eirenicon comments on Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 August 2009 01:10AM

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Comment author: RickJS 22 September 2009 12:28:53AM 0 points [-]

In Eliezer's article on Newcomb's problem, he says, "Omega has been correct on each of 100 observed occasions so far - everyone who took both boxes has found box B empty and received only a thousand dollars; everyone who took only box B has found B containing a million dollars. " Such evidence from previous players fails to appear in some problem descriptions, including Wikipedia's.

For me this is a "no-brainer". Take box B, deposit it, and come back for more. That's what the physical evidence says. Any philosopher who says "Taking BOTH boxes is the rational action," occurs to me as an absolute fool in the face of the evidence. (But I've never understood non-mathematical philosophy anyway, so I may a poor judge.)

Clarifying (NOT rhetorical) questions:

Have I just cheated, so that "it's not the Newcomb Problem anymore?"

When you fellows say a certain decision theory "two-boxes", are those theory-calculations including the previous play evidence or not?

Thanks for your time and attention.

Comment author: eirenicon 22 September 2009 12:57:33AM 0 points [-]

That's what the physical evidence says.

What the physical evidence says is that the boxes are there, the money is there, and Omega is gone. So what does your choice effect and when?

Comment author: RickJS 24 September 2009 05:10:02PM 1 point [-]

Well, I mulled that over for a while, and I can't see any way that contributes to answering my questions.

As to " ... what does your choice effect and when?", I suppose there are common causes starting before Omega loaded the boxes, that affect both Omega's choices and mine. For example, the machinery of my brain. No backwards-in-time is required.