SilasBarta comments on Hypothetical Paradoxes - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Psychohistorian 19 September 2009 06:28AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (33)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: SilasBarta 29 September 2009 09:54:02PM 0 points [-]

I meant that something takes the functional equivalent of Omega. There is a dissimilarity, but not enough to make it irrelevant. The point that Psychohistorian and I are making is that the problems have subtly contradictory premises, which I think the examples (including modified TSL) show. Because the premises are contradictory, you can assume away a different one in each case.

In the original TSL, TDT says "hey, it's decided anyway whether I have cancer, so my choice doesn't affect my cancer". But in Newcomb's problem, TDT says, "even though omega has decided the contents of the box, my choice affects my reward".