Why is the predictor handing out arbitrary boxes of money?
What does he get out of it?
Sounds like a self-contradiction to me. A reliable predictor would reliably predict he should keep the money. The 'paradox' vanishes if we introduce rationality to the players. Otherwise: insanity is not reliable. Whoops.
Is he giving out money because it's worthless to him? Prediction isn't worthless, it has some cost. There's no way he would bother to make the effort to achieve reliability if the money was meaningless. "In one box, there is visibly pocket lint. In the other...there might be a rusty penny." Yeah the predictor is totally going to bother to play this game straight.
More importantly, what does newcomb want? What does he get out of it?
"I'm an atheist because I can't imagine my personal god as a person. It is inconceivable that he has his own desires or motivations." Good 'ol clockwork personal god.
This is what that whole [frame] discourse is about. Whether you one-box or two-box, you're accepting that clockwork personal gods, who exist only to hand out cold hard cash for fluffy bunny unicorn reasons, are a reasonable part of practical ontology. The frame is the payload. The 'paradox' is merely bait.
This puzzle is not created out of curiosity and it would be stranger if it weren't inherently erroneous. Newcomb's troll box.
"Mommy, I don't care what you want. I have the right to your milk, hurry it up."
Nothing but very very Sophisticated mommy issues. Or congenital brain damage.
If you can't precommit to taking box B such that omega can safely predict you won't take both boxes, the other thing he can't do is stop you from changing your mind and picking up box A too anyway.
Take box B as if you're only taking box B. See what's in it.
Then, what, the money in B vanishes when you change your mind? You going to build a concrete bunker to stop anyone taking box A? What if someone takes A but, generously, gifts it to you, does that count as taking both? Do you have to refuse?
Newcomb clearly suffered from aphantasia. Or was perhaps illiterate. Didn't know what words mean. An affliction shared by the interlocutors.
At least the trolley problem happens in real life, in very rare cases. It's not immune to experiment.
first thought was "wow a free thousand dollars with the chance to also have a free million dollars"
ReplyDeletesecond thought was "who exactly is this a paradox for"
third thought was "this guy worked in military research, this means this problem is actually a reskin of some situation that a military researcher would encounter (handed black box physics problem and not being told what it's for), what situation would that be"
answer: it's about getting hired for a black site project and being paid a lot of money vs being a regular government scientist and being paid regular government employee money. the condition of getting into the former is reading the guy's mind. which he models as omnipotent and omniscient. since that's what a black box setter looks like to the black box player..
Excellent point. The small box is getting paid on-the-books money for your cover job, while your real job pays real money you don't have to pay taxes on because the IRS doesn't have the clearance to know you have the money.
DeleteSolipsistic narcissism. Casting a particular personal event as some abstract universal.
Also, perhaps this goes without saying, but obedience. The box setter is communicating norms. Thinly veiled commands. Newcomb is saying: "Yeah just do what the black-site government man says, numbnuts."
To skip many steps: and this is what passes for spycraft.
I didn't know newcomb was a military guy. I suppose in this cases it doesn't matter but really that should be the first thing. Assume it's petty/venal/parochial corruption until proven otherwise.