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pjeby comments on Newcomb's problem happened to me - Less Wrong
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Comments (97)
That depends entirely on what characteristics you consider to be most "Newcomb like". From an emotional point of view, the situation is very "Newcomb like", even if the mathematics is different.
This sounds like a fully general excuse to support any position. What is this emotional view? If the emotions disagree with the logical analisys, why aren't the emotions wrong? Correct emotions should be reactions to the actual state of reality.
We seem to be having a language difficulty. By "emotional point of view", I mean that there are similarities in the human emotional experience of deciding Newcomb's problem and the marriage proposal problem.
(Agree) Evolution built in (a vague approximation of) one boxing into our emotional systems. Humans actually can commit, without changing external payoffs. It isn't a bullet proof commitment. Evolution will also try to create effective compartmentalization mechanisms so that humans can maximise signalling benefit vs actual cost to change later.
On a timescale of decades, the commitment has hardly any strength at all.
Fortunately, it isn't meant to be. In a crude sense the emotions are playing a signalling game on a timescale of months to a couple of years. That the emotions tell us they are talking about 'forever' is just part of their game.
Then you agree that Joe's commitment is not a good indicator that he will stay in the marriage for decades, so Joe did not get what he wanted by allowing Kate to make an accurate prediction that he will do what she wants?
Why, when we are discussing a problem that requires commitment on the scale of many decades, did you bring up that humans can make commitments up to maybe a couple of years?
I haven't said any such thing. Joe and Kate are counterfactual in as much as organic emotional responses were simplified to Kate having a predictive superpower and Joe the ability to magically (and reliably) self modify. Two real people would be somewhat more complex and their words and beliefs less literally correlated with reality.
The basic mechanism of conversation requires that I follow the flow rather than making every comment as a reply to the original post. When I learned that from a book there was an analogy about tennis involved which I found helpful.
You did say "In a crude sense the emotions are playing a signaling game on a timescale of months to a couple of years." And the scenario does involve predictions of events which take place over the time scale of decades. Do you disagree with my assessment of the time scales, or do you somehow disagree with the conclusion?
The scenario was presented as something that actually happened, to two real people, with Kate's beliefs literally correlating with reality.
I am comfortable with leaving my previous statements as they stand.
I think we are taking a somewhat different approach to discussion here and remind myself that my way of thinking may not be strictly better than yours, merely different (P vs J).