Alicorn comments on Confusion about Newcomb is confusion about counterfactuals - Less Wrong

35 Post author: AnnaSalamon 25 August 2009 08:01PM

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Comment author: HalFinney 26 August 2009 09:29:12PM 0 points [-]

Two comments. First, your point about counterfactuals is very valid. Hofstadter wrote an essay about how we tend to automatically only consider certain counterfactuals, when an infinite variety are theoretically possible. There are many ways that the world might be changed so that Joe one-boxes. A crack in the earth might open and swallow one box, allowing Joe to take only the other. Someone might have offered Joe a billion dollars to take one box. Joe might aim to take two but suffer a neurological spasm which caused him to grasp only one box and then leave. And so on. Counterfactuals are a weak and uncertain tool.

My second point is with regard to determinism. What if the word in general, and Joe in particular, is nondeterministic? What if QM is true but the MWI is not, or some other form of nondeterminism prevails? Ideally, you should not base your analysis on the assumption of determinism.

Comment author: Alicorn 26 August 2009 09:52:03PM 2 points [-]

There are three of these.

Comment author: Nubulous 26 August 2009 11:34:03PM 2 points [-]

It's a little worrying that the people trying to save us from the Robopocalypse don't have a website that can spot double-posting....

Comment author: SilasBarta 26 August 2009 09:58:35PM 1 point [-]

Props for the politeness. I would have responded (and was about to respond) by saying something like,

"Yes, yes, great point, Hal. Not ... necessarily a point you needed to make three times in a row ... but a good point nonetheless."

Comment author: UnholySmoke 26 August 2009 10:07:13PM 0 points [-]

Three identical comments, all beginning 'Two comments'?

Head a splode?