourself in the back of the head when firing into the distance, and sticking to that position even after finding out you're in a pac-man-style loop-aro…
The fact that to an observer who knows the contents of the boxes (say, the moderator or an audience) you always look like an idiot for taking only one box and leaving money on the table, should be a huge red flag.
1) completely infallible and incapable of error
2) to get a perfect prediction, the predictor must simulate you perfectly to the extent that the simulated you won't have any way to know it is the simulation
Therefore, at the time of the decision, "you" might actually be the "simulated you" and any decision you make will indeed affect the content of the boxes for the "real you". Which makes single boxing the rational decision.